Dibibokri Dreaming - Part 1. Freedom of the Hills.

The ice scraped against the stubble on my chin as I lay horizontal at the edge of the runnel. I could hear the muted roar of the water and the icy blue sides and bottom of the channel glowed dimly in the fast fading light. Clutching a bottle, I reached down with my right hand to scoop up some water. The water level remained tantalisingly close, but not near enough to be of any use. I angled the toes of my boots on the glacier ice and thrust my body forward, hoping that this would give my arms the extra reach.

Unfortunately, the thrust generated by my legs was a little too much and I was plunged unceremoniously into the crevasse! I was brought up short when my shoulders jammed against the sides and I felt ridiculous, dangling with my legs soaked up to the thighs in frigid water and wondering how long before the pressure and friction of my body would melt the ice just a tad for me to slip through and be swept away in the icy torrent, knowing full well that I was unlikely to survive the long, cold and slippery journey to the snout of the glacier.This grim prospect hastened my efforts to extricate myself and a few minutes later I was staggering back to the tent thirty yards away. I handed over the water bottle to Harsha who was crouched over the stove preparing our evening repast. I removed my wet clothes and squeezed the water out before it could freeze to ice, dried my limbs and crawled into the comfort of my sleeping bag. When I recounted my little misadventure, he chuckled and we both had a good laugh: we were in a great mood. Our little expedition had tasted the sweet fruit of success just two days earlier and we were anticipating the prospect of perhaps another little summit.

View of the West Glacier from the slopes of Rubal Kang

We were camped high up (at approximately 17,800 feet) on the West Glacier of the Dibibokri basin, at the foot of Rubal Kang (Tibetan for turtle, as it truly resembles one). Our original objective, Kulu Makalu (also called Lal Kila by some) towered at the head of the glacier, its wedge of rock flattened at the top like a broad chisel. Circumstances had reduced the climbing team of five to just two even before we left Mumbai in August 1991. The plan now was that Harsha and I would potter around the West Glacier of the Dibibokri system of the Kullu Himalaya and look for a modest summit, Franklyn would hold the fort at the foot of the glacier, and Aneeta Wadia would walk with us to the Base Camp as her introductory trek in the Himalaya.

Franklyn and I arrived in Manali with all the gear on 30th August, after an exhausting journey from Mumbai by train and bus. Harsha and Aneeta decided to join us a week later later, flying into Bhuntar airport on a Vayudoot flight.

The next day Franklyn and I decided to hike up to Bhrigu lake. We walked up to the village of Vashisht and continued past the hot springs.We had not reckoned with the nearly eight thousand feet height difference between Manali and the lake and this took its toll on our non-acclimatised bodies and we pitched camp late in the afternoon in mist and rain, with no sight of Bhrigu Lake yet.

Tarachand and his dog lead us to Bhrigu Lake

The next morning we followed shepherd tracks which contoured round the green hillsides, thinking that the fabled lake was just round the next turn, but no, we might as well have been walking round in circles. Just then salvation appeared in the form of Tarachand Thakur, a shepherd whose flock of sheep and goats roamed in the high pastures. He offered to show us the way and in half an hour we were at Bhrigu Lake.

Tarachand poses in front of Bhrigu Lake

I must admit that I was a little less than elated: I had expected to be greeted by a picture postcard rendition of a heavenly tarn; instead, Bhrigu Lake turned out to be a fairly nondescript body of water, the mists lifting off the surface to reveal the hundreds of votive coins that pilgrims had cast into the pond over the years. The tourism brochures touted it as a favourite place of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. As far as we were concerned, the politicians could have it all. We retreated to a little alp where Tarachand had set up shelter in a stone enclosure. He allowed us to pitch our tent a little distance away while he strode off to collect his flock and corral them for the night.

When our stove malfunctioned, we crawled into his shelter to cook our meal on the small fire he had going inside. The mists closed in once again, darkness swarmed over the mountains, the sheep and goats settled down outside. It was a good time to chat, our faces lit up in the best dramatic fashion by the flickering flames, our voices punctuated often by the comforting animal sounds emanating from the mass of four footed creatures surrounding us. Tarachand's lone pony stood sentinel with a little help from his sheep dog.

Tarachand told us his story, in between long puffs from his hookah. His home was in the Kangra hills lower down and he had adult sons minding the crops in the fields that the family owned. He had a wife and grandchildren, but he was also possessed of a restlessness that only the freedom of the hills could assuage. He had spent decades working in a government office in Dehra Dun and the Kafkaesque routine had eroded his soul. When he retired, to the shock of his family, he took up the shepherd's staff again and set off each summer for the lush grazing grounds of the upper Kullu and Lahul valleys. Up here, alone for weeks and months at a time, with his pony and dog and goats and sheep for company, he tasted true freedom. "Azaadi", he used the Urdu word, "that is what I had been missing all those years!"

During the course of the night we heard him go out many times with an old blunderbuss he had proudly showed us in the evening, to deal with any bears that might be preying on his flock.

Thus refreshed in body and soul, Franklyn and I caught the bus to Kullu on 3rd Sept to get our Inner Line Permits, for the Dibibokri basin fell into the restricted zone. Our trip couldn't have been more ill timed: the Himachal State Governor was in town and all the government machinery was fully occupied in various forms of bandobust! Nobody had the time nor the inclination to listen to our pleas. To compensate, we gorged ourselves on mutton chow mein at a small Tibetan dhaba when we returned to Manali at seven in the evening.

An afternoon trip by myself the next day to Kullu was successful in producing the permits. We reckoned that one more hike on 5th Sept with a 6000 feet ascent from the village of Aleo would do wonders for our fitness. I am not too sure about our fitness, but the deluge of rain and wind that hit us high on the slopes certainly worked its wet magic for our descent. We sloshed down muddy trails running with knee deep water and were glad to reach the little tea shop below Aleo. There were many landslides on the road back to Manali and the road itself was awash with water cascading off the sides of the hills.

There was still no sign of Aneeta and Harsha. Instead, we met up with Jayant and Kum Kum Khadalia (with whom I had shared the Panch Chuli adventure three years earlier: http://taccidental.blogspot.ca/2013/01/panch-chuli-part-ii-lessons-in-humility.html ) who were in town with their two year old son Kunal. Seeing him playing around the hotel corridor reminded me of my own 19 month old son whom I had left behind in Mumbai. The Tibetan dhaba came to our rescue again and we added an extra helping of momos to compensate for the delay in setting off for Manikaran and the Parbati valley.

Aneeta (right) and I on Day One of  the approach walk

Finally, on 9th Sept we left Manikaran and set off up the Parbati river, passing through the villages of Raskat, Tahuk, Burshaini and Nakthan to spend the night at Rudra Nag. Our baggage was carried by 7 porters led by Ramlal, all from the village of Raskat. Franklyn and I found the going rather pleasant, our earlier forays above Manali had certainly enhanced our relative fitness. For me personally it was interesting to see the changes along the trail six years after my last walk here ( http://taccidental.blogspot.ca/2012/07/sara-umga-pass-manikaran-to-shamshi.html ). Back then I had turned up the Tos Nala after Burshaini; now we were heading further into the valley of the Parbati river as it carved its way through rocky gorges and steep slopes clothed with evergreens, past the hot springs at Khirganga with its resident baba, up towards the open pastures of Tunda Bhuj and Thakur Kuan.

L to R : Harsha, Franklyn and Aneeta

Khirganga

Aneeta and Harsha opted to stay an extra day at Tunda Bhuj, our next halt, to get over their jet lag - they had flown into Bhuntar from London with just a day halt in Mumbai!. An even more convincing reason might have been the dead sheep we had bought here for Rs.200/- from a shepherd who told us that the poor beast had fallen from a cliff. There is nothing like fresh mutton to supplement the generally vegetarian diet that we were relying on to sustain us in the mountains.

Our camp at the "dwar" (arch / doorway ) formed by rocks at Tunda Bhuj

Franklyn and I were keen to get the expedition established at a suitable Base Camp in the Dibibokri Nala. Ensuring we packed some of the meat, we continued with Ramlal and four of the porters. We crossed over to the true right bank of the Parbati river on a "jhoola" ( a metal basket suspended from cables and operated by pulleys) at Thakur Kuan. Our trail began to hug the cliffs on the north side of the Dibibokri valley. Late in the afternoon we stopped for the night in a stone shelter built by local shepherds. Mutton and rotis for dinner concluded a satisfying day.

One of our porters with his load

The "Jhoola" crossing at Thakur Kuan

This striking peak ( 5810 m  / 19,057 ft on the Survey Of India map) above Thakur Kuan on the left bank of the Parbati would be an excellent technical challenge for the competent climber. This view from just below our Base Camp in the Dibibokri.

More mutton curry accompanied with rice and khichri comprised "breakfast" the next morning: thus fortified, we couldn't possibly go wrong! We crossed a turbulent little nala cascading off the cliffs on our left and were soon at the Base Camp site, just in time to say goodbye to a large party (12 members) from Bengal who were vacating the place. Eight of their members had climbed Rubal Kang, with the help of 5 High Altitude Porters (HAP). Chaman Singh, one of the HAPs, was the brother of Ramlal who was with us. Chaman Singh hailed from the village of Raskat and had shared many mountain adventures with my friend Jayant whom we had met only a couple of days earlier in Manali.....so there was much exchange of news while tea was passed around. Chaman Singh generously offered me his bivouac sack and an extra stove for Base Camp, both of which I accepted gratefully. Then, with a final wave of his hand he went down the valley with his charges. I suggested to Ramlal that he should also go down to Thakur Kuan to help Harsha and Aneeta and the two porters with them when they came up the next day, Friday 13 Sept.

Porters crossing the torrent before arriving at Base Camp

Base Camp in the Dibibokri Nala

Ramlal also helped us over the next couple of days to stock up our Advance Base Camp at the foot of the ice fall leading up to the West Glacier. Harsha, Franklyn and I occupied this camp on 17th Sept after Ramlal and Aneeta began their hike out to Manikaran. Three weeks after arriving in Manali, we were finally poised at 15,000 ft. on the threshold of our little river of ice.

A view up the Ratiruni valley, en route to our Advance Base Camp

Dibibokri Pyramid (6408 m / 21,018 ft) dominates the view up the Main Glacier

Our camp site was perfect: a clear stream flowed nearby, a cave formed under a huge boulder to shelter our kitchen, the toe of the West Glacier was ten minutes away and a grand view of the impressive ramparts of Dibibokri Pyramid completed the picture. As we draped our sleeping bags over the sunlit boulders to air and dry, we revelled in our isolation; as far as we knew, we were the only humans in an area large enough to swallow all of Mumbai. The only link we had to the outside world was a small transistor radio which had to be coaxed to pick out signals from the ether. This was paradise!

The ice fall of the West Glacier at our doorstep

Advance Base Camp

Lion Peak - Retreat plus R & R

After the heady euphoria of climbing my first peak, I was eager to get back down the glacier for the simple reason that we did not have much food left! But when we woke up the next morning our little summit camp was plastered in freshly fallen snow, we were enveloped in cloud and could not see very much. Prudence dictated that we wait for the weather to clear before descending the crevasse ridden glacier. In the event, we had to wait the whole day. We brewed tea and nibbled the few almonds and other dried nuts we had left, and lay around in our sleeping bags chatting. Being stormbound in a small tent with your fellow climber offers plenty of time for conversation, especially if neither of you have your ears plugged with the ubiquitous pieces of audio devices so prevalent these days. Back in 1985, neither of us had the luxury of owning even the humble Sony Walkman, so we were oliged to converse.


Occasionally, I would poke my head out of the tent to see if the snow had stopped falling, then fall back into my siesta. We spoke of various things, none of which I can remember now....but the day passed pleasantly enough, except for the hollowness in our stomachs, which of course increased the tendency for producing flatulence: this in turn called for more incense sticks to be lit by Ravi and we inhaled a potent mixture of clean mountain air flavoured with body emissions and "aggarbatti"(joss stick) fragrance!

We spent a lot of time watching the clouds roll up the glacier

The next day, 31 August dawned not so bright but fair enough to move. We also had no choice as we had run out of food! Moving as quickly as we could with our heavy packs, we were soon at the Camp 2 site. We paused briefly here and then kept going downhill till we arrived at the Hawa Mahal camp in the afternoon. We had managed to leap across most of the crevasses unharmed, though I did slip on the ice once and took a small tumble and hurt my knuckles. You can see why I've named my blog The Accidental Climber...I seem to attract mishaps all the time! Thankfully, they are mostly minor in nature and rather embarrassing to report. As for the more serious incidents, so far I have survived to tell the tale!



Ravi strikes a farewell pose below Lion



I am ready to go down



Ravi takes the plunge!



Bir Singh and Rinzing now came up to help us and by the end of the next day we were camped at the snout of the Bara Shigri where it flows into the Chandra river. Bir Singh was a young lad of 16 from the village of Urgus in the Miyar Nala and was portering to earn some money in his school holidays. Rinzing worked out of Manali through a trekking agency. We had met them earlier with the Bengali expedition and they had agreed to help us when we were done with our climb. Both were extremely fine gentlemen and very very strong. They were also very bold, unlike the two porters we had brought out of Manali and who had rather inconveniently abandoned us in the middle of the Karcha Nala.

Thanks to Rinzing and Bir Singh, my journal for 2nd Sept reads : "This morning we left the Bara Shigri glacier snout at 6:30 am and walked quickly to the Karcha Nala which we reached at 9 am. Crossing it was a piece of cake. I brushed my teeth and had a head wash on the other side."

16 year old Bir Singh

Rinzing Lama

Ravi Kamath

Bir Singh fording the Karcha Nala

Rinzing helps Ravi across.
Dharamsura and Papsura glitter in diamantine splendour in the distance.

We walked leisurely to the tea shop at Batal which also doubled as the bus stop. Here we bumped into Ravi's old friend Tashi who was  chaperoning a group of French trekkers to Chandratal, the lake that is considered the source of the Chandra river. And so an idea was born : why don't we make a quick dash to the lake ourselves since we were running ahead of schedule in our plans? The French group left the tea shop at 10:30 am, Rinzing boarded the bus to Manali at 11:15 am with most of our luggage and the three of us settled down to lunch before boarding the bus going to Kaza at 1:50 pm. The 11 km to the Kunzum La (the pass that divides Lahul from Spiti) was covered by the bus in an hour as it grunted its way slowly up the gravel road with its short and steep switchbacks. We got off the bus at this 15,060 ft (4590m) pass, posed for a few photos and visited the little shrine, then marched for 3 hours, mostly downhill, to reach the tranquill waters of Chandratal at 6 pm.

Shrine at the Kunzum La with the peaks of the CB (Chandra Bhaga) group behind

The dry and arid landscape of Spiti from the Kunzum La

One of the CB peaks from the pass

Bir Singh with Spiti background

Unfortunately, it was cold and windy as we put up our tents on the shores of the lake, though this did not deter a couple of ducks from flying around the far shore. Bir Singh woke us up at the crack of dawn (5 am) with a welcome cup of tea and we were packed and ready to go by 6. An hour later we came across the camp of Tashi's group - they had trekked up from Batal with their mules. They offered us tea which we gladly accepted. They were an obviously well run outfit - one of them was enjoying the luxury of shaving with hot water! We thanked them for their hospitality and sped on our way, munching on puris and peas bought from Batal the day before. We soon intercepted the road descending from Kunzum La and continued at a crackling pace. We were just in time to hop onto the Kaza - Kulu bus at Batal; A nice lunch followed when the bus stopped at the Chatroo tea shop and we were in Manali by 5 pm.

The rapid transition from the serenity of Chandratal to the bustle of Manali was a little distressing, though  adequately compensated by a princely repast of mutton curry and rotis at Lakshmi Dhaba!

For Ravi this was the end of his mountain holiday. Before catching the bus back to Delhi he took me to visit his old friend Nalini. Nalini lived in the very first (at least in those days) cottage on the right hand side of the road as you drove in from Kulu. The cottage was called SNUG and was a charming structure, very traditional and very old world. Nalini herself was full of  old world charm and it was a delight to meet her. She was originally from Mumbai (then of course still Bombay), and had been the principal of a school there. She was one of the earliest women to complete a mountaineering course at the Western Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Manali. She had so fallen in love with Manali then (the early 1960s) that she decided to sell off her property in Bombay and settle down here with her two other friends Shashi and Gautam. Hence the name of the cottage SNUG : the U linked their initials together! Gautam was no more, but the name did not change.



Ravi with Nalini in her orchard



Nalini treated us to tea and biscuits and a stroll in the little apple orchard at the back of the house. She was a great storyteller and filled us in with the goings on in the little town and of course some of the gossip. It was a wonderful afternoon interlude, but we could not linger: Ravi had his bus to catch whilst I had to prepare for the next phase of my adventure : a trek across the Sara Umga Pass, where I would ascend from the Tos valley and descend into the Chota Shigri glacier. Bir Singh had agreed to accompany me on this walk and I looked forward eagerly to the delights of an unhurried stroll through gorgeous alpine scenery and to cross the challenging 16,000 ft pass...

The Hadimba Devi shrine in Old Manali

Lion Peak : Into the Den

Though I had slept quite well I woke up depressed to a cold and cloudy, grey sky. Arvind had had another bad night and had decided to go back to Manali.

We repacked our kit bags and helped him to cross over to the Batal side of the nala. He headed off to the teashop to see if he could rustle up some aid. Luck was with him as he returned within the hour with Gautam and Raju, our new porter recruits. They helped him get back to the bus stop with his baggage while Ravi and I proceeded to transfer our reduced loads to the Bara Shigri side of the nala in a repeat of the previous day's rope sling manoeuvre. We dumped 5 kg of "theplas" (fried, supposedly long-lasting Gujarati parathas) among the boulders as the long moist journey from Mumbai had kindled a healthy growth of fungus on them! Thus lightened, we began the slow approach to the snout of the Bara Shigri glacier with the help of our two new porters who had now returned after leaving Arvind at Batal. They very gladly accepted 6 kg of atta and the remainder of the theplas which Ravi and I now planned to jettison as well - our plan was to trim our weight and go in as light as possible. The porters concealed their booty up a small gully for them to pick up on their return. It was great to be walking again and to realise that perhaps our little expedition might still arrive at the base of our peak!

Our two porters enjoy tea and rotis with the shepherds (with dogs)

After a short tea break with some hospitable shepherds from Palampur in Kangra who were herding their sheep up to the high pastures we neared the terminal moraine of the Bara Shigri as it thrust its millions of tons of rock, soil and detritus into the Chandra river. Clambering over huge boulders we finally decided to pitch tents for the night in a little grassy enclave among the rocks. The sun dipped rapidly behind the retaining wall of the glacier with its rocky crenellated summits and the temperature plummeted.

Traversing high above the Chandra river we move towards the snout of the Bara Shigri, visible at the end of the frame.

I pose with one of the porters

Ravi is silhouetted against a striking mountain backdrop. Dharamsura and Papsura are the two big peaks on the left.

Closing in on the snout of the Bara Shigri glacier across the wide Chandra valley

We camped for the night a little beyond this point

Camp at the mouth of the Bara Shigri

Next day, four hours of boulder hopping on the tangled moraine of the glacier, laced with a liberal dose of collapsing mud slopes, brought us to what was called Centre Camp in the historical accounts of the exploration of the Bara Shigri glacier. It was hot and it was dusty and it was exhausting. It was hard to believe that we were traversing a river of ice, frozen beneath all the ugliness. Everything was shades of brown, ochre, black and grey. A few hardy stands of pink willow herb struggled to add a dash of colour to the barren wilderness. The only human encounter we had that day was with four people descending the glacier. They were from the large expedition from Chittaranjan in West Bengal which was camped further up at the junction of the Lion and Bara Shigri glaciers. These four gentlemen were going back to Manali to replenish supplies of kerosene and food which they were running out of......when they told us that there were 14 mouths to feed at their camp, we were surprised that they had not factored this into their logistics planning. We exchanged pleasantries and when we enquired from them how far did we have to go till Centre Camp, they confidently predicted "4 hours at least"! When we actually made it there in the next 2 hours we were mighty pleased with ourselves: perhaps we had given the impression of being an extremely slow-moving group to our friends to have come up with their estimate. It was still just before midday and blazing hot; we cowered in the shade of the rocks after putting up our tents. Out of curiosity I placed my temperature-reading watch out in the sun and hastily put it away when the reading touched 51.6 deg Celsius! I remembered then reading about an Australian expedition on the north face of Everest which had to deal with severe sunburn in a high glacier bowl where the heat of the sun gets reflected by the vast mirror-like slopes of snow and focused like into the basin....out here in the Bara Shigri, it was the rocks that were heating up and grilling us mercilessly.

I am flanked by Gautam and Raju at Centre Camp.
The NE face of Dharamsura provides a fitting backdrop.

An early dinner at 5:30pm and we called it a day. Four hours of trudging up the moraine the next day finally brought us to the junction of the Lion nala and the Bara Shigri glacier. This is where the large group from Bengal was camped and this is also where we established what we called our Advance Base Camp. We exchanged pleasantries with Deepak, Dilip and Neelkanth from the other expedition - they were very hospitable and offered us tea and biscuits as we set up our tents. Gautam and Raju were paid off for their services and we watched them skip happily back down the glacier.

Since it was only mid-day, Ravi and I picked up some light loads from our pile and hiked up the Lion Nala for 2 hours until we reached a spot christened "Thanda (Cold) Camp"  by Josephine and Barbara of the Women's Kulu Expedition 1961. They had named it thus because of the extremely cold winds that they encountered here, right at the base of the icy snout of the Lion glacier. Twenty four years later nothing had changed, it was still a freezing, uncomfortable campsite on rocks. Later we were to modify the name to "Hawa Mahal" (Palace of the Winds). We dumped our loads here and rushed back to Advance Base, to be offered tea again by our neighbours!

"Thanda Camp" or "Hawa Mahal" was just below this icy snout of the Lion Glacier.
Two figures can be seen descending the slope in this telephoto shot from the camp.

They topped up their hospitality by inviting us over to their camp for dinner and we were only too happy to accept, as we were now truly tired. They had a full time cook turning out meals at regular intervals and we were shocked to see some electric bulbs strung up in their kitchen mess tent! Power was being supplied by a couple of large batteries. We concluded that their budget was significantly more than the micro finances Ravi and I were operating on......on return to Mumbai we sat down and calculated that between the two of us we had spent less than Rs.4000/- on the whole trip. This included transportation, food, hotel and porter charges!

Anyway I was glad that someone had the means to offer us a free dinner of delicious chicken curry, meat, chapattis and rice at 14,000 feet on a glacier! I tucked into the meal heartily but Ravi who is a vegetarian, ate his usual small portion. I shall always remember that sumptuous repast and am eternally grateful to those kind gentlemen from Chittaranjan. It was almost midnight when we finally fell asleep, happy and content. We had every reason to be : in exactly a week's time after leaving the hot, teeming, tropical and humid megalopolis of Mumbai, we were poised to fulfil our little Himalayan dream.