valley of flowers: part VIII

Day 7, Fri Aug 29, 2008: The day had come to start our journey back to the noisy and polluted city life. We visited the temple again that morning. Morning experience was completely different from the evening experience. There were very few people. We could do darshan easily -- without any push from anyone. It was all great, but we still relished our evening visits more. I think evenings provided kind of coziness and isolation from the rest of the world.

After checking out from the hotel, we went to the bus station to catch a bus going 'down' (to low lands). The buses, or rather timings of the buses, on Badrinath-Joshimath route are controlled by a concept called gates. Authorities on both sides coordinate with each other and let buses go only at specific times. I heard from someone that it's to ensure that there is not much traffic on the single lane road between Joshimath and Badrinath at any point of time, but that hardly seems to be the case now. It has become a way for the gate controllers, self appointed committee sort of thing, to make money through illicit means. They extort money from bus drivers and in exchange let them go at whatever time they want to go. So, yeah, it's kinda corrupted there :)

Anyway, we didn't get a ride because we were not ready to sit in the driver's cabin. Seats in driver's cabin are not comfortable and are not for passengers. Get it? They sell tickets for these seats too and money received in return is never accounted for. We waited for some time and finally left by a shared jeep for Joshimath. We thought we'll go as far as possible and take whatever means of transportation we find. Soon we were met by a live landslide. Yes, landslide was happening in front of our eyes. It was raining a bit and the rocks and stones started coming down as the mud on the mountains started loosening because of rainwater. The road was blocked, in fact we were at the front, with a long queue of vehicles behind us. Luckily rain stopped soon and slowly stones and rocks stopped coming down. But, the road was still blocked as a big rock and other smaller rocks were lying on the road. We all waited for the BRO (Border Road Organization, organization which maintains roads in region) people and machinery to come. Pankaj and I decided that we'll cross the landslide zone on foot if they don't come by 2:30 pm. But, they came. They came just before 2:30 pm. They cleared the road and gave us clearance to cross. It was a bad bad road :) It was a relief, having crossed that zone.

Well, the whole landslide thing delayed everything. We reached Joshimath by 4-4:30 pm. There we found out that the road was blocked again in Pipalkothi (a town 31km away from Joshimath), so no vehicle was going down. We had no other option but to spend that night in Joshimath. We again checked into GMVN TRH. This time room was much better (though it was not bad last time too). We freshened up, took leisure walks in the town, ate jalebi :), watched some tv and called it a day.

Day 8, Sat Aug 30, 2008: Next day we got up very early to catch the bus to Haridwar. We came down to the main road at 6:15 am, only to find that the bus had already gone. Later we'll found out that it was actually lucky for us. Keeping our motto of going as far as possible and by any means, we took a shared taxi to Chamoli, the district town about 55 km from Joshimath. And then, in Pipalkothi we met another landslide. This landslide was gigantic. It seemed as if whole mountain had come down on the road. As there were no chances of this thing clearing up soon, we got down there and paid the taxi driver. This time we made a quick decision. We decided to cross that mountain of rocks, which was lying on the road, on foot. It wasn't easy, but it was fun -- climbing on huge, still not very settled, pile of fallen rocks. There was a bus at the other side which was actually going to Badrinath, but looking at the situation and after waiting for a night there, decided to go back to Haridwar. All to our luck. We boarded this bus and resumed our journey to low lands. We were lucky to have missed the bus in the morning from Joshimath, because in that case either we would have been stuck at Pipalkothi or given away the fare from Joshimath to Haridwar.

This bus took us till Rishikesh without any further issues. We checked into a hotel in Rishikesh (again GMVN but a bit expensive), freshened up and started our walk along river Ganga to watch Ganges aarti. We watched the aarti in Paramarth Niketan, an ashram on the opposite side, near Ram Jhula. It was a wonderful experience. The whole air was of relaxed attitude. I bought a book there (though Pankaj paid for it ;))- Siddartha by Hermann Hesse - and then we had our dinner at famous Chotiwala restaurant. The day had almost ended.

Day 9, Sun Aug 31, 2008: We woke up to a pleasant morning. Our hotel was on the Ganges bank and our room's blacony looked towards Ganges and mountains. The view was amazing. Ram jhula and Parmarth Niketan, though about 5 km away, were visible from our room. We had breakfast there, checked out and took a bus to Haridwar and from Haridwar another bus to Delhi. We were back in Delhi by 4 pm or so.

This post marks the end of valley of flowers series (finally!). Hope you liked it and found it useful. Now I am relieved, I can write about something else :)

Cheers,
Manu Garg / www.manugarg.com / Journey is the destination of life

valley of flowers: part VII

I think, it's the time to finish the VoF series. In my previous post, we were sleeping in Badrinath, at the end of Day 5 of our journey. Badrinath was a 'Rivendell' for us, a place to relax and rejuvenate. The dawn of Day 6 (Thursday Aug 28, 2008) brought us a pleasant morning. Though we got up early, we started the day at a slow pace. Only thing on agenda that day was a 3 km walk to Mana, a border village. In earlier days, when Tibet was not taken by China, Mana village was a much used gateway to Tibet. Now it is a closed border.

Walk to Mana was pretty cool. A plane road along Alaknanda, the river that had been with us all along. In fact after doing trekking in last 4 days, it felt pretty much like how you feel when you read Harry Potter after reading Moby Dick. After a nice and easy walk of 35 min, we reached Mana. It was a small village - very few houses, populated mostly by people of Indo-Mongolian origin. We interacted with few kids there who were selling some medicinal herbs. Kids could speak Hindi easily. Not surprising considering that there was, quite surprisingly, a Saraswati Shishu Mandir (a chain of primary schools, mostly found in North India) there. A short walk into the village and we came to the Bheem Pul, a bridge over a mountain cleft, made of a huge single rock. The legend has it that it was made by Bheem when Draupadi, his wife, could not cross the opening. Near Bheem Pul is the birthplace of Saraswati river, a river that is hidden for the rest of its course, and meets Ganges and Yamuna in Allahabad. There was also a shelter, naturally made of rocks, which a youngish Baba (to an outsider, a Baba is a kind of hippy yogi) had converted into his abode. I remember him complaining to a local that somebody stole his pressure cooker last night :)


Later we went to the Vyas Gufa, the cave where Ved Vyas is said to have written Mahabharat. As per an inscription there, that gufa is more than 5111 years old. Just beside Vyas Gufa, there is another attraction of Mana (probably the biggest attraction) - the last tea shop of India. It's very popular. You can find pictures of many people in front of this tea shop over internet. We had a good time there. There were only Pankaj, I, tea shop owner, and an old man who had seen the times when there was no border in Mana and people from each side were free to go to the other side. We spent quite some time there. Leisurely drinking the Van Tulsi tea of last tea shop of India and talking to that old man. He told us lot of stories including the story of how Badrinath came to be. Interesting stories.

In the evening we came back to Badrinath and visited the temple again. We went to the same prasadwala's (guy show sells things that can be offered to deities, like sweet, flowers etc) shop, kept our shoes there, bought some prasad and went to the temple. This time when we reached, there was still time for aarti. We started the parikrama of the main temple in the middle. On the way, there was a satsang going on in the satsang hall. There was a man, of the sage kind, in his forties or fifties, singing 'Sri Man Narayan' bhajan on a harmonium. Others were singing with him in chorus. There was something in the air there. We just stopped in our tracks and started listening to it. We didn't go inside the hall, but we could not leave that place either. We just stood there outside, without a word to each other, watching and listening to the group lost in some state of joy, and we ourselves lost in the same state of joy.

When satsang got over we realized that aarti had already started. One interesting incident happened when we were coming back. As the temple was closing, Panditji (priest in-charge of the temple) was asking people to leave and shouting 'subah char baje (morning 4 o'clock), subah char baje'. He obviously meant to say that the temple will open again in the morning at 4 o'clock. But, someone, a youngish guy, very innocently asked him - what will happen at 4 o'clock? Obviously Panditji hadn't realized that somebody might ask that question. So, it was funny and all of us laughed. But that's not it. Our prasadwala guy was also there and I was amazed to see how much joy he derived out of this incident. While coming down he was shouting and telling everyone - 'subah 4 baje, subah 4 baje' and then he even told his neighbor shopkeepers about the incident. It was good to see that how much joy someone can derive out of small incidents.

That day we again came back to the temple after it was closed. This time to take photographs. We took few, not many of them came nicely though. After that we had our dinner, in the hotel I think, and hit the sack after a walk in the town. Tomorrow we were to start our journey back to city life. A journey that will take 3 days to complete with overnight halts in Joshimath and Rishikesh.

I know I thought I'll finish this series with this post. But again this post has run longer than I expected and I don't want to make it even longer. Now the only part left is our journey back, which was made a bit interesting by the landslides that we met on the way.

Last set of photographs: http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripBadrinathAndReturn

Other sets of photographs:
Till Ghangaria: http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripTillGhangaria
In the Valley: http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripInTheValley
Hemkund Sahib: http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripHemkundSahib

Cheers,
Manu / www.manugarg.com / Journey is the destination of life.

valley of flowers: part VI

Day 5, Wed Aug 27 2008 (contd.): After checking into our hotel in Badrinath and taking bath, we were all fresh by 6 pm or so. We were in a chill mood and wanted to take it easy, so we thought "lets just find out about the temple - where is it, what are the timings etc - today and do the darshan tomorrow". One specific thing we wanted to find out was where Adi Kedareshwaram temple was. Actually, it is said that one should go to Barinath only after visiting Kedarnath, and if you are not able to do so, you should at least visit Adi Kedareshwaram temple, which is in Badrinath itself, before visiting Badrinath temple. We asked the caretaker, but he didn't seem to know where it was.

When we came out of the hotel, we came to know that temple was pretty close from there. In fact it was visible from the other side of the road (our hotel was in the higher parts of the town). We decided to go till the temple at least, even if not inside. It was an enchanting walk till the temple. There were shops throughout on the way, playing religious audios and videos, and selling various religious things like pictures and idols of Lord Badrinath, diya and ghanti (lamps and bells) for prayer, necklaces with God's idols in it, etc. The temple was on the other side of Alaknanda, we had to a cross a bridge to reach there. We were still trying to figure out where Adi Kedareshwaram temple was. Finally, after strolling there for some time, we came to know from a video playing in a shop that it was near the main temple only.

As there was still time for the temple to close, we decided to visit the temple that day only. We kept our shoes in one prasadwala's shop (shop which we'll keep coming to), bought some prasad, and after washing our hands and feet in Tapta Kund (hot water springs), we moved forward by the stairs which approached the temple from right side. Few stairs up, there was a guy rubbing sandalwood. He put some sandalwood paste on our forehead. Few more stairs up, there was Adi Kedareshwaram temple. It's a small, but peaceful and powerful temple on the right side of the stairs. After paying our reverence to the Shivling there, we moved forward. Few more stairs up, and we were in the Badrinath temple. We entered the temple from the right side.

Inside this temple, there was a smaller temple in the middle where Lord Badrinath was seated, and in the corridor around it, there were temples of Goddess Lakshmi, Hanuman, Nar-Narayan and Lokpal. Lord Badrinath temple, the one in the middle, had 2 doors, one on the front and the other on the left side. When we reached there, the Bhog was going on and people were waiting in queues outside both the doors. Luckily we somehow got into the left door queue. Lucky, because left door opened first. So, we were among the privileged crowd that entered the temple first. Front door opened afterwards and the aarti started.

This was one of the most mystifying experiences of my life. There were sounds of drums and chants in sanskrit. It felt as if these sounds were calling for gods from the skies above. Just imagine a temple on a lofty himalayan peak, in a small town populated only by religious people, with most of the unsettling noises of cities far far away, and the peace of the night all around except for the drums in the temple. It was amazing. I let myself slip into believing that a tremendous flow of energy was descending down into the temple on the call of those drums and chants. I felt a certain kind of joy. Certain kind of relief. Relaxation. As if there was nothing else to do in the world. I was smitten.

Once the aarti was over, we offered our prasad and got some in exchange. We walked back in a mesmerized state of mind, with a promise to ourselves to come there again. We had our dinner near the guest house and after a bit of walking and then watching tv in the room, we turned to bed.

valley of flowers: part V

Day 5, Wed Aug 27 2008: So we had already finished the difficult parts of the trek by now. Today we had to descend back to Govindghat. Our knees were still paining from yesterday's roller coaster descent. After our daily routine of things, we finally departed from Ghangharia, our trekking base for last 3 days. As we kept on walking, our knees also got better slowly. Actually, it's true, when you decide to do some thing, things usually fall in place. We reached Govindghat in 3.5 hours if I recall correctly. We had our lunch there. I tried calling home but phones were not working in Govindghat that day :) So beware, these kinda things, which may sound strange to you, happen quite often in places like these.

Retracing our steps from 3 days back, we came to the main road from where we were "likely" to get a vehicle for pious town of Badrinath. Here we heard the not so encouraging news that road to Badrinath was blocked due to landslide. We were still hopefull though and continued to wait there. After about an hour or so, we were relieved to see 2 buses coming from Badrinath side. I asked the conductor if the road was clear now; he replied in affirmative. Ok, so the road was open now, but we still had to get some vehicle. We waited and waited. I kept running to each vehicle that stopped there to ask if it was going to Badrinath. After waiting for about 2.5 hours there we got a shared jeep at 2:30 pm or so. We launched ourselves into it. As there was hardly any space (there were 5 people on the back seat - 4 on the seat and 1 in the lap of another), we kept our luggage on the roof of the vehicle, which later caused it to get wet.

There were two interesting people in the jeep. They were mule herders, going to Badrinath to buy new mules. They were talking about religion, nature etc. I remember one of them saying that mountains streams are actually tears of mountains :) The other guy seemed more intelligent. He said "It can't be so. If these steams were not there, there won't be enough water on planes". Very interesting their conversation was.

Soon, we reached the landslide zone. It was a mess there; it seemed as if rocks will start falling again on the road at any moment. Our fear was further exacerbated when our driver asked his helper to look outside the window and keep an eye on falling rocks. We just kept our fingers crossed till that stretch was over. Road was in bad shape at lot of other places too. We crossed many streams which had washed the road away and were flowing there unabated. Anyway, we reached Badrinath at around 4:30 pm.

So, we had got at least one good thing from Ghangharia TRH - information regarding TRH in Badrinath. The guard there told us that Badrinath TRH was very nice, unlike Ghangharia TRH, and gave us the address too (actually he was posted at Badrinath TRH earlier). We found the TRH (Hotel Devlok) pretty easily and checked in. The rent was 600 per day and room was very good. For a change there was no need to order for bucket of hot water as there was a working electric geyser in the bathroom and guess what, there was electricity in the town. I remember myself asking the caretaker from what time to what time electricity is available there. No wonder, he was little surprised by that question :)

Now, the first impression of Badrinath. It was an amazing feeling. I am not sure what exactly it was, but I think it was the feeling of spaciousness that we felt there. The town, located on a huge flat top, was very very clean, and had a very fresh feeling. Almost all the buildings were single floor ones, which added to the feeling of spaciousness. And, we were already impressed by the room in TRH and low rates.

After taking bath in hot water all the weariness of the trek was gone. And, then it dawned upon us that our trekking days were finally over and time to relax had come. Some trekking it was. We had trekked for more than 50 kilometers in last 4 day.

Since, this post has already run so long, I'll write the rest about Badrinath in next post, which is coming very soon.

valley of flowers: part IV

Day 4, Tue Aug 26. After a wonderful, pleasureful and captivating trek in Valley of Flowers, time was now to take on the challenging ascent of Hemkund. The trek goes from an altitude of 3048 m to 4320 m over a distance of 6 km. This trek is dubbed as challenging by even most avid trekkers. I think it's more the lack of oxygen and other high altitude conditions that make this trek challenging.

We got up at about 6 am again. Lit up a candle for bathroom as it was little dark (no electricity, remember?), dealt with a centipede in our basin, freshened up, ordered for hot water bucket, had bath and were ready to rock by 7:30 or so. I don't remember what we had for breakfast that day - must be aloo paratha considering the limited options :) Weather wasn't looking very good. The day was overcast. There was mist everywhere and soon it started drizzling too, which was not a good thing as we were not carrying any rain gear with us. Pankaj's jacket was water resistant (not waterproof) so he was a bit covered. We rented a rain jacket for myself and a head cover for Pankaj for 60 rupees and moved on. We were still little concerned though - "what if it will start pouring, will the trek be doable then; we'll definitely get wet, we are not really well covered; etc". Anyway, we carried on in a true backpackers' spirit :)

Actually this weather proved to be good. The fact that sun wasn't there made the trek more enjoyable. We were moving in rhythmic small steps without stopping much. When we reached higher, after climbing for 3 km or so, mist defined our experience. That pleasureful coolness in the air, freshness and cleanness of everyhing in sight, and feeling of having clouds by your side in your path, it was some experience. On top of that, there were flowers all around like previous day trek, but this time mist made them look even more beautiful.

Shortly we met a glacier on the trek. I put my gear down and took some photographs here (My camera was stowed in my backpack for most of the time to save it from rain and also to make the climb easy). On taking my rain jacket off, I realized that my t-shirt was completely wet - not with water, but with sweat. Though it was cold outside, I was still sweating, mainly because of climbing, my non-breathing rain jacket which we had rented, and my backpack. Later in the trek, when we were about 2 kms from Hemkund, we saw Brahma Kamals. Brahma Kamal is a rare flowering plant. It's found only on high altitude and as conditions are not usually vegetation friendly as such altitudes, it's not easily found even on high altitudes. We found Brahma Kamal flowers in plenty in Hemkund.

We were not really finding this trek too hard actually; in fact we were enjoying it a lot. I think there were 3 reasons for that - one, we were already acclimatized; two, we had learned the trick to walk on mountains - small steps, no hurry; three, we rock :) We reached the summit at 11:45 am. And you know when we started? 8:15 am. YES, we did the whole trek in 3.5 hours. Most avid trekker do it in 4 hours, while other not so used to folks do it in 5 hours. We did it in 3.5 hours and on top of that we didn't find it too difficult, in fact we enjoyed this trek the most. Here we got a sense of achievement, just exactly what we had done this trek for :) Moreover, it was just lovely out there. There was a beautiful, serene glacial lake with a gurudwara, a temple (laxman temple) and green hills all around it.

We had maggie (noodles) in a stall there. Here I changed my t-shirt also as it was completely wet with sweat. After spending about an hour at Hemkund, we started back. While returning we took the stairs. Now, these stairs are definitely a short-cut, but I think we did the right thing by not taking them for coming up. Your legs, knees and lungs don't like it when you take high steps. These stairs brought us at about 4 km mark (from Ghangharia) in less than 30 min.

Rest of our descent was a roller-coaster ride, all thanks to Pankaj. He was almost running and I was trying to catch up. When you are coming down on something this steep, either of the two things happen - if you come too fast, your head starts paining because of the shake and if you control your speed your knees start hurting. Anyway, by the time we came down, both, head and knees, were paining. Head was fine in some time, but knees were not looking too good. That was worrisome considering that we had to go down to Govindghat next day. Rest of the day was usual - lunch, afternoon-nap, snacks, dinner and sleep.

Link to photographs: http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripHemkundSahib#

Still to come: Badrinath and Mana village.

Have fun.
Cheers, Manu
Manu Garg/www.manugarg.com/Journey is the destination of life.

valley of flowers: part III

Against all your expectations, part 3 comes much sooner. So, where were we? Yeah, we were sleeping in the TRH in Ghangharia.

Day 3, Mon Aug 25. We got up early again at about 6-6:30. Had tea, ordered for the hot water bucket, took bath and phew, we were ready to trek again. Now, when it comes to having breakfast in Ghangharia, there are not many options. In fact the only options are aloo paratha, if you are lucky and there is bread in town then butter toast, and if you don't mind eating eggs which could be 2-3 months old then bread omelet. On that day we had butter toast. Bread slices were the smallest I had ever seen and to make us feel even worse about it, each butter toast cost 35 bucks.


Anyway, we started our trek at around 8:40 am or so. After climbing on a decently steep trek for about 10-15 min we reached the point where the route for valley of flowers separates from that going to Hemkund. This is also where you have to pay the valley of flowers national park entry fee. Yes, it's a national park, didn't I tell you? Fee sounded a little hefty to me by Indian standards - 50 bucks per person and 100 bucks per camera. So, we paid 200 rupees there. What treated us next was a beautiful trail that goes inside a forest. You know the best part about this place is that no mules are allowed inside and there are no shops here. This make it a really clean place, with only nature all around. So, back to the trail, we started seeing beautiful flowers from here only. Mind you, valley was still about 3 kms. After some walking inside the forest, we came into an opening. There we encountered a rather interesting bridge, on a stream of Pushpavati, river that flows inside Valley of Flowers. It was a small bridge, made of an iron sheet, but very useful nonetheless, as crossing that stream without it would have been pretty difficult if not impossible.

After crossing the bridge, the trail very soon entered the forest again. At one place it rapidly came down, and after crossing another bridge on now much fuller Pushpavati, it started rising again. This time it was quite steep. But, we didn't realize it. The trick we learned on Ghangharia trek, taking small steps while climbing, came in handy. It was nice trekking here as we were in the shadow and we were going through a forest with nature crammed in all around us. After about 40-50 min of trekking in this jungle, the trail came into an opening again. Now we had a mountain on our left side and Pushpavati river was flowing in the valley on the right. Trail had become easier now, not very steep slopes. It was wonderfully pleasant. Mountain slopes, on the left and right side of the trail were laden with flowers and other vegetation. As a reminder of much colder days, the river sported a "not yet completely melted" snow bridge.

It's not been even half an hour on that trail and we were treated by awesomeness. I was busy exclaiming and emphasizing what a beautiful place it was and taking photographs, when Pankaj, who was already 6-7 steps ahead of me, called me - "what you're gonna see next will probably blow you away". And right he was. On our right side, we saw a wide open huge lush green valley crowned by beautiful snowcapped mountain peaks, with vapor rising from their surface in effect of sun. We were ELATED. The valley was valley of flowers, but it was still very far - entrance was about a km from here. To make this place even more memorable, though not in the same way, I was here bitten by some poisonous plant which caused me skin rashes on affected body parts days later.

We entered the valley at around 10:45 am. It was stupendously beautiful. Just imagine, you are in a wide valley, with mountains on both sides, not a human soul to see, flowers of different colors all around, mountain streams flowing here and there, greenness in abundance, not a piece of polythene or any other litter in long long distance, snowcapped mountain peaks in front of you (though distant) and a bright clear blue sky to cap it all. And there we were, walking on a trail amidst all that. We were basking in awesomeness.


As time went past 11:30, Pankaj helped us realize, by asking for something to eat, that we very carelessly and stupidly had forgotten to bring the lunch pack from Ghangharia. Thankfully there was half a packet of Britannia biscuits in our bag to save the day. But we were not really hungry at that time and kept those biscuits for later. Now, this valley is pretty big and you can keep walking for hours and not see all parts of it. So, to make visiting valley of flowers a tangible thing, you need to set a tangible target. Most people return from just after entering the valley. Some people don't even reach valley. Some go till Joan Margaret's grave and some probably go even beyond that. We decided that we'll go till Joan Margaret's grave and return. Joan Margaret was a German botanist who fell in Pushpavati while collecting some samples in year 1939. We reached there by 12 noon. We saw a guy and a girl there (girl was looking kinda cute in a cowboy hat), probably botany students looking for some interesting plant; kinda finishing Joan's job :) We sat there for some time sipping in nature's beauty and then started back.


As the day was passing, those mountain peaks, which had elated us earlier, almost disappeared behind the clouds. I think we were very lucky to have seen them at all. We came back pretty leisurely, taking enough breaks to sink in the beauty all around. We reached Ghangharia by 3:30 pm, had some food, and took an afternoon nap after that. In the evening, we were little unsure of doing Hemkund the next day. Basically a thought came to our mind or rather Pankaj's mind, that why not do Kedarnath also on this trip. It was a matter of motivation too. Which one is more worthwhile and worth the effort - Kedarnath or Hemkund. By the way, going to Kedarnath also requires a trek of 14 km. Anyway, Hemkund won in the end. We decided to do it for the sake of challenge if not anything else. And of course, it was right there and Kedarnath was quite far.

After that we had our dinner. I was able to call my home this day. I told my parents not to expect any call from me for some days.

Photographs of valley of flowers: http://picasaweb.google.com/manugarg/VoFTripInTheValley#slideshow

Savor the photographs for now. There is more to come yet - Hemkund, Badrinath and Return.

Yours truly,
Manu Garg / http://www.manugarg.com

valley of flowers: part II

Day 2, Sun Aug 24: After spending a good night in Joshimath, time was now to further our journey. Our day started early. We got up at 6 and had checked out of the TRH by 7:30 am. Plan was to take some mode of transportation till Govindghat. From there we were to start our first trek, to Ghangharia. We got a jeep for Govindghat from Badrinath taxi stand in Joshimath. After a drive of less than an hour, the jeep dropped us just at the border of Govindghat. From the road itself, we could see Laxman Ganga, river that flows from glaciers beyond Hemkund, falling into Alaknanda. After walking for about 10-15 min, we reached our trek start point. By the way, our cellphones had stopped working as soon as we left Joshimath, so luckily we were unreachable now and we remained so till the end of our trip.

We hired a porter for our luggage here (for Rs. 405). Though there are lockers available in Govindghat for luggage, we didn't want to leave anything behind as we were going to be in Ghangharia for at least 3 days. It was 9:45 am now. Much to our surprise, it was quite nice and sunny; from whatever we had researched earlier, we were pretty sure that it was gonna be cloudy and rainy. Well, it was good for us because being as heedless as we sometimes are, we didn't carry any rain gear. Trek beginning was pretty easy as we were excited. But, long and quick steps that we were taking (at least I was) made us little breathless. After about 4 kms of trek, waterfall near Pulna village started to appear. We took a short break here. Next 5 km were comparatively easy. Trek leveled out at lot of places. We kept meeting Laxman Ganga on and off on the way.

The next village we encountered on the trek was Bhyundar village. Ghangharia was still 3kms from here. These were the most difficult 3 kms of this trek. It gets pretty steep from here, and unpaved trek, with uneven rocks on the path, makes it even more difficult. By this time we were in a sort of trance. We were just walking. We had learned the trick to walk on the mountains. Small steps, no hurry, and no long stops to make up for the slow pace. Believe me, it works.

Anyway, we reached Ghangharia by 3pm. We were mighty hungry by this time. But, we wanted to find a place to stay first. We chose to stay in GMVN TRH again, but not without checking other options. It was pretty expensive (Rs 950 per day and Rs 35 for a bucket of hot water) compared to other options, but somehow it felt more spacious. I think the nice courtyard in TRH made the difference. After putting our luggage inside and having lunch in the restaurant in front of our TRH, we fell asleep.

Now, Ghanghria is a makeshift village. After October 5, when Hemkund Sahib is closed and snow is all around, everybody starts moving to lower areas. They come back only in the beginning of June, when snow starts melting and Hemkund is reopened. That's the reason you can find only basic minimum things here and since there is no road connecting it to the rest of the world (only way to reach here is either by mules or by foot or helicopter) everything is quite expensive here. So be prepared for the prices like Rs 30 for a water bottle and Rs 35 for a butter toast (with miniature breads). Electricity is available here only between 7 pm and 10 pm. That's when telephone exchange works and even when it works, chances of your call getting through are pretty slim. You have to try for at least for 15 min to make a call. No wonder the telephone guy charges you 15 bucks per minute :) So as you can see, we were pretty discouraged to make any calls, which is good. After having a rather not so good dinner in TRH restaurant we called it a day and hit the sack.

Pics of the story so far.

I know, I know it took very long to publish second part. The delay was mainly due to short trip to Leh and other things that I have to do for living :) Hope to post other parts sooner.

Cheers,
Manu
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Manu Garg / http://www.manugarg.com

valley of flowers: part I

Last year, after our Ladakh trip itself we had decided that our next trip would be to Valley of Flowers - a national park, nestled high in the lap of western Himalayas. It's in the north-east corner of Garhwal region of Uttarakhand state, near the holy town of Badrinath. As reaching the valley requires a trek of more than 17 km, and then there is a trek of Hemkund Sahib nearby that you wouldn't want to miss, it was essentially going to be a trekking trip.

Though we wanted to do this trip since last year, ideal time was the constraint. Ideal time to visit the valley is mid-July to August as that's the time when flowers are in full bloom. We decided to do the trip in the last week of August (Aug 23 - Aug 31). There was not much to be planned for this trip as itinerary in these parts of Himalayas is pretty much decided by the moods of the mountains. This region is particularly infamous for landslides. So, we only thought about the going part. Now, since scope of luxuries on this trip was already less, if not zero, we decided to do it completely backpackers style -- no hired cabs, no advance hotel bookings, less luggage etc etc.


We boarded the train for Haridwar at about 11:55 pm on Friday. This was probably to be the most luxurious part of our travel :) However I could hardly sleep in the train, owing to thundering snores of a guy in our compartment. We reached Haridwar at 4:20 am in the morning. Without wasting much time, we rushed to Badrinath bus stand where we were to get a bus to Joshimath. Tip: Buses for Joshimath leave Haridwar only between 5 am and 7 am. Our bus started at 5:20 a.m. It was an ordinary bus - no reclining seats, no AC, not much leg room. But as we had not slept much last night, it didn't take us long to fall into a slumber. One good thing that we did was to not have anything including tea in the morning. It helped in sleeping and better equipped us to handle mountain roads. The road from Rishikesh to Joshimath goes inside a valley and follows Alaknanda river, which originates from glaciers near Badrinath, very closely. We had our breakfast in Deopryag and lunch at a dhaba near Rudrapryag.

We reached Joshimath at 4:20 pm in the afternoon. That was somewhat earlier than we expected, much due to our bus driver's expertise on mountain roads. He showed very little respect for those hot curves of hills. With the help of local people and sign boards, we found GMVN Tourist Rest House (TRH) and checked in. The way to the rest house was little uphill and reminded us of the coming days which were to be full of such uphill walking. By the way, wherever we go, we usually try to get GMVN TRH first; I think it just gives us a feeling of familiarity. After quickly freshening up, remember we hadn't freshened up in the morning, and having tea, we went for a walk.

Joshimath is a nice little town. It's mostly a transit town. People going to Badrinath, Valley of flowers, Hemkund Sahib, Auli, Nanda Devi national park and few other treks do a night stay here. But, I think, it's mostly Badrinath pilgrims who help run economy of this place. Obviously, it's a very religious town too. We could find only one very small, that also sort of hidden, liquor shop. Of course, we didn't want to drink. We were just curious.

From local people we came to know that Shankaracharya temple is a place to see in Joshimath. We went in search of that. Following signs on the road we found that it was very close to the place where we were staying. Now, this place had some amazing vibes. I especially liked the way Panditji chanted some mantras while giving Charnamrit to us in Durga temple. The cave where Shankaracharya himself set up Sphatik Shivling was nice too. We spent some quality time there at the terrace. We came back when it was getting dark. After having dinner in TRH, which was really good - especially chapatis, and having tea at an aunty's dhaba, we called it a day.

.. to be continued.

Pics and other parts of the story coming soon. Stay tuned.

Cheers :)
-Manu

pactester for Windows

Lately, I have been getting some queries for "test pac files on windows", "pactester for windows" etc in website access logs and emails. Compiling pactester on Windows, though possible, is quite a complicated process. So much so that it's almost impractical to ask users to do so. Since it's a perl script, packaging it for Windows is even more difficult. To avoid packaging difficulties of perl code and now that pacparser is there, I think it makes sense to implement pactester using pacparser. That's exactly what I did in last couple of days, implemented pactester in C using pacparser library.

I have compiled it for Windows and uploaded zipped binaries on pactester downloads page:
http://code.google.com/p/pactester/downloads/list

Also, to simplify things and as an added bonus to pacparser users, I have decided to distribute this version of pactester (implemented in C using pacparser API) along with pacparser from next release. Thanks to open source that I can do that :)

Cheers,
Manu

pacparser - a library to parse PAC files

As I mentioned earlier also, proxy auto-config (PAC) files are becoming more and more important for web proxy usage because of automation and ease of administration provided by them. Almost all popular browsers today support them. But, there is still a dearth of tools available for processing PAC files e.g. popular web software like curl, wget and python-urllib still don't take PAC file for proxy configuration.

That was the problem I wanted to solve when I started to work on pacparser. Now it's ready in full glory - http://code.google.com/p/pacparser. From the release announcement:

I am very pleased to announce the release of "pacparser" - a C library to parse proxy auto-config (PAC) scripts. Needless to say, PAC files are now a widely accepted method for proxy configuration management and almost all popular browsers support them. The idea behind pacparser is to make it easy to add this PAC file parsing capability to other programs. It comes as a shared C library with a clear API. You can use it to make any C or python (using ctypes) program PAC scripts intelligent. Some very useful targets could be popular web software like wget, curl and python-urllib.

For documentation and available packages, please visit project home page at:
http://code.google.com/p/pacparser

For the ones who like to start with source code, here is the link to direct download for source code:
http://pacparser.googlecode.com/files/pacparser-1.0.1.tar.gz.

I hope you will find some use for it. Anyway, let me know how your find it :-)

Cheers :-),
Manu

Update: For easy installation on Ubuntu boxes, I have created debs for Ubuntu gutsy for i386 and amd64 platforms. These debs can be downloaded from here:
http://code.google.com/p/pacparser/downloads/list
---
Manu Garg/http://www.manugarg.com/"Journey is the destination of life"