Writing another post on trekking and
nature after nearly a year. What kept me away for so long?????Nothing much
other than a writer’s block. Now that I have overcome that, let me take you to
an enchanting or a better adjective would be thunderous waterfall far away amid
snowclad mountains.
When I proposed the idea of trekking to
my friend Tina, she jumped on the idea and brought in another friend. And there
started our long conversation and planning for our trek to valley of flowers
(which will be documented later).
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| ENTRANCE TO THE LAST VILLAGE OF INDIA-MANA |
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| BHIM PUL ACROSS RIVER SARASWATHI |
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| RIVER SARASWATHI GUSHING OUT OF THE CAVES |
After we had a strong kadakh chai at the
last shop here in Mana, two of our friends decided to go back to the hotel and
we three decided to proceed ahead. Now everyone was surprised at our decision
to plan a trek after the strenuous Valley of flower trek. Questions like this
started coming in
Are you by any chance mountaineers? -
Obvious the answer was a No
Do you at least belong to the mountain?
Well again except for a fake pahadan among
us, we are close to beaches. Why is Tina called as Fake pahadan…. because she hails from mountains but I guess she has
forgotten all about that and takes avomine while travelling in the hills ☺
Then why this trek at an altitude?????
Well we wanted to have fun and explore the nature at our convenient pace and we
happily succeeded
Mythology says that Pandavas with
Draupadi walked this way after the battle of Kurukshetra renouncing everything.
When Draupadi could not cross Saraswathi, Bheem is said to have laid a stone
across the river as a bridge to facilitate her crossing the river. You can see
this here
The trek started at the Bhim Pul that is
nearly 6 kms away from the waterfall. Each of us took 2lts of water, some
energy bars and chocolates and we set out on our trek equipped with our
trekking pole and hiking shoes. The first 3 kms was comparatively easy. There
was a well-defined path, though a rocky one and muddy at some places. We slowly trekked
taking in the beautiful and awesome sceneries all along the way, clicking a lot
of pictures, selfies and groupies. It was so much fun especially when we are
with friends. The ascent was not strenuous as it was not very steep.
As we were falling
into the comfort zone, Vaish heard a sound above us. We felt it was from a
helicopter but she asserted that it was from a plane. We looked up the sky to
unravel the mystery only to realize the noise was from the wind howling
scaring us with not a single soul around in the vicinity. With Alakananda
flowing beneath in the valley, hovering mountains covered in mist and snow, a
river roaring behind the mountains, it was an overwhelming and at once a
humbling moment. It was then we decided that we quicken our pace to be back
before the sun sets.
As we trekked further, there were times,
when it was just a pile of rocks ahead of us. We would ask ourselves where
could be the path to move ahead?????? Then it struck us that there was no clear
way and we must climb the rocks climb to forge ahead. The daring trio
accomplished this too with no fuss☺. After another km we came across a small waterfall to be crossed.
Since we were wearing forclaz 500 shoes, there was no fear of water entering
into the shoes, and our fake pahadan took the lead to cross it. Next I followed
suit though with some trepidation. It was then Vaish’s turn and as we waited
for her to cross, she stopped midway pleading her inability to move further. As
we were wondering why she feared, we realized that she was overcome by fear
remembering our mishap near Govind ghat the previous day where we were lucky
not be to washed away by the river. It just took a minute for her to overcome
the fear and we were soon huffing and puffing as we walked and walked with no
end in sight.
When Vaish asked Tina, how far was the
waterfall, Tina replied to former’s disappointment that may be we need to cross
another two mountains but as we walked we realized to our dismay that it was
more than 20 mountains. Finally, to our great relief, we did sight the
Vasudhara in the distance and that spurred us to walk faster. As we neared it,
we heard her thunderous sound as the fall descended from a massive tall
mountain What an enchanting beauty she was worth all the trouble one has to
undergo to have a look. No camera or words can capture her magnificence and splendor. You just have to walk all the way to feel and devour the scene
personally as she falls from a height of 400
ft, cascading down to finally join Alakananda
Anyone who has seen Vasudhara will agree
that she is a beauty from far and scary as we near her. She falls on the rocks
below with a thunderous sound,If you have some time to watch her, you can watch
her rhythmic fall on the huge rock below her, with intermittent misses. There
is no way you can go below the fall to take a shower. You can watch her from
few hundred mts and if you are lucky she droplets shall fall on you. At this
minute, a realization will dawn on you, that there is so much more to life then
our mere everyday bickering and there is so much more to explore and the time
is so less. Here I think each of us made a oath to ourselves to come back to
the mountains soon. The sheer magic of these pristine mountains pulls everyone
and we are not spared too
After savouring slowly her visual feast
for some time, we just sat there to munch on some energy bars and drink water
to get over the tiredness even as we let her tiny droplets fall on us.
Mythology avers that her droplets fall only on people who are pure in heart and
we three were delighted at the drops falling on us.. The time we spent looking
at her and enjoying her, we were speechless. We just enjoyed the moment in
silence. We would have loved to spend more time but we had taken nearly three
and half hours one way and now we faced the daunting task of reaching Mana in
two hours.
While Vaish was happy with the return,
she was named the descent queen as she found it easy to climb down. Tina was
fine with both ascent and descent at her pace, I was a little skeptical because
I was good with the ascent while descent brought some vague fear in me. But
with friends around, I guess fear had no place. While both of them took turns
to hold my hand to give me confidence, I tried to remain calm. They knew I was trying
and let me do it as we descended
fast till one wild buffalo decided to stand right in our path and would not
budge. We had no choice but to wait, as one side was mountain and the other
side was a deep valley. While it just kept standing right there, Tina decided
to make some sound to scare it away. Did her sound scare it? Nope, it was
amused and turned to look at us and give us a dirty stare for solid two
minutes. While Vaish was exploring possible escape routes, Tina was engaging
the bull in the stare fight, I prayed intently☺. Luckily for us, one local guy emerged and helped us
by shooing away the bull. Thanking him profusely, we continued with our descent
to reach Mana in a record 2 hrs.
Having skipped lunch, we were so
famished that we had hot noodles at a tea shop along with some chai. Without
the pangs of hunger and refreshed well, it started sinking in us that WE Really
DID IT!!! An arduous trek we planned and accomplished successfully all alone by
three of us without any outside guide or help.
After completing this we concluded that
we will be back to the mountains soon as It was not about the destination, but
about journey!!
When your friends are as crazy as you,any journey is bound to be stupendous.!!
HIP HIP HURRAY TO OUR FRIENDSHIP!!
NOTE:
TO REACH VASUDHARA, YOU WILL HAVE TO TRAVEL BY ROAD TO BADRINATH AND THEN MANA
START EARLY AND MAKE SURE YOU RETURN BEFORE SUNSET
TAKE ENOUGH WATER AND FOOD AS THERE ARE NO SHOPS ON THE WAY
ENJOY THE NATURE AND BRING BACK ALL THE PLASTIC WASTE
