There’s nothing like waking up on a bright sunny morning and that too in a forest. Birds chirped all around. When we came out of our tent, we were greeted with a chilling breeze that was much colder than what we found at Deoriatal. It was evident, we were at a greater height. After regular morning duties and a breakfast with parathas, we left the tents. The rest of the crew were to follow us later after dismantling the tents. They would overtake us in between and reach the destination earlier to get the place ready for our stay. Heera Singh, the guide, stayed back and was to guide us through the forests. It took sometime for him to find the way out amidst the dense forest and we followed his footsteps.
After yesterday’s rest, our legs were fresh in the morning. We then came out into a sprawling meadow. It was the Vanagher Bugyal, the place where we were supposed to camp yesterday. It is a wide open place with peaks of the Garhwal Himalayas peeping out of the horizon. While we rested there for sometime, our crew overtook us along with the ponies. We followed after sometime. At the end of the meadow, forests started again and we were on our descent down the slopes of the hill. It was a zig-zag trail of steps made out of rocks and soil. We had to be careful as they were steep. We kept going down till we reached the banks of a stream that flowed through the gorge between the surrounding mountains. Just as we reached there, our crew (who already reached there before) started off with their journey to our destination for the day. Heera Singh stayed behind to serve lunch to us. What a place to have lunch! We sat on boulders beside the stream with trees forming a canopy above our head. The cool breeze that flowed through the leaves removed the tiredness from our bodies.
The trail after lunch was going to be tough. Firstly, it’s always difficult to walk after lunch and secondly, the entire trail was a steep ascent. We crossed the stream by placing our steps carefully on the rocks spread across it and reached the other side and started our ascent. We were moving up at snail’s pace. We would ascend a few steps, breathe a few mouthfuls, take a few steps again only to stop to breathe. My daughter got bored with the process and started to show her resistance and then came to a halt. Me and my wife persuaded her firstly with calm words, then bribed her with the prospect of rest “just a few steps ahead” and finally scolded her for the behavior. It was one of the acts which I regret to this day. After all she was on this trail not by her own choice, but thrust by us (more specifically, by me). Finally, she resumed her journey but for that I had to involve in a constant conversation with her to keep her mind away from toil. That had a surprising effect on her mind and body. She started walking with a rejuvenated spirit and I was bombarded with numerous questions about almost everything under the sun. I tried my best to answer them. It wasn’t easy to speak while I was ascending the slopes, but she showed no signs of tiredness and the barrage of questions kept coming at me.
We kept hiking and after sometime the steepness decreased somewhat and we came in the midst of a grassland, the Martoli bugyal. It was spread for miles along the slopes of the mountains we were hiking. The fields were bathing in the bright afternoon sun. The slopes started to get steep once again and gradually we entered a land of loose boulders that dotted the uneven slopes. We had to walk over them carefully as they were skiddy. As I looked up to see how far the shepherd hut was (where we were headed), I could see the trace of a trail that embraced the distant hills like a snake. Guides confirmed that it was, as I guessed, the trail to Tunganath from Chopta. But our place of halt, Bhujgali, was still a long way ahead. I saw one of the members of the crew coming down the slopes with two ponies. Anindita was getting tired and the pony provided a welcome break to her. She and my daughter ascended on the ponies which were to carry them for the rest of the day’s journey. As my daughter rode the pony, she was wrapped around by the jacket of Anindita that fastened her to the saddle to provide extra protection against a potential fall.
As they rode away on the ponies, I followed on foot and after considerable amount of time, found myself crossing the boundaries erected by rocks that formed the fences around the shepherd hut, our destination for the day. We finally reached Bhujgali. By that time, our crew had already installed the tents. The sun was already preparing to go down the horizon. The skies turned crimson and the surrounding oak and pine forests too bathed in those colors.
The tent was pitched along a gradual slope and as in the evening before, our crew stayed at the adjoining shepherd hut. I requested them to erect one more tent as it was very clumsy in a single tent and they obliged. Evening was approaching fast and after the sun slid behind the distant hills, temperature plummeted. It was late November. The doors of the Tunganath temple were already closed by that time of the year and the lord resided in his winter abode at Mukumath. The next day was to be the culmination of our trek and was the toughest. We woke up early in the morning at 4 AM. It was pitch dark outside. We were given head torches. Me and my wife started the ascent to Tunganath. My daughter lay asleep at the tent with some of the crew members to take care of her. We carried a bottle of water each. Anindita rode a pony, but I preferred to walk. We were accompanied by the guide and the person who managed the ponies. In the beginning, we plodded up together but soon I found myself walking alone as the pony strode ahead. The ascent was steep and so, my pace was slow. I constantly kept an eye on the skies to watch out for daylight. Our target was to reach Chandrashila, about 1.5 km above Tunganath temple, to witness the sunrise. As I gained height, I had to breathe hard and sip water more frequently. It wasn’t comfortable at all to gulp down cold water in this shivering cold, but that was my best bet to keep Oxygen flowing through my blood vessels in order to keep going.
As I saw the top of the Tunganath temple after a bend around the corner, first rays of sun gradually started to light the skies. Anindita was already there and we didn’t loose time at the temple and instantly started off for Chandrashila which was still 1.5 km uphill from there. The trail (or should I say a narrow strip of foot marks) zig-zag-ed up with frequent and sharp bends. Very soon, it ceased to be a trail and we had to ascend by placing our steps carefully on loosely scattered boulders which were rendered slippery by the last night’s dew which froze to a white powdery mass. Anindita was moving carefully and she relied heavily on the guide Heera Singh. By that time, the peaks of the Garhwal Himalayas had started to wear their crowns of gold.
I found the Chandrashila top to be a small flat space and almost the entire Garhwal hills and the villages and settlements were below us. As I turned my head gradually and completed a 360 degree circle, I found myself surrounded all around by the mighty peaks of Kumaon and Garhwal regions. The sun was popping up from behind the peaks of the Kumaon Himalayas and showered its rays on the ones from the Garhwal region. As I turned anti clockwise, I was greeted with magnificent views of Nanda Devi, Trishul, NandaGhunti, the mighty Chaukhamba, Mandani, Kedar Dome, Kedarnath and many others stretching up to the peaks of the Gangotri region. Chaukhamba was almost just a stone’s throw away.
Our toil was rewarded handsomely by nature and all tiredness were swept away by the views that Chandrashila had in store for us. I opened my bottle to sip water and suddenly I felt the pricks of a few cold needles in my throat. I saw the bottle and found small needle like icicles floating in the water. A bottle of warm water provided to me by our crew at the start of the trek in the morning, had ultimately, in this biting cold, transformed itself into a viscous mixture of water with frozen icicles.
On our way down from Chandrashila, though I was careful on the slippery rocks, I tumbled at least twice on their skiddy surfaces. We prayed a brief visit to the closed shrine of Tunganath and headed down to Bhujgali, where our daughter greeted us with anxious eyes looking for her parents who absconded her on a cold wintery morning. After gobbling down a few spoons of noodles, we headed down to Chopta and then to Sari.
Break shackles 
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