Himalayan Trek - The Great Lakes of Kashmir

It's that time again when the mountains beckon, and you know another trek is on the cards. I had skipped an April trek in Uttarakhand, wanting to explore the Himalayas differently. And different it was...with the Great Lakes of Kashmir trek, a 6 days-7 nights trek that starts from Sonmarg and goes deep into the mountains, passes and valleys of Kashmir.

This time around, I will describe the trek, not so much through a day-by-day account, but as snippets of what the eyes, heart and mind experience while there. Hope it gives you a glimpse of what I felt, and hope it inspires some of you to go experience it yourself too.

--------

We are just beginning to settle down for lunch on the mountain slopes on our descent to Naranag on the last day of the trek. Suddenly from behind us, two gun-bearing soldiers dressed commando style charge down the slopes from behind us, one of them shouting "Idhar milega. Idhar milega". Tensed with the thought of who could be coming from the pine forests below, we stopped all our work to stare at them...until one of them stretched his hand out on the slope below to check if he was catching mobile network. 

The armed forces make their presence felt on this trek as I've never experienced on other treks.  They are first visible as soon as you land in Srinagar, with small groups of armed forces on the sides of the roads and dotting the landscape within the thickets of trees and along farms of rice, corn and apple or walnut on our way to Sonmarg. There are three army checkposts we come across on our trekking trail, the first is at the trek's start from Sonmarg. The military is posted here mainly for the safety and security of trekkers, this being a popular trekking trail among Indians and foreigners. When a foreigner trekker didn't report out from the other end of the trail a few weeks earlier, these army men had gone looking for her and only when they found out she had exited the trail at another point, they were assured of her safety. 

The next Gadsar army checkpost turned out to be the location of our campsite on Day 4. Most of the jawans (soldiers) posted on this trekking trail are from Rashtriya Rifles. They are based here for months at a stretch, and with these locations receiving more than 20-22 feet of snow, the army will leave these posts starting November. You soon realize that the soldiers are as excited meeting you and talking with you, given how little interaction they'd have with others in these remote far flung locations. 

All checkposts proudly have the national flag fluttering, and four flags denoting the four leading religions of India - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Sikhism. Somehow, seeing the Indian flag fluttering wildly in the wind in these remote locations tugs at the heartstrings in a way that leaves one feeling quite choked with emotion. 

The Satsar army checkpost along the way from Gadsar to Megandob on Day 5 was one such. Located at an altitude of 3800 meters and less than 20 kms from the Pakistan border, our entire group of sixteen sang the national anthem here with the soldiers with the flag flying high and our voices blowing in all directions with the strong winds. By the time we ended with Jai Hind!, we realized that not one of us was left dry-eyed. 

--------

You get a good mix of terrain on this trekking trail. You wade through or cross streams and rivers (you're often best advised to take off your socks and shoes and wade through the shallow sections rather than trying to jump over the rocks and invariably slipping and getting yourself wet). 

You climb...or jump...over rocks and boulders, especially near the streams and rivers. At the this time of the year when the summer has melted most of the snow, you still see snow in the higher reaches and also get a little snow to walk over at some places. 

-------

Forests - dense covers of pine, silver birch, maple - are found only on the first and last days of the trek. Other than that you don't get to see a single tree for majority of the way. 

But you don't really notice this fact, as your senses are filled with lush green grass all over mountain slopes, rolling meadows and valleys. It's the kind of green that not only provides a nice soft cushion for your feet as you walk hour after hour, day after day.

 It's also the kind of green that sends you very inviting messages to roll down the slopes, until the little stones and rocks embedded between the grass deter you from converting that thought into action. 

-------




Early mornings usually have clouds that hang thick and low on the mountain slopes just in front of you, as if they've decided to sit down for a bit of rest from all their drifting around.

Even during summer (which is when this trail is best done), you often find yourself in the middle of clouds. At many times during the trek, especially when doing the long climbs to the summits, you find yourself walking in the clouds...with the cool mist in the clouds softly settling over you. 

On the way to Vishansar, you cross the stream and look above to see the steep ascent, wondering how you're going to do it. You start climbing and slowly you realize the thinner air is making your legs heavier and your breath shorter. Your steps gets smaller and you try to maintain a steady rhythm. You see you are following the stream in a reverse direction, climbing higher until the stream is a rapid waterfall. Climbing further until the waterfall is just a small rivulet again. But now the waters are surrounded by glaciers with the clouds floating all around, reducing visibility and giving everything around a mysterious foggy appearance. Some of the glaciers along the edges have neatly carved patterns on them resembling the walls of an igloo as remembered from schooldays. The air is still thinner, and you can feel the coolness - from both the high altitude and from the mist of the clouds. 

-------

Not all mountains are green. Some are full of craggy black stony surfaces. The patches of snow on them try to soften their hard appearance...but as some hastily applied talcum powder, it does little to reduce its raw wildness. Others have sharply etched stone surfaces along their slopes making for interesting sedimentary patterns. Most of them have never been climbed, such as Mount Harmukh that at 5142 meters is the highest in that region of Kashmir and towers over Gangabal Lake, with some of its glacial waters still melting into the lake. The lake has another gushing waterfall on the opposite side that feeds water from the high mountains. This site was considered sacred by Hindu pilgrims before the Amarnath Yatra.

-------

For the first two days, you're left wondering where the lakes are on the Great Lakes of Kashmir trail. Then they start appearing by the end of day 2 of the trek, all majestic and bright blue-green, and cosily nestled between mountains. 


There is the Vishansar lake that is viewed after a short walk from your campsite on Day 2. Kishensar Lake and its scenic surrounding form a constant and splendid view for you as you make your steep ascent on Day 3. 

The Gadsar lake makes a delightful appearance on Day 4 as you push your tired body anxiously waiting for your lunch break. When suddenly after a bend in the mountain, this stop appears in front of you with the river flowing into a bright blue-green lake. The brightly colored flowers in the grass also form a stark background for the beautiful black mountain at the back of the lake that has it own little waterfall spilling its icy contents into the lake. Can there be a more picturesque lunch spot?

Gangabal twin lakes (including Kolesar lake which the twin is known by) is the location of your last campsite, also providing a perfect spot for a dip in the cold waters of the lake or in the gushing waterfall adjoining it. 

---------

Ascending mountains is hard and strenuous. Unlike the earlier treks I had done in the Uttarakhand Himalayan range, this route had not one, but many ascents to passes and summits upto 4300 mtrs (14000+ feet). During some ascents, we particularly felt the strain of the steep gradient and the thinner air of the high altitudes. Small baby steps was the mantra we picked up from some of our more experienced trekkers. Sometimes, you feel like you're just putting one foot in front of the other like a zombie, conversations between you and fellow trekkers reduced to grunts or gestures to pass the water bottles. 

Descents come in all varieties. Some include wider trails and roll smoothly along lush green meadows, such as what we experienced on days 2, 3 and 4 to Vishansar, Gadsar and Megandob via Satsar respectively. Other descents such as on days 5 and 6 are treacherous. 

And different trekkers take to descents differently. Some who can barely put one foot in front of the other on an ascent, suddenly start sprinting down almost as if a button has been switched on, and all they can do is run forward at full speed. 

Some others get taken up by fear of heights on the way down especially if the descent route is narrow and / or slippery. Over a few treks, most will realize that the fears have calmed down and a good steady pace help you reach your destination in a reasonable time and with lesser aches in your knees. 

---------

Flowers! Anything that can be said about the flowers here will be inadequate. It is very interesting that at an altitude and climate where trees cannot survive, little flowers of so many varying shapes and colours not only survive but thrive so wonderfully. 

It is almost as if they are defying the terrain and saying "you may be all massive and tough, but I can still be little and flourish in my bright colours. You can loom over us all you want with your giant size, we are happy swaying with the wind so close to the ground". 

You see them on many large parts of the trail, providing a multi colored carpet over the valleys and the meadows, or looming their dainty pretty heads between the boulders along the rivers. Stretches of yellow flowers continue for vast distances, until purple varieties mingle with yellow...and then there's stretches of purple flowers. And so on with pink, orange, white, many different shades of blue. I tried to capture them on camera but every time you think you've seen them all, one more variety makes it appearance. Be careful not to spend too much time sitting or lazing about in the flowers as some of the flowers are said to create a heady feeling. 

At some places, you see rocks that have developed interesting patterns in bright red (from their iron) and fluorescent green (from the lichen), adding further colour to this dazzling display of nature. 

--------

There are no roads anywhere close to you on your path once you leave Sonmarg until your last day when you make your steep descent to Naranag.  There are instead trails made by other trekkers who've been this way before you, and by shepherds who've been grazing their sheep here for hundreds of years. Everything about their routine is done at its own pace, and in a way that looks untouched for many generations. 

There are no settlements you see, and the few people you do see on these mountains and valleys are on the move. Along with them are hundreds and hundreds of sheep and sheep-herding dogs. And then there are the horses and a few horse-riders...who start as small dots on the horizon of an unending valley of flowers. And then before your eyes, they loom larger and larger until they cross you galloping away on the back of their horses in the wind. As you watch them gallop by in those massive green open valleys surrounded by even more massive mountains, you're thinking...is this for real?

Lying down another time after the day's trek on the blue tarpaulin laid out on the grass, with the river gurgling a few meters below you. You are surrounded by rough edged black mountains on one side...and green rolling slopes in the other, with one slope letting a long white waterfall roll down its side. You and your fellow trekkers have just finished an impromptu open air massage session for each other.with half-open eyes, you're watching the sun play hide and seek with the clouds as they waft in and out between the mountains. An artist among us is sitting on the grass next to me with her water colours capturing on paper the scenic beauty that lies ahead of her. You hear some movement and a couple of horses who were drinking water from the stream are casually trotting in your midst to cross over to the other side of the meadow. And you're thinking again...is this for real?

---------

The Himalayas stand out for their sheer scale. Everything here is served in mega portions. And it's a good thing being here, being surrounded by its vastness...exploring its vastness on foot. When you traverse this terrain, it is both a humbling and an energizing experience. You appreciate a little more how minuscule you are amidst the vastness of these mountains and valleys that lie strong for centuries and centuries, unconquered for the most part. 

You stay open to the abundant energy within these open natural spaces, and strangely you can actually feel Nature restoring your energy, filling your cells with its abundance despite your body being pushed on a daily basis. In the process of ascending and descending its surfaces, you not only feel a step closer to Mother Nature in its purest form...you also feel a few steps closer to yourself. In putting one foot ahead of the other, you develop a connection - with the ground below...with the mountains and skies above and the universe beyond...and deep within you. 

The Great Lakes of Kashmir trek is a moderately tough trek, given the duration (6 days of long walks, ascents and descents, 7 nights of camping), high altitudes of unto 4300 meters (14000+ feet) and the mixed terrain. But with enough stamina building and gearing up physically before the trek and with the right spirit of adventure, it's a splendid trail that even first timers can enjoy. 

When you're back to the cities, you realise that what you've come from is all real...What we have in these pockets of Nature are how Nature meant them to be in the first place. In order for it to be preserved like this, we all need to play our part in treating it with respect and with love. Fortunately, despite this being a popular trekking route, it has been treated very well by the trekking community making sure there are clean campsites, no trash along the trail, and an overall pristine experience for others to enjoy. After all, when it comes to Nature, however much she has to offer us, I think she mostly tells us to leave her alone and untouched. 

The great Indian disease

It was international women's day yesterday. It is and should be a celebration of everything we are. So cheers to us! It's nice to have a day dedicated to us (just as it's nice to have a day dedicated to fathers and mothers and children...and so many more). This time, per my promise to myself, I want to write about something I feel strongly about. It is my story. But I am sure it's not just mine alone.

The Jyoti Singh rape incident in Delhi (a.k.a. "Nirbhaya" or fearless, or India's daughter) was not the first rape in India or in the world. But the news of it had done something to me even before it spread like wildfire and created a storm like never before. The morning after, when I woke up and read about it in the paper, I gagged at the horror of it. The feelings of rage and anguish rose within me like bile, that I had to will myself to control it and go to work and continue leading "just another day". Throughout the day at office, my mind kept going to that morning newspaper. By the lunch hour, the news was already picking up like wildfire across the online world, and the topic came up amongst the five of us having our lunch together.

We were two women and three men. The discussion went from a quick recount of the incident to what needs to be done to the rapists (who hadn't yet been caught then) and to ensure this does not happen again. My other woman colleague was fairly quiet during that time partly because I think she hadn't read the morning paper that day. So it was mostly me and the three men talking. At one stage of the discussion, we talked about what kind of punishment needs to meted out, not just to bring justice to the victim and her family, but also as a means to dissuade and prevent crimes and atrocities on women.

Then one of my colleagues, someone who I had worked with for several years and have respected for his fairly balanced views on most things, said something that stunned me. He asked, quite in genuine curiosity, why rape should deserve a punishment any different from other crimes such as robbery or even tax evasion. What is wrong is wrong, he said. I tried to explain why it's not like robbery or tax evasion. Why it was not even equal to murder, but worse than that. I explained how in case of a murder, unless the murderer is a complete psycho, there is a motive - either in offense or defense - to take the life of someone else. However in a rape, or a sexual assault, I questioned, what is the motive. It is driven not by a sexual need or a surge of passion. But it is driven by a need to exercise power. And the victim is often a woman that the assaulters think they can exercise power over. And they do it in any way that they can do it. And they do it any time that a chance presents itself. All of these were points of view I was trying to put across, but I realized I was not getting through. I tried to explain how women feel like they are easy targets, what the feeling of being "commoditized" for the body does to us.

At one stage, one of my colleagues asked if I thought all men were like that. I tried to explain that was not so. I wanted to explain that for all the hundreds of wonderful caring sensitive men we came across, coming across even one man who disrespects a woman, just because she is a woman makes for a terrible terrible experience. However, he was too agitated to hear any more. We all broke from that lunch break, returning to our desks, quite shaken (I definitely was). A little later, another male colleague sitting right next to me started reading out something that came up on his WhatsApp. Midway through I realized it was a joke about the rape. My eyes stung.

I felt helpless. Because I knew all these men were wonderful thinking, feeling people. But I couldn't help wondering about their reaction. Do they really know what it is to walk in women's shoes? How many of the men have had the women in their lives tell them when they have been physically assaulted? If the men knew, would they get any close to the sense of why I felt the despair and rage that I did? That I still do.

Being an Indian is truly wonderful. We are so unique and varied in so many ways. And living in India as a girl and woman is amazing. It means a massive lot of positive things. We are a democracy and a free country and that itself makes it possible to achieve the things we do in our country. I grew up in Mumbai and was brought up in a liberal minded family and had gender equality ingrained in me right from my childhood by my parents. I studied, played, commuted, travelled, worked shoulder to shoulder with both genders. But somewhere along the journey, I realized there is a difference and I wondered why being a girl felt awkward, felt quite sick sometimes. That realization started early on when as a little fifth grade girl going to school by BEST bus an old man would everyday rub his dhoti-clad balls against me. Wherever I would be sitting or standing in the bus, he would find me. I was naive enough to think he wanted to pee so badly that he was trying to control it by holding it against my body! As I didn't quite know what happened then, I didn't tell anyone. After a few days, I just stopped taking that bus.

Age makes us wiser, and tougher. So subsequent bus journeys across the city of Mumbai meant dodging various tactics for bottom-pinching, breast-grabbing by the palm, a "subtle" breast touching by the elbow (this is a favourite) or claws of men. I could see that whatever possible, whenever possible, however possible, men want a piece of it...anything for a feel of a woman's flesh. You can randomly ask any Indian woman / girl who has travelled and commuted using public transport. Every one of them would have faced it.

A little older and as I started traveling by local train in the eleventh grade, a man jumped into the train compartment I was sitting in at VT station one afternoon and pulled out his stuff and start shagging right there in front of me. I was alone in that compartment and almost shat bricks myself. But when I started moving toward him yelling loudly at him, he scampered outside desperately trying to tuck his treasures inside his trouser. Another time of getting bottom-pinched hard at another peak-crowd train terminus staircase had me slap the cheek off the guy who did it. Even as city-bred girls in Mumbai, we were learning to fend for ourselves in ways that we could.

But if I grew more alert all along, there were times later when during long distance bus journeys from Mumbai to Pune and back, when somebody from the back seat would try to finger his way between the seats to feel some flesh. So again, screaming and yelling on the bus journey to just tell a man to keep his hands to himself. This may sound familiar to those who watched that girl passenger in that Indian flight who recently video shamed the man who was groping her from behind her seat. If we had mobile cameras then, we'd do that too.

This is not to say traveling by public transport is the only bane. Each of us has a personal story of atleast one creepy uncle (or some male family member) who has spent a better part of his lifetime devising techniques to feel up or to rub against girls and women of the family.

Some women put up a fight. Many just bear it and go about their daily lives. But the key question for all of to ask is - If we are such a great nation, why is this so rampant? At times like this, I have often wished we would stop with the whole sham in our country of calling women as goddesses. Women don't want to be a goddess. We just want to treated as a human being. Where our body is not made for the visual and tactile pleasure of sick men. Where we are able to go about an otherwise simple uneventful task of commuting from point A to point B instead of it being ridden with so many hazards to the female body and to the female psyche.

In wake of the recent controversy related to the Jyoti Singh documentary, a lot of questions and debates arose. Without getting pulled into the controversy, I strongly believe that we need more sharing of this disease - of attitude, of mindset - that we have. It is endemic to our society. If those of us who grew up in cities face the sickness, we always think of what it is like in other remoter areas of the country. We have achieved one thing in India - We have this disease that is truly free of age. Or of religion. Or of geographical location. Or of caste. Or of socio-economic status. I didn't get gang-raped in that bus. Or stripped and raped and hanged to the tree. Or assaulted and burnt alive. But I feel the same pain that each woman goes through.

We don't just need more documentaries out there. I also believe each of us - men and women - need to ask the women and girls in our lives. What is it they have faced - what does disrespect mean to them.

And I also believe we need to make sure that as we hear of more horrors and sicknesses, we don't closet the girls and women in our lives to lead more "protected" lives. Because by insulating them from these sicknesses, we are actually feeding the virus. As that virus will then realize that it is winning. That it is conquering through fear, what it always wants us to do. To keep women indoor and unseen. When that defense lawyer in the documentary talks about a woman as a "flower" and how that same flower can be used for worship or can land in the gutter - we need to be aware that by keeping all the women and girls at home, we are feeding into this sick mindset.

We are not the only country where this happens. But we need to do what we can to rid our country of this disease.