People don’t matter.. only snow matters!
Yes. I said that. But we’ll get to the details, sequences and consequences that led to this blunt declaration later. Having said that, today let’s meet the people who made this trek more enjoyable and then ride along to Loharjung.
16 of us registered for this trek with Indiahikes. Of whom, I already knew 7 from previous treks. You have already read the escapades of yours truly and the techies from Bangalore - Sujeet, Raghavendra aka Raghu, Ravindra and the analyst Ambareesh at Jog Falls Monsoon Drive.
Then there’s Bhanu and Poonam whom we met on Kudremukh trek here. Kunal and Pavan from Bangalore are friends of friends. Exactly half the group was acquaintances already.
Now let’s meet the rest. There’s Deepak and Smitha from Delhi – The photographer and his muse. The ruler of seas – Ram Kumar from Chennai. We sure pestered him asking curious questions about his profession! The other techie Raghavendra is from Bangalore as well and the three musketeers – Jagadish, Bhaskar and another Ram Kumar. That makes sixteen of us.
But there were more to join whom we didn’t know yet. A rather shockingly pleasant surprise I must say! We met them only after reaching Loharjung and so shall you.
After taking an overnight train to Kathgodam (Ranikhet Express), we found ourselves waiting for the Cab that never showed up, at least until 9.30 he didn’t! Early morning chores finished and with nothing else to do, we got down to the task of “knowing your trek mates”. And we start at around 8.00 AM finally; we have been waiting since 6 AM. No points for guessing that the road journey is very beautiful cruising along the Kosi River. We stopped at around 2.00 PM for lunch at Kausani – dwelling of poets they say. It is from here that we had our first glimpse of snow capped peaks at 3.00 PM – A fleeting glimpse. And at 4 we saw the first marvel just after crossing the curious looking temple (which we later found out was Baijnath temple) - A huge colorful rainbow which actually dwarfed the distant mighty mountains. And the next stop was at Tharali at around 5.00. From here you get full views of the majestic Garhwal Himalayas. It was now that we could see the majestic ranges and feel the chill too. Now it feels like we were headed to Himalayas.
