Since how I got to Sarpass is a story by itself, I didn’t
want to mix it up with my experience in SarPass story. In the beginning of the
year I was contemplating a 15 day break in the himalyas, with project
transitions and several other things at work, I didn’t know how to plan for it,
but my optimistic self, went ahead and booked the spicejet tickets in the flash
sale for some random dates to Delhi when I thought tickets were the cheapest.
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| Sar Pass |
What to do there then is the next question? Although I don’t
bother myself with details much, I needed an ultimate destination in the
Himalayas. YHAI was an obvious and first choice due to my prior experience with it
– hassle free planning, budget friendly and very safe for a lone women traveller.
There was Sarpass Trek with base camp in Kasol, a place I so wanted to stop by
in my last trip, and then there was chanderkahni, also in himachal and another trek in Kashmir. I
was partial to the Sarpass Trek, due to the snowcapped mountains in its high
altitude camps and the breath taking Kasol,which was the base camp. After numerous
attempts at trying to book it online, which got me nowhere, I called the Delhi
YHAI office, and they told me “Madam, you are too late. All dates are booked
for Sarpass many months back.” I was not overtly surprised, but very
disappointed, thinking beggars can’t be choosers, I asked “What about any other
trek, anywhere in Himalayas” (Talk about desperation!!) and they said
“Everything booked”. Sad, shocked, desperate, I hung up the call and thought to
myself “I need to go to Sarpass this time somehow!! But how!!”
Days rolled by and it became obvious to me, I was going to
take a longer break from work, a recuperation effort and stay away from the
work radar until I decide to come back. This truly was going to be the break I
had been dreaming of for years together!! I decided to sign up for volunteering
in a small town called Gushaini, which I did not existed till then. By then, I also found out the random day of departure I had chosen to leave was ‘Buddha
Purnima’. The realization was very stark and overwhelming as I considered the
journey to be an inner journey for my realization as much as an outer journey
it was. As the full moon seeped into the window seat of my Volvo Bus, when the bus was climbing up the ghat roads of the himalayas, I could
not help thinking of the phrase ’Buddha is smiling’ (Apparently, a code word,
used to indicate India’s successful nuclear mission conducted on the same day some years back).
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| Kasol Base Camp |
So there in Gushaini, working with Stephan Marchal, I also
met some wonderful people across the country, who had come to do their
internship with the friends of the Great Himalayan National Park. I was still
keeping my eye out for the Sar Pass trek in YHAI updates in FB, and found a
number of teams returning without summiting due to the excessive snowfall (I was secretly and sinisterly happy about it !!). I
was hoping against hope that some miracle takes me there and that my batch
completes the trek. And it so happened, that Arush who was interning for his BA
Philosophy (Getting philosophical in the Himalayas is pretty natural you see!!)
in the Great Himalayan National Park told me about his YHAI treks and that his
uncle who is a member helped with his bookings. Wow!! Here comes my Miracle!!
The rest of things quickly followed as Arush put me in touch
with his uncle, who followed up and confirmed that there are last minute drop
outs and I may meet a camp leader he mentioned for a booking. I rushed next day
to get a Demand Draft, medical certificate printed, checked out of my home stay, and with
a warm and hurried hug bid adieu to Gushaini and went off to Kasol. I reached
later than the reporting time, and they were surprised to see a harried woman
all the way from Chennai with a Demand Draft with the hope to get through a trek that got
filled many months earlier.
So that was how I gate crashed YHAI’s most popular trek of
the year which they have been running for almost 45 years now. I of course had
a great time there and that experience will follow soon J
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