Valley of Flowers: A Travelogue Part V

Valley of Flowers: A Travelogue

Part V

A Long Way Up

At first it sounded like an airplane taking off; but as I listened, longer and more closely, I could hear a veritable orchestra of other sounds: drips, clicks, rattles, gushes and whooshes……..! Her name was Pushpavati, the river of flowers. The World Wide Web says that she was named thus because the Gods found petals of flowers floating on her bosom. That of course is mythology. I don’t know who of the mortal world gave her this name for even Frank Smythe, the discoverer of the Valley of Flowers makes no mention of this river in his travelogue. But nonetheless, no name would have suited her better than ‘Pushpavati’ or the Flower River. She is born somewhere high up in the Rataban and Nilgiri peaks of the Garhwal Himalayas and flowing through the Valley of Flowers in its entirety, she joins the Lakshman Ganga at Ghangria.

As I descended that demented path of stones (described in detail in part IV), the river’s thundering became louder. Once I was safely down, I hurried over to the bridge that was strung across her breast. It was a fairly sturdy bridge resting on strong-looking concrete pillars; but when I stood on it and faced the flow of the river, the current was so strong that for a moment I had this feeling that all would be swept off: me, the bridge, the pillars, everything. It was unsettling, so I scuttled off the bridge to the safety of the more solid ground on its banks. I stopped there for a moment to savour the wild beauty of the rain-swollen river as it hurtled down the deep gorge.

‘Why this furious speed, Pushpavati?’ I asked her.

All white foam and whiter froth, she never paused to answer.

But I knew why she raced at that breakneck speed, at that drunken haste. It was because further down in the valley beyond, the Lakshman Ganga waited to catch her his arm; and she couldn’t wait to immerse herself into him.

Ahhh, pyaar diwaana hota hai………mastana hota hai…..

I had turned a little maudlin with these thoughts, but all amour was wiped off my mind when I surveyed before me the steep grey path to the VoF stretching at an evil seventy-degree angle, topped by those demented stones. But I no other option available to get to the VoF short of growing a pair of wings; so I clenched my teeth and my loyal stick and staggered slowly up the track.

The path moved through varied backdrops: bare black mountainsides alternating with fairly thick jungles. The jungles were filled with silver birches (Bhojpatra, Betula utilis), the beige-brown bark peeling off their white smooth trunks. The bhojpatra was used in ancient times as paper for sacred texts. I also found plenty of five pronged leaves lying strewn around and mistakenly thought they belonged to Chinar/maple trees. It was later that I realised that these leaves were those of the Oriental sycamore.  As I walked, drops of rain trickled off the leaves, new moss on tree trunks glowed fluorescent green and a faint daylight dripped through the lattice of branches above, shrouding everything in a faint yellow-brown haze.

This part of the trek was, I think the most challenging. The path was long, stony and steep; and the steadily increasing altitude compounded the misery. It was also raining, a fine misty sheet that clouded my camera lens, adding to my growing unhappiness. The track at places was quite narrow, of less than two-men width and when the pitthoos rushed by, they sometimes left us cowering on the treacherous edge of the road. This was scary because the drop from the edge was a sheer thousand or more feet and a fall would have meant immediate annihilation.

I was, as I have mentioned before, the rate limiting member of the group and here too, like on the Pulna-Ghanghria route, the other girls had moved on far ahead and I was left all alone. Well not exactly. Dinesh was always present behind, reminding me of a conscientious nanny who would never abandon her charge. I will forever be grateful to Dinesh, for without his silent but reassuring presence, I don’t think I would have been able to complete the trek. All my memory-pictures of the trek up and down the Valley will always have Dinesh in the backdrop: a short, slightly built youngish man in a blue pullover, baggy track-pants and hand-me-down Quechua boots, a head of untidy close-cropped hair, a three-day stubble stippled in gray and a simple smile flashed through bad teeth crinkling his eyes into a thousand wrinkles. Like a good guide, he was unobtrusive but available when required, and his honesty was an added bonus. What I particularly liked about Dinesh was that he spoke very little and when he did, he spoke sense. Like that time when he told me of how since the Valley had been made into a National Park and the grazing by local goats forbidden, many flowers previously seen were not to be found anymore because the goat dropping fertilised the soil of the Valley. Later I also learnt that these goats grazed on weeds such as the Polygonum and when no goats were allowed in, the running-amok Polygonums were elbowing out the other less hardier variety of flowering plants. I also read that the govt was now spending lakhs of rupees in trying to weed out this weed. Well……..that’s what happens when we try to interfere in the natural course of things.

I was lagging behind, and while I did manage to catch up with DD occasionally as she was being victimised by the altitude, the other two Tenzin Norgays had zoomed off ahead and now even their designer rain-cheaters were not visible. I told myself that by now they would have reached the Valley. But surprise of surprises, at the next uphill bend, I found all three of them huddled on a rock, munching almonds and egging me on upwards with their smiles. 

“Tum log aage gaye nahin?” I asked, feeling nice that they hadn’t.

“Oh no….! We would never enter the Valley alone without you, Aibee……………!” They chimed.

A warm feeling crept up my throat and settled there. Of course, they wouldn’t. How could I have thought that they would.

A little later, Dinesh announced, “We are almost there. A little charai, then a little ‘down’ and then flat, flat…..!” He smiled at us.

I looked ahead. I could see his little charai. After what I had crossed below, that little charai was truly ‘little’. Enlivened I got ready to move. Ahead, there was what looked like a landslide of grey stones and boulders.

“What’s that?” I enquired.

“A sliding zone. It’s a place where rock falls are common. We must cross it fast.” Dinesh cautioned.

But before we could move, we spotted a young man standing amidst the rocks, on a high stone taking selfies.

“Hey!” Dinesh yelled, “Please move.”

I yelled along with him helpfully, “Helloo, helloo……..!”

But the young man was too interested in his selfies to heed us. Shiny turquoise jacket, slick gelled hair and a fair face framed by a Shahid Kapoor beard.

‘Punjab da munda. Totally lawless.’ I grumbled, shaking my head. We crossed the rockfall zone quickly, past the munda still engrossed in selfies and clambered up the little charai. It was now a ‘down’ as Dinesh had promised, down all the way till a cute gushing mountain stream bridged by a single battered tin sheet of a bridge. Across the bridge, a few metres ahead was the green and red Forest Department board that announced, “You are now in the Valley Of Flowers.”

Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The four of us clung together in celebration of our victory (for it was nothing less than battle that we had won) and belted out our dear old school anthem at the top of our tuneless voices,

 “To East and West…….”

I don’t know what people around thought of a gang of four bedraggled middle-aged women with flying black ponchos and waving hiking sticks singing some strange angrezi song in a stranger angrez accent….but who cared? None of us did. It was exhilarating singing that well-loved song and we would have continued, enthusiasm undimmed had it not been for a pitthoo who shooed us out of the way unceremoniously, thus putting an end to our stellar performance. Fortunately, Dinesh had offered to record our little show and I can remember distinctly his highly amused but indulgent smile behind the camera as he filmed our performance.

Dinesh herded us all under a huge black rock and advised us to first have our lunch. It was raining, and everything was wet and cold and that lunch of soggy parathas is not something I remember with much fondness. On top of that, that rock was the only shelter for the truckloads of hikers who had swarmed into the Valley that day and we kept elbowing each other within its narrow confines.

I was chomping on my paratha when suddenly, an elderly gentleman standing before me toppled in slow motion on to his side. It appeared as if he had been leaning against the pitthoo chair and had slid down, throwing him off balance. But he propped himself up immediately, goofy smile on his face , all the while assuring everybody that he was alright. However, after barely a minute, he fell again. This time he was caught by a person from his group. While in this man’s arms, I saw with horror that he had fainted again.

I stuffed my half-drunk Frooti into DD’s hands and rushed forward.

“Make him lie down. Make him lie down! I yelled, but nobody seemed to be paying heed to my words. Exasperated, I yelled “I’m a doctor!” But in that weird black poncho with rain slithering across my wet face and lank hair, I probably looked more like one of Macbeth’s witches than a doctor and it was difficult getting the people around to listen. I kept insisting that they lay him down flat on the ground but maybe because the ground appeared muddy and dirty, they hesitated. I told them to raise his legs, thinking it probably was a simple fainting spell. As someone, raised his legs, I fumbled around in that crowd for his wrist and was reassured to feel his pulse. The man by now had recovered consciousness and was protesting, “I’m ok. I’m Ok!” But his pulse was fast and weak, and I wondered whether those fainting spells were related to something more sinister than a simple fainting attack precipitated by altitude. He was sweating a little and that scared me even more. But his tour guide was nonchalant.

“Kuch nahi hua. I’ll give him ORS and he’ll be Ok.”  

I was like “ORS????????????”

“Get him down to Ghanghria, partner. Pronto!” I hissed through gritted teeth. But the guide did not heed my words. He was busy making his panacea of ORS and refused even to bring out his bottle of oxygen. Maddened, I caught hold of the man from his group, the one who had caught the patient as he fell and asked, “Who’s he travelling with?”

The man pointed to an elderly lady napping on a pitthoo chair.

“Jesus!” I thought. “What do I tell her? That her husband was probably having a heart attack and it would take two and half to three hours to get him to Ghanghria?”

She had woken up with all that commotion and seeing her husband lying on the pitthoo chair, she tottered forward.

I asked her, “How old is he? Does he have some chronic illness?”

“No!” she waved me away. “Nothing. He is sixty-two.”

My eyebrows touched the roof.

What was the need for a sixty-two year old to ascend to 12000 feet ? Did he think it was a joywalk in Mughal gardens? Couldn’t they remain happy at some luxury Mussoorie hotel sipping green tea and eating pakodas or holiday at some Goan beach-resort with a gaggle of grandchildren? What was the senseless need to go traipsing up to 12000 feet riding piggyback on another man over a track of demented stones, all to see some silly flowers hiding in the mist?

Sixty-two!!!! Hey Bhagwan!!!

I grasped the group member by his shoulder.

“Listen,” I told him. “Get him down on a pitthoo before something terrible happens. Heed me, for God’s sake. I’m a doc. Don’t listen to your ORS drunk Guide.”

Saying that I moved away.

Advice given readily and free of cost has zero value. This is something I’ve learnt over the years and rarely do I distribute advice freely. But the man had looked ill and because three episodes of syncope (fainting spell) at an altitude of 12000 feet without acclimatisation in an elderly man should never ever be taken lightly, I had been forced to intervene. Now I had done my bit and it was now up to the group to act as they deemed fit.

I moved away. Better things were waiting.

The flowers were calling………………..

(To be continued)

PS: Later Dinesh informed me that they had evacuated the gentleman down to Ghanghria by pitthoo.