Baby steps to the top of the world

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves – Sir Edmund Hillary

Call Of The Mountains

Finally a month after returning from the life changing trip/trek of my life I am starting on penning down the experience and about the wonderful trek.

Actually I had started writing the day after we touched the sea level i.e Delhi but then was caught into the routine that I just couldn’t make myself to start the ever pending blog… Uff… Such excuses I give myself. But here it goes.

After more than an hour of hot water bath, have the energy to hold a pen and note down my experience. I am currently in Delhi, takings a day’s rest before heading down home.

After the visit to the beautiful Taj and relaxing at Prasar Lake, we headed out to Seobagh 3 kms off Kullu. There was the base camp from where we would start our 10-day trek to Chanderkhani Pass

TEN DAYS!!!

10 days seems normal during work-home routine. But the last 10 days of my life were the most challenging days ever. I am not exaggerating a bit when I say that I am lucky to be alive. These 10 days taught a lot about survival.

We learnt a lot, started as a group of 52 strangers from different parts of India. Together we laughed, cried, fell, helped, gathered ourselves up, pushed each other to overcome the hurdles and pain.

I am super super thankful to all the 50 members of CP-12 as they encouraged me when I felt I could not take a step forward. They were the ones who would wait for me to take a 2 min break and push me and specially my lovely husband Praveen who kept on telling “Come on Niks, you can do it, just a little more and we reach.” I am damn sure if not for him I would have given up. He made me push my limits. I wouldn’t even dream of walking 13 odd hours continuous on fresh snow against heavy winds, rain, snow storm basically terrible weather.

The start!!

It all started when Praveen and I were planning some trip for our 2^nd anniversary. As usual we started doing our research on where to go, places, dates and so on. A common quality between us is our thirst for new/unknown places. We love to explore. We are not suckers of luxury and believe that we can manage in any kind of accommodation or transport. All we want is treat to our eyes and to capture some of the bestest visuals. No compromises on that.

So, when Praveen stumbled upon YHAI, he was super excited about the trek and started reading numerous blogs about it. Basically he started irritating me to look, read about the treks to Sar pass and Chanderkhani Pass. Honestly, initially I wasn’t that interested but showed some enthusiasm just so that he doesn’t get disappointed.

But reading and watching videos of these treks got me hooked too. I started sending him links and details (that he knew before). Silly me!! It started to become our common activity daily and then we decided we would go for Sar Pass. But apparently Sar Pass gets sold as hot cakes, probably faster. In no time they were all full, we couldn’t even book 2 seats.

Disappointed, we started looking for Chanderkheni Pass seats (little did we know that it would be the best). Coz we wanted to be literally at the ‘top of the world’ on our anniversary (12^th May), we planned accordingly and booked the trek for 7^th May.

With the booking done, our next task was to book our travel tkts. Days went on pondering on whether to travel by rail or by air. We had almost finalised the rail. Details, dates, fares, timings and tentative itenary were planned but Praveen, being him, had to make some last minute changes. Changes? He convinced me to take the air route. Grrrrrr!!! The entire itinerary went for a toss, dates changed, budget increased. So, we had to plan from the scratch again. But well as they say ‘Jo bhi hota hai aache ke liye hota hai’ (whatever happens, happens for the good).

The changes lead us to go scouting on Google asking her for unexplored places in Himachal. And she poped up a place called Prasar Lake. We just fell in love with this place and so decision was made. Check my detailed blog on Prasar Lake. 

Prasar Lake

But, we still had to figure out what to do in Delhi for a day, as our flight would land in the morning and the bus to kullu was late in the evening. Praveen hated crowd and heat so it was definite that we wouldn’t do site seeing in the scorching Delhi heat. So, a day’s plan to Agra came on cards. Woila!! Yes, the TAJ MAHAL is where we would be heading. Taj as known to all was a beauty. Again a long blog on Taj will be up. (Isn’t this is a looonnggg post, already?)

So after our literally adventurous Taj trip, we finally headed to Kullu. A day’s stay there and on May 7^th we would be reporting for our Himalayan trek. We were excited, scared, tensed and happy. We were about to go a National level expedition.

Chanderkhani Pass – Here we come