A few more miles to go

It was a pleasantly warm day in October in Spiti Valley. The sky was clear and deep blue and a gentle breeze carried with it the subtle aroma of rosebush flowers. Flocks of mountain finches hopped from bush to bush, gorging on sea-buckthorn fruits. I was driving through the winding-uneven mountain roads towards the Ullah gorge in the newly acquired field vehicle, a Mahindra Scorpio. The visibility was good and I was soaking in the beautiful vistas with mount Manerang at a distance towering over the undulating valley glittering in the morning sun. I was going to drop Sushil and Tenzin, two very capable field assistants to Keuling village, a base for Ullah gorge. The work entailed setting up two camera traps, one at the mouth of the gorge and another six kilometers inside the gorge.

View of a typical gorge in the Trans-Himalayas

Ullah is an extremely tough gorge to traverse through by any standards. The gushing and freezing cold water in the stream that flows through it forces one to keep away from the narrow base, while the steep slopes above offer scarce foothold. The gorge is largely narrow with slopes becoming almost vertical at a few places. Any mistakes while you are trudging slowly at a height of 100-200 meters over the stream with nothing but boulders and rocks to fall upon can be fatal. The mountains look beautiful and charming, but they are also unforgiving, the mistakes rarely go unpunished.

Seabuckthorn laden with fruits. Villagers in Spiti valley have refused to use it commercially because they believe it will deprive many birds of their natural food.

A survey I conducted in this gorge searching for snow leopard signs in the year 2010 had revealed the difficulties one has to face in this gorge. Though I was able to go upto 5 kilometers inside, the going was tough. There was hardly any place to camp, the snow leopard signs were scarce and just for covering 5 kilometers, I had to cross the water six times. In the late afternoon the water level rose higher, making it impossible to cross the water any further, which meant one had to carry camping gear and provisions for at least one night. When I returned the next morning, I had bruised my knees, my limbs were numb after crossing the waist deep chilly stream water and my spirits were low as I found few snow leopard signs in this gorge despite the tremendous effort. As I crossed the last one of the water channels, all of my team members had already crossed over and were putting back their socks and shoes to get rid of the biting cold.

A wide river bed with turquoise waters. The water is often bone chilling cold and serene flow deceptive of the actual force of such rivulets

Broken physically and mentally, I was slowly wading through the water without caring for the cold anymore. I was despaired at this unsuccessful exploration. This right bank of the Spiti river was important to cover as the left bank was covered nicely with camera traps whereas cameras on the right bank were sparse. But the left bank was also hopelessly difficult to access, only the gorges offering some access while presenting unique challenges of their own.

These thoughts were running through my head when the typical thatched flat roof houses of Keuling village started appearing signaling the arrival of our destination. Despite all the limitations, it was important that we placed camera traps in this gorge. Once we reached Keuling village, the rucksacks were checked for the essentials (torch, batteries, chocolates, dry fruits and noodles). The old and worn out sleeping bags, the most trustworthy companions on such trips were taken out and Sushil and Tenzin were ready to go. I briefed both of them, primarily about ensuring that they do not engage in any overzealous adventure inside the treacherous gorge. Based on my previous experience, I was confident that both would return by 9:00 am the next morning. Faring them goodbye, I returned to drop another team of two at another location.

A panoramic view of the beautiful Trans-Himalayas

Next day I reached Keuling at the scheduled pick up time of 9:00 am and was confident that they would have already reached. However there was no sign of either of them, and knowing their adventurous nature, I mused that they would have tried exploring the gorge further and might get delayed by another hour or two. Now it was 11:00 am, the sun was shining brightly over the valley and yet there was no sign of either of them. I was starting to get a bit nervous and decided to go to the mouth of the gorge, hoping that they would be on the way. One also gets the BSNL cellular signal upto about a kilometer inside the gorge. I kept trying their cellphones and eventually reached the mouth of the gorge, but Sushil and Tenzin were nowhere in sight. It was 12:15 pm and time was running out fast. I was worried that one of them might have been injured badly and the other one might not be ready to leave the person alone and come out. Several such gloomy thoughts were running through my head simultaneously. I called up Thinley at base camp at kibber (30 km away), told him what was happening and asked him to be ready with a few men, ropes and other gear. Then I ran to the car and sped away to Kibber to get other people of our NCF team to plan and mount a search operation. I was now genuinely worried about the safety of these two as morbid thoughts kept crossing my mind and I tried hard to ward them off with positive thoughts. I was also very hungry as I did not have had breakfast thinking that three of us will have it together at Kaza, the small tourist town and administrative headquarters for Spiti valley. I reached Kibber in about 45 minutes and promised myself that I would never drive as fast on these roads again. Ranjini my colleague, offered to come along, but I requested her to stay back at the base camp as she was to leave for Bangalore the very next day and we needed someone to be at the base if things went wrong and we needed more co-ordination and help. While Thinley and team were loading their gear in the field vehicle, I quickly grabbed some lunch and we rushed back to Keuling. It was beginning to get dark when we started our trek to the Ullah gorge in earnest.

Sunset in the Trans-Himalayas. A Buddhist prayer flag is visible in the foreground.

No sooner had we reached the mouth when two silhouettes appeared on the cliffs on the right and the distinct rucksacks gave away the identity of the silhouettes. All of us shouted with joy and rushed towards them. Both of them were perfectly all right but I was perplexed about what took them so long. Both these guys are very capable trekkers and I was expecting them to make it before time.
I asked Tenzin and he told me that they had reached almost the glacier point beyond which Pin valley begins. What was the need to go that far I asked, a bit annoyed now. Both of them pointed to the GPS device and told me that something was wrong with the device. I took it from their hands and was shocked to see that someone had changed the units from metric system and the GPS was reading miles instead of the expected kilometers. They had walked six miles, instead of six kilometers and that explained everything.

Tenzin then added ‘we walked on and on, but the distance reading on the GPS would barely change’ and I was wondering if something was wrong, but Sushil kept cheering me up with it might be just a few more miles to go.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.