02 August – Gunji-Navidhang Track – Part 1 – Gunji to Kalapani

The next morning I woke up and Sushrut was not to be seen. I pulled on my shoes and walked outside. There he was, outside the barrack, chatting to Sudhir uncle and munching away on biscuits. I raised my eyebrows and asked him, “I thought you weren’t coming with us today.” “Ha!” He said. “Why wouldn’t I?” I was overjoyed to see him up and about with no sign of the headache.
Around 7:15 am, we gulped hot glasses of bourn vita and left the gates of the Gunji camp. Turning right we walked a sharp incline and came to a kind of a plain where again there was an ITBP check post and a head count was done. The sky was a deep blue with puffs of clouds everywhere and everything was bathed in a pale watery light. The air was crisp and clean with a faint piney smell. The walk was pleasant and invigorating. The path was wide and stone strewn and it seemed like we were out on a simple nature trail with no sign of the previous hardships.
The Kali seemed like a sweet gurgling brook. I found it hard to believe that this was the same river. Sometimes we were high above the river and sometimes we were walking alongside it. We could see cliffs of sandstone on the opposite side and mountains of a yellowish ochre stone on our side and smooth pebbles and rocks along the river. There were moss and lichen covered trees and unusually shaped dried trunks all around. I was lulled into a feeling of tranquility and mostly walked in silence.
A small battalion of ITBP soldiers raced by us at one point. They were probably out on their exercise routine. A little before Kalapani we saw structures like closed rooms down below the path a little off the river bed. When we asked Sahji, he said those were actually bathrooms. Somewhere below were hot springs and the bathrooms were built for pilgrims to bathe in them. A hot bath sounded heavenly though sadly we were in no position to take advantage of it. We had a lot of ground to cover yet with no time for luxuries.The trek was completely uneventful and almost soothing and we covered the 9 kms to Kalapani by 11:15 am. I should have wondered then at such an out of sync calm but I was too busy enjoying myself to look a gift horse in the mouth.