03 August - Navidhang

We woke up early feeling completely refreshed. In our exhaustion last evening, we had barely registered that the Om parbat for which we had trekked all this way, was completely obscured by clouds. This morning we were hoping that the weather would clear up enough for us to see the Om. This is indeed one of nature's miracles. The mountain top is usually covered completely with snow. During this time of the year, the snow melts sufficiently to reveal an Om shape in snow. The photo here is one I got on the net (courtesy: www.meriyatrra.com).

We waited for a pretty long time. We chanted Om with all our hearts. Finally the clouds parted to partially reveal the mountain top in the distance. But alas, a lot of the snow had melted and what we saw was a somewhat broken form of the Om. Courtesy: Global Warming. Another one of nature's beautiful and miraculous creations has fallen a victim to it. We all felt saddened and grew a little quiet. Still, we were glad to have made the effort and at least caught a glimpse of the Om. God knows if in future people will even be able to see as much. Perhaps future trekkers may completely bypass this part of the trek. That would be really sad. Anyway, this is what we saw.

After breakfast everybody went exploring. There was a beautiful little Shiva temple near the camp. Another point of interest was the wreck of a helicopter that's been lying around for a long, long time. This morning we lazed about till lunch. The weather was pleasant, no rain and we were only supposed to climb down to Kalapani and camp there.

Sachin had gotten better through the night but Pallavi was feeling ill. The altitude had given her a headache and she was also feeling nauseous. So Aditya and Pallavi left early, after breakfast. The rest of us had a nice lunch and left at around 12:30. Today, wonder of wonders, I reached camp first and in under 2 hours. There was not a spot of rain and the road was all downhill. After everybody reached the camp, I suffered through a round of highly exaggerated pats on the back.

By then Pallavi had revived completely and now Aditya was sleeping like a log. We ribbed her that perhaps he had had to carry her down the mountain. With the horse.

That day at camp, we had steaming cups of soup and sang endless rounds of songs. Around 6:30 pm, we went to the temple to join in the aarti. We sang bhajans and recited prayers and ate the bhog brought by the jawans. It was a beautiful experience. The whole atmosphere was spiritually charged and we returned to our fibre huts feeling rejuvenated. We went to sleep with the happy thought that tomorrow also was a light day, just the 9 km to Gunji.