The trek to Chandratal was one of the most value-for-time/money/effort treks I went on. Here is Akshat's best written travelogue ever...with a few additions in italics by me. Akshat calls it...
...Just Another Chandratal Story...
I always knew that trips are not meant to be picture perfect; planned meticulously with the execution following the plan to the last detail. And so I have told you about my trips in which most things went according to plan. Then there are the trips I have talked about in which things did not quite work out as expected. But never ever in my brief career :-) as a tourist have I been involved in a trip in which everything that could go wrong, went wrong. hmm, I suppose it was about time that it happened to me. For people who would soon run out of patience, just a flavour of what kind of things can go wrong in an irregular trip (A note that though this not a regular hill-station trip, it was neither a tough trek). So the things that could go wrong are, having porters who do not quite relish the idea of carrying luggage, getting stuck in a cold, windy place with no food and no tents and with night fast approaching, travelling around 100 kms in a jeep driven only by the powers of gravity.
So, let us start from the very begining. As has been the trend, after many last minute dropouts and some late addins, the final 8 for the chandratal trip consisted of Rohit,
Mohit, Chinmoy, TV, Amol, Bhide, Kundu and myself(Akshat). Chandratal is situated at a height of around 15000 feet in the cold desert of Lahaul-Spiti region (Himachal) with almost no vegetation. The plan was very simple. In the interest of time, we would take a Qualis to Manali on Friday night, change vehicle at Manali and reach Batal by aftenoon. We would then either walk/drive to Chandratal by evening and set up camp there. The next day would be free for a trek to either of Kunzum Pass or Tokpo Gongma or just laze around at Chandratal.
And so I was all set to go home and bring my backpack when the first of the "events" happened. The Qualis that Amol had booked had broken down and we needed to find a replacement ASAP. What followed was a set of frantic calls to all the travel agents that we knew and finally Amol managed to find a Qualis. No harm done other than the fact
that we lost more than 2 hours in this. Younis Khan, our driver, turned out to be less adventurous than his elk and as a consequence we arrived at Manali after noon. I had
heard lots of stories about Manali being a trekkers' paradise in the sense that you could choose and pick your supplies in no time. As it turned out, the only choice we had was
to pick or not to pick. We could locate only one camp operator who had tents available and he took a lot of time before disclosing that he needed a grand deposit of 10k for the
tents. We decided that it was better to pick whatever was available rather than trying to choose between non-existent options. The episode reminded me of the Salt and
story theory, which says that, Stories are always meant to be taken with a pinch of salt because the writers forget to mention that there is always a validity period, an
element of chance and a great deal of generalization with most stories.
Bottom line: Rent all rentable equipment from Delhi itself.
Before I lose any further readers, I should quickly summarize the other relevant events and move on to the walk itself. We hired a well used Mahindra Commander with well
used wheels and well used chasis for 4k.
Since we could not find any porters (another story goes bust:-(), we accepted our new driver Guptram's suggestion that we take two boys from his village on his
responsiblity and we were off at 3:45 from Manali.
We crossed Rohtang La, the connecting door b/w civilization n "what lied beyond it"...Lahoul-Spiti...at around 6 PM. The huge delay meant that we could only reach Chota
Dhara, even after driving for some time in dark, rationalizing ourself that there was some ambient light sufficient for driving. In order that the name of the places make some
sense for the non-chandratal educated readers (tumko chandratal nahi pata :-D), here is the route from Manali to Chandratal.
Manali- Gramphoo(Lahaul) via Rohtang La 66km on Manali-Leh Highway
Gramphoo-Chhatru 17 km Manali Kaza(Spiti) highway...highway???:))
Chhatru- Chota Dhara 17km -do-
Chota Dhara - Batal 15 km -do-
Batal - Chandratal 14 km unnamed road/trek
and just to put things into proper perspective, Chandratal is known to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the country alongside Pangong, Tarsar etc. The interesting
commonality is that all of these lakes are high
altitude and not very easily accessible.
The road from Gramphoo to Batal(actually there is no road...) runs in Chandra Valley parallel to River Chandra(later known as
Chenab in J&K). The beauty of this landscape though barren is mindboggling. You can almost find anything right in the middle of the road...a waterfall...a stream...a river(just joking!!!)...or a big herd of sheep/mountain goats/yaks...the pace of chandra in the valley wud even put michael schumacher to shame...
So we passed the settlements of Gramphoo n Chhatru, finally reached n
we set up camp at Chota Dhara, which by itself is a nice place to camp. While camping, we discovered
that our porters had very very limited experience in camping and cooking(Lesson: Make sure ur porters know all aspects of the trek like route, camping/cooking blah
blah).The upside of this delay was that we could acclimatize at Chota Dhara (3600m) before moving on to chandratal (4300+m). The next day after an early start, we
crossed the Bara Shigri glacier (supposedly the second largest glacier in world) to reach Batal around 9 o clock. Again, as contrary to expectations created by stories, there was no bone-chilling window at Batal and we started our walk to Chandratal at last. Our Mahindra carried our backpack for the first 3 km and so it was a pleasant walk for
some time. After the 3 kms, a stream had washed off the road and we had to start our trek with the backpacks.
With naya naya josh, everybody else other than Rohit and me, had already started their padyatra even before I had packed my backpack. The remaining 11 kms looked like
a piece of cake especially since we were
well fed and acclimatized as well. We had done 6 kms more before I could reach the rest of the gang and by then the shoulders had begun to droop. Out popped the question
from Kundu, "How much distance is left?".
No more educated than the rest, I still gave them an answer since I was supposed to be the planner, "4 kms". Another couple of kms passed and the questions gave way to
groans and sighs of "aur kitna bacha hai?".
The high altitude had started to take its toll and the moderate trek started to look unending. After a while, when it started to look like we had done more than our fair share of
11km, we decided that few of us should
leave our backpack and look ahead if we had strayed from the track. As it turned out, we had and all we needed was to head down the nearest slope and bingo, we were at
the green coloured Chandratal. Now, as
some of you already know, the color of Chandratal changes according to the position of the sun. The reason as far as I could guess is that the colour of the hills/peaks
surrounding it vary from green (of the hills) to brown of the taller hills to white of the peaks to blue of the sky. Hence, depending on the angle of the sun, they are reflected in
the clear waters of the lakes giving the lake water their colour.
To add here...when me n Akshat were looking if we had strayed from the track...we chanced upon this small lake (let us call it chhota chandratal) which we wud almost
have mistaken for chandratal...chhota chandratal is situated a few hundred feet above the main chandratal...the view beyond this small lake was fabulous...(which we later
discovered was a combination of the highest peak in the region "Mulkila Peak" and the grand "Samudra Tapu Glacier" plus their reflection in the clear water of lake)...this
view is not to be missed...
Mission Accomplished, we started our wait for the porters as they had all the food and tents. The expectant waiting soon transformed into anxiety as the sun started to go
down the slope n wind started blowing at great speed and still there was no sign of our porters. As the wind intensity started to pick up and the mercury started to fall,people
started showing signs of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) like headache n fatigue. More worrying was that Chinmoy started having mild heart pain maybe because of
breathlessness due to lack of Oxygen(no vegetation...remember???). Depressing thoughts started to cloud the minds. When we had reached Chandratal, TV had popped up
the question, which sounded silly at that time, "what happens if the porters do not come?". "Hum sab thand se mar jayenge", had been my (Akshat's) jestful reply, I remembered,
though no longer with jest. Hey, you don't need to worry as yet, though. We had a backup plan. We decided that 5 o'clock was the latest we would wait for the porters and
then trudge back to Batal. It made sense than that few of us go back looking for them at 4 o'clock and if we failed to locate them, we would head back at 5. Amol and
myself(Akshat) formed the search party and had almost given up the search when Amol found the porters, with a bottle in hand, ambling up a slope with no sign of our food and tents. We
were informed that the luggage was too heavy for them, that they had never worked as porters before and that they had left the luggage 4 kms back. Also, they could
somehow arrange for a horse to get the luggage to Chandratal, if we paid for the horse. Left with no choice, we told them to get the horse and headed back to the tal.
After delivering the news to the rest of the Junta, the stupid thought started to come up. The simple problem was that they may not get any horse and the simple solution was
that some of us go back and get tents for the 8 of us. Well, we could live without food for one day but without tents we stood no chance of surviving one night at Chandratal.
So, TV and myself(Akshat) started our trudge back to the place where our porters had left the luggage. As we reached the spot, we saw a horse all ready to move with luggage
strapped and the two porters alongside it. And so we all walked back to Chandratal with TV and myself helping themselves to 2 packets of biscuits on their way back.
Nothing of much consequence happened that evening other than the howling wind that threatened to blow away the tent, the irritating headache that most of us developed
and the spine chilling cold that refused to go away even after we had put on all our clothes. The simplest solution to all the problems was to have some food quickly(we did
not have the honour of having a lunch that day...thanks to the porters...) and snuggle into our backpacks and that is what we did. The minor detail I forgot to mention was that
cooking was not quite quick, unless 2-3 hours is your idea of quick cooking, out of which an hour went in lighting up the stove.Finally we had some food (after a gap of almost
12 hours) and had a quick peek at the snow-capped peaks in the full-moon"light"...which we were not in a state of mind to enjoy much:( ...and so we were in our sleeping
bags by 11 PM.
The next morning was clear and almost everyone had developed headache overnight. We somehow forced ourselves to get out of the tent (that was around 6 AM). The
sight that greeted was the sight I had seen so often in all the photographs that I had seen, while reading about Chandratal on the web. The reflection of all the surrounding
peaks in the clear water gave a different colour to each part of the lake. There was white, there was brown, there was blue and there was green all reflected in the same
lake. Slowly everybody else started to crawl out of their tents and enjoy the view for which we had come so far. Even after all that had gone wrong, we had managed to get
the reward for which we had come. After satiating oursleves we packed out stuff and started on our way back. Our porters obliged us by carrying two tents and kitchen
equipment. TV carried the third tent with some of us carrying TV's stuff after suitable division.
The return trek was uneventful and we started our drive back to Manali. And of course, we reached Manali, returned the tents, collected back our 10k, headed to Delhi and
as you already know reached Delhi safe and sound. What also happened was a few flat tyres that are no big deal since Guptram could borrow a tyre from any passing
Commander. And so, even though, there were times when we were stuck with a flat tyre and with no spare, we never needed to wait for more than 5 minutes before getting
a spare from a passing vechicle. What is more interesting is that on our way down from Rohtang, Guptram broke his clutch while we were in third gear and with a clever mix
of neutral and third gear he managed to cover the 50 kms to Manali. What is even more interesting is that we overtook many vehicles that were engine-driven and if any of
those drivers ever come to know that they were ovetaken by a gravity-driven vehicle, I wonder if they would contemplate suicide. And so here we are back at Delhi after
watching Chandratal change colours and what I would just say is that "All is Well that Ends Well" and of course, don't forget the "Salt and Story theory".
-Akshat Verma
-edited by Amol Herlekar;-)
