Thursday, January 6, 2011

Five star Camping



Finally managed to organise and do a camping/trekking trip to Kuari Pass. This wasone of the best camping trip I have ever done... Raj style :-) with our very own Raju Guide.
The planning started back in April 2010 and with enough persuasion from couple of the team members the trek was chosen to be one that was not too difficult or high to impact AMS (altitude sickness) but high enough to keep us honest and get some nice views. So the kuari pass was chosen as this was 6 days long and went up to 3600Mts. The team consisted of the nomads, our novice camper friends , Piyu and Pooj the y-gen reps.
Trip started from Delhi on the train to H
aridwar and a jeep ride to start fo the trek. The roads were exciting after the recent floods, at one point it was really bad, with just enough space for our qualis to get through on a very muddy stretch , when I decide to enquire the driver about the toad, and asked 'यह कब टीक होगा? - when will this be fixed? ' His answer was 'पहेले खराब था, मगर अब टीक है, अब गढ़ी चल सकती है - It was not ok before, but its OK now, the car can go through' - implying what are you on about, we are going trough aren't we.... I learnt my lesson no more comments about the road :-)

The brochure/email we had got from Grand Adventures India 'http://grandadventure
sindia.com/index.htm' we expected to have a walk of about 3 hours on day one. Well with the exciting ride that we had, it was almost 3pm ( 9 hours of a bumpy drive) by the time we reached Ghat the starting point.Well it was himalayan 3 hours :-) Priyas comment summed it up, after half hour of walking she goes 'perhaps should have done more steps'.

Day one camp was reached when the sun was just about setting and the guys did not have sleeping bags. We thought hmmmm indian trek company.. However, to give Raju credit he fixed the problem. Got some new and
very heavy doonas for that night. Next day early mrning a guy was sent out to get the missing sleeping bags and they arrived by 5 pm next night
! From then on each night was sensational and the food an absolute hi
ghlight. Here is a picture of our dining tent being set up by our entertainer/helper Debu ji. The food each night was sensational as was the brekky and our packed lunch

The walk was as wonderful as we expected with wonderful views of the nandadevi sanctuary and the mountains there like donagiri, nandadevi, godhagiri etc.
The nights were camp fire and dancing . Cant wait for the next trip.
We had these fantastic people looking after us. The cook and his helpers had left by the time we took this picture.

1 comment:

Fantasies of a Lifetime said...

:D :D ! That was so much fun (even with all the climbing) . . .cant wait for another one