The eight-hour bus journey from Haridwar to Uttarkashi was tricky and required much brinkmanship from the Pahadi driver. Hills have slid down and often the road was just a mental projection there. The next morning on the bus to Gangotri, I realised that cliff-hanging is routine business in the region. Roads have been washed away in landslides in the area and everything is just a surmise there.
Gangotri is like a tiny European fairy-tale town, a very unlikely Indian pilgrim town, tidy and orderly, with good-looking buildings. It is filled with Bengalis seeking fun and faith during Navaratri. My young friend, Swami Samvidanand, and I equipped ourselves for the 22-km trek to Tapoban (14,664 feet) — especially a Sherpa to guide and carry our stuff. Next morning we embarked on the first part of the trek, the 14-km walk to Bhojbasa (12,440 feet).
It’s a dizzying landscape with the river Bhagirathi roaring and flowing white in the gorges to our right, and a kaleidoscope of mountains soaring into the sky, gathering light and shadow and startling us at every turn with new configurations. The walk-way, a little belt of stones sticking to the sheer rock face of the mountains, has been smashed to smithereens in many places by rock falls and your mouth goes dry as you gird your loins to cross over. On your right is a 600 feet dead fall to the frothing river.
Bhojbasa is a clump of a few buildings in a huge valley, looking like goods forgotten in the vastness. The view is gorgeous from the Lal Baba ashram with snow peaks glowing orange and other-worldly in the twilight, and clouds swirling around them in the centre of a faraway ‘V’ formed by the darkened hills. Next morning we were off on the 4-km leg to Gomukh, the mouth of the Gangotri glacier from where Bhagirathi emerges. We were wandering through a world of stones, precipitous rock faces and rivers of gigantic boulders pushed along by the might of the snow. Gomukh itself is a fearsome and massive fortress of ancient snow. Science says the glacier has been receding steadily, which is bad news for all.
It was as we started the 4-km ascent from Gomukh that I tasted real fear. It is a pathless trek amongst lumbering rocks that makes you humble and craven. Even a tiny pebble rolling down from the upper reaches could be the precursor of a murderous rock fall. You tremble on precipices and crawl on all fours on rock points with no foot-hold. After a two-hour heart-stopping battle, Swami pointed forward and said, yes, now we shall cross the glacier. Cross the glacier? Who wants to cross a glacier?
But you must. There’s no turning back now. And we made that nightmare journey along the crumbling edges of the massive, gaping glacial fissures, demonic, as they hissed, growled and shrieked as giant blocks of ice came apart and fell into them. I vaguely realised that the surface of the glacier was actually a chilling and stupendous graveyard of boulders strewn around by the iron will of snow. My mind and body had switched off by then. Then Samvidanand pointed ahead to a stark and perilous mountain and said, that’s the last climb and then it’s over. I climbed because I was witless by then and driven by another greater dread: the sun was setting. I climbed, clinging to the mountainside like a half-dead beetle and teetering on the edge of nothingness. And thus, even as the sun vanished and only the highest peaks carried the last rays, we reached the top and I lay myself on the cold ground, not sure if it was real.