Chadar Trek - Ladakh

“The fall was fast. The impact was painful and there was a moment of silence”  

The flying legs came down to the ground after the body hit the white Ice floor first with a loud thud sound. Shaken, scared, hurt and impossible to get back on one’s legs unless someone picks you up. And then slowly your sense organs start working one by one. First you start hearing. It’s the roar of laughter from behind you by your own friends. Who are literally holding their stomach laughing loudly re-imagining your fall and they are keeping count.

After a brief moment, you search for the walking stick that has fallen with you. If you are lucky, one of the laughing idiots will kick it closer to you  you grab that, hold onto it, and like a baby getting to know how to stand up for the first time, you get back on your legs. The bag on your shoulders is heavier than it seemed in the morning and you feel like a bloated bear wearing 5 layers of clothing.

The fall has shaken you. The white glossy ice road in front of you is still teasing you. The wind gushing through the valley of never ending magnanimous mountains brings more chill as if it wasn’t enough that we were inside a freezer already. The legs are tucked into a double layered socks and then onto rubber gumboots of disfigured shape. Somehow they are not skidding. There is no sweat on your forehead, no sounds except the laughter and encouragement from behind, no irritating noises, no smell nor pollution.. But just soft cold sweet air that your nose and lungs are feeling happy breathing, nothing else that you are familiar with. There are just two things. Endless ice under your foot and then there are your friends, who are right behind you, for now, standing on their own legs for god’s sake!

You take a breather and muster courage and put one leg forward. And then comes the next step. And then the walking stick. Then the cycle begins and you move few inches forward. You glide, you slide, you walk, you fall, you slip, you skid, you skip, you walk, you fall, you glide and slide and you do it relentlessly. And you slowly get a hang of it. And the count of falls keep increasing!

The Bag settles down on your back comfortably. The body accepts that the walking stick is your third leg. The mind overwrites whatever you know and says, the world has always been a frozen place. The ice begins to change shape and texture. It turns soft like snow, hard like glass pieces, hardest like the green marble floor and smooth and silky like her skin. The morning sunrays light the farthest mountain valleys Orange Yellow... while the closer ones are still cold and grey. And then you are part of the gigantic world. The one that never forgets to tell you…what a small speck of dust you are in the middle of all that matters in this world.

This is NOT a story. 

This is neither a travelogue nor a manual for what to do in extreme weather conditions. This is an experience of an uncanny gang of friends, who signed up six months ago hoping secretly that it will get cancelled last minute; This is a diary of 2 budding teenage boys showing the spirit of finishing; this is a biopic of us fighting odds to win in style !!!

Welcome to Chadar. Welcome to Ladakh. Welcome to God’s gardens!!!!

In the beginning, God created Man and a Woman. In the next few days, he filled this earth with his imagination and made it gorgeous and called it heaven. He also kept an office for himself during this construction time, you know, to keep his papers and materials etc etc, in a place called Ladakh. He is still there, but rarely gives an appointment for us to see him. Only some mad people put extra effort to get that. Like the gang of 13 that flew from their homes on that mid-January evening from Bangalore. The team was ready!!

Although, in the hindsight, the team looked ready just like the rugged villagers in team Lagaan, mostly confused on what’s in store for the next 6 days.  For a while, none of us could answer why one should leave the comforts of a nice home, nice bed, nice weather, flowing tap water, food delivered at home by a finger swipe on a phone…and get into a place, where there is nothing in common to Bangalore.

Everything here is FROZEN. You breathe a little deep in, your lungs will feel cold. You put your hand out for a moment, you fingers will freeze. You stand out watching the stars for more than few moments, you have ice frozen over your head; you get down into the flowing water, you will freeze to death. Everywhere you see, there is ICE. Everything you feel is COLD. Every thought in your mind is about the CHILL. Absolutely nothing but cold.

So, as the cab reached our base camp on the first day, having driven in shit-scary cliffhanger kind of a road ; which in itself could kill a weak hearted passenger, we got down to get out first feel of the river Zanskar. The river has been there since god started work-from-home from here; the river has seen centuries of culture and trade go through it, has seen millions of rugged silk-route travelers and has been flowing relentlessly carrying possibly the cleanest and the best water this earth has! The people who live on the banks of this river; god bless their souls; have been walking on top of this river in winter because it is, yes…you guessed it right…frozen:)

Now you may ask, what this team was doing there. Because we neither belong to Zanskar village, nor is anyone married to that village, nor are we built like them to handle -30 degree temperature. Forget us, even our Refrigerator’s freezer compartment at home hasn’t seen a -30. If I have to honestly answer, we had very little awareness. All the blogs gave information, but as usual, do we really care a damn for other people views in life ever). We believed, if we can walk 5 kms in Bangalore’s morning weather, wearing decathlon shoes, we can conquer Mt. Everest.

Our first feel of the cold came when we got into our tents on the first day at the banks of the river. Each of us were with 2 t-shirts, pair of thermals, 2 Jackets, top another rain jackets, 4 trousers, and 2 pairs of socks, woolen cap and neck covering shawls. No no, I am not saying what we carried in our bags…this is what we were wearing on us...all at once. If you try this at home, in 15 minutes, you will come out as a skin-out chicken. So, please don’t try unless you are in Chadar.

Imagine this. You are wearing the above clothes and well covered. And you are still feeling cold!! And on top of that, imagine someone has pierced one iron nail each in all of your toes and starts to hammer it nonstop, gently. Do you feel the pain? That’s exactly how we all felt with our feet. After a while, some of us lost all our feelings towards our body parts. Feet first.

But then, like always, when everything feels like shutting down, there is always something nice that begins. This time it’s the evening bonfire, which would warm the front while the back gets frozen. We turn and show the fire our bums to heat the other side. We kept singing songs to keep our spirit warm and kept turning our bodies A-side and B-side to keep our bum - faces warm.

Some of us formed sub groups. Group of people with body aches, group having headaches, group with nothing but feeling need for some balm or other, and then the group of healthy bastards refusing to take any medicine and only focus on hot pakodas and tea . Don’t forget kg’s of dry fruits everyone carried!!

But no amount of side snacks can beat the smoking hot south Indian uppittu, served with the backdrop of a huge waterfall which is frozen as it was falling down.., and a setting involving beautifully flowing river and a canvas of triangle shaped hills with a lonely tree at the tip of the tallest hill, serving nest to beautiful birds. To have hot steaming upma on a minus 20 degree chill filled evening; when you have done half the trek, watching the happy faces of dearest friends… Priceless!!

We would rush like mad hungry wolves when the dinner shouts came and were always greeted in a large warm tent, by the mystical-pleasant-honest-smiling Ladakhi men, who with their gentle mannerisms and warmth, would serve us hot smoking delicious food and tea. Their gestures, their humbleness, their customer satisfaction goals can put any company’s vision statement to shame.

With the tummies satisfied, there would be a high energy battle of Wolves and villagers that would happen within the tent. This game called Mafia, would take the team members to the brink of mistrust and lies between them and then increase the adrenaline up for the wolves at night and bringing sweat on the forehead of harmless and clueless villagers even in this chill.

There would be bonfire, this time for late night birds. This one is more for those who carry Kishoreji and Lataji in their hearts. As the temperature starts dipping rapidly into unmentionable body parts; with reluctance, would some of us move towards date-night with the sleeping bags.

Briefly we look up to the sky and are shocked by the glitter above. We realize why god made man and woman to come and stay in this earth. Even if God had one spare star, he would have found it difficult to place it above. That’s how jam packed the star studded sky is. But the sights our eyes would capture in those nights would be the ones that will pleasantly haunt us for the rest of our lives.
It’s beyond just paintings. It’s real. It’s magnificently big and splendid. The entire sky is light with twinkling shinning bright dots. And moon, lucky for us, was full and was like the leader of the universe with Sun being absent. The dark hills would have an unforgettable glow in them reflecting the moonlight. The lonely tree would look mesmerizingly beautiful. The water would look like the dark flowing hair from your beloved. The sounds are surreal and mystical. The background of the songs within the caves of those distant hills makes you sway wherever you are. You are drawn into a late night show by the creator, who magically transforms the stage to something you can never find in the artificial world. It stays with you. To haunt you. Happily.

Can’t keep staring at it unfortunately because…yeah…you guessed again, ice is forming on your empty head already

They say, Chadar trek is India’s most thrilling and difficult trek for mainly 3 reasons. Firstly because of the temperature, which is always on average -20ish; second because of mental ability to withstand the trek; which I will try to explain later; and last is because of how you need to manage your sleep at night. You may wonder and ask…, what’s so difficult? Didn’t you guys have tents and layers of covering and also sleeping bags? Hmmmm!!

Let me explain. You are already a bloated bear with so many layers of clothes. Then you slide into first sleeping bag. And then to the second sleeping bag. Zip it up till your head. Not neck. Till your head is covered. Leaving absolutely not more than 2cm hole for the nose to feel you are breathing. Any stunt apart from this, will ensure you will have chills all night. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, just few hours after you struggled and managed sleep, you rotate sideward. Normal, like we do in our beds. Imagine now, you have missed the bloody breathing hole. You are wrapped inside 2 layers of zip lock bags. You get panic attacks just to grab that hole and find the zipper. Till you find it, you can experience the same feeling like a breathing man buried six foot under by mistake!!!

You might be wondering, why on earth would anyone pay thousands of rupees and get into this mess? I wonder too. But I missed saying something earlier. In the beginning, God created man and woman. Some turned out to be mad!! That’s all. That’s the reason. We were mad enough to brave that cold. We were mad to take those nails in our toes. We were mad to sleep inside ziplock bags. We were mad to not touch a drop of water for 7 days, despite water and ice covering us 360 degrees. We were mad. And we found God and god’s creation in that madness!!

See what that madness got us. It got us a week full of isolation from the real world. Not sure which is real now, nevertheless, we were just left out from the mainstream. In itself, it’s a scary thought; even for the inmates of big boss.
But when you are left in this magical world with just a few of the known people; you discover friendship like never before. You gain companionship. You fix a lot of missing emotions. You get your priorities right.  The little champions in the gang start becoming leaders in their own way. Not a single complaint; not a single drama; these two champions taught us how to enjoy what we do. Just focus on the task, keep walking, and eat the food served aka Maggi, with glee in their faces!! And they had the most energy left still at the end of the day; we had to literally plead them from climbing more hills.

Oh!! Those mountains and snow covered hill tops. Those large caves in those hills. At night, when all seemed lost, alone in the bags, with so less oxygen, and feeling sad and down, we would hear the Ladakhi group of men, singing songs from those caves. That was a ritual, where these men, after slogging all day relentlessly for their trekkers, would gang up in those caves. Light a nice bonfire and sing songs. Imagine this. Mountains like you never seen before in your lives, and nature-made cave-homes inside that. Most melodious songs being sung in one hill, then reciprocated by another hill and sometimes, if it’s a famous song, then sung together. The hills were put to sleep by that melody. We slept like babies listening to that and to the endless sound of the flowing river gushing into its own ice caves.

And everyday morning, we would wake up with ice on our sleeping bag and tent. We would shrug it off with our woolen-wrapped gloved-fingers and stretch our hands to the world’s most aromatic tea served inside tent. That would be the only motivation needed to open the warm sleeping bag and walk out into the world’s coldest giant freezer.

Breakfasts would be hot and cheer us up and porters would help us wrap our tents and pack things in a flash, as we ensured our camp site is clean and free from trash for the next time campers. One of the mornings was extra special, being the Republic day. Lined up by our handsome captain, we saluted the national flag with as much obedience and respect and proudness as the forces which are deployed in such terrain guarding our motherland. Our shouts of Vande mataram and Bharat mata ki jai would have matched any proud war-cry this land has ever witnessed.

As we slowly slide and glide on the ice, the next destination would always be the soupy lunch. In between us, the amateur ice walkers, the big hearted porter would carry all our tents and kitchen in their sledge and would run zoom past us like the vehicles of Mad Max Road fury!!!

And you can’t help feel inferior to them. You can see a grown up human, fighting odds unlike his fellow beings; running like a mad man just to reach before us - pitch the tent -  and welcome us with warm food and hot tea. I felt cheap, as a human, and totally unworthy of that kind of sacrifice from a fellow human for my benefits and comforts; which apparently I take for granted. They never ran like that for the little bucks they made…it was their karma that they believed in. To make their guest happy with the utmost service one can perform. None of us rank anywhere close to their dedication. None of us.

May be because God did decide to stay back in this region; that this place has people who are still clean, innocent, warm and humble. You can’t match upto their spirits, you can’t match upto their energy, you can’t match upto their spirit or strength. You don’t know how to smile like them, how to laugh from the heart like them, you can’t trust like them, you can’t be content and basic like them. They are humans. The ones god created. We are the rotten ones surviving in a life freezer.

And as we got used to the cold, to the rigors of the day, as we became masters of ice walking, out of nowhere, the trip ended. To the dismay of all of us, we had finished the great Chadar. The last day of the trek never seemed like an ordeal at all. We started to walk slower….didn’t want the finish line come up so rapidly. And some of us sat down next to the river …motionless, speechless and full of relaxed thoughts. Thanking the great creator for ensuring all of us are safe at the end of the trek; for the little champions and the fit moms and ageing daddy’s like me; for having conquered the now friendly Chadar.

All of us wanted more. We wanted this companionship more. We wanted this relaxed mindset more. We wanted this tough life more. We wanted to be happy. More. And as we all, one after the other took the famous Chill-dip inside the flowing Zanskar one last time; the tiredness vanished in just one shot. The body became fresh. The aches were gone. The troubles vanished. We felt fresh and clean. And we were finally stepping away from the sliding and started walking back.

Somewhere as I returned back home, I was again feeling, like most of us do after visiting our almighty mountains, very very lucky to have got a life like what we have. A single button pressed gives out flames to boil water. Oh…the water comes flowing into your home and at optimum temp. ; The food is always in abundance and wasted…with no respect to the toil fellow humans have given to grow and make it to this shape. Just spoilt brats of this world, who continue to give back to earth absolutely nothing. As I took the first hot shower after 8 days, I paused instantly. Sat down quietly and humbled. Couldn’t believe that I could take a relaxed hot water shower, that too a bucketful.

The frozen waterfall is a sight to watch. The designs and colors on the hills are painter’s imaginations. The changing sky color, the turquoise water, the pristine and pure real mother earth will leave you stunned. Absolutely gorgeous and worth seeing if you have eyes.

Once a lifetime, Ladakh is a must. Gods do live here. You have to open your frozen eyes to see!