Trekking - Tales of Reverse Osmosis Baba and other shaggy dog trekking stories

November 18, 2005 - Almora, Uttaranchal

I am back from my trek. I wish I could tell you how beautiful it was, but words cannot capture what I felt and saw.

My trek started at Song (a small trekking town at 4,000 feet in the Kumaon Himalayas). This is where the motorable road ends. Over the next 15 KMs, we ascended from 4,000 feet to 10,000 feet at Dhakuri Pass, and then descended another 1,000 feet to the village of Dhakuri. Over the course of the trek, the vegetation changed as well - from scrub jungle at the lower elevations to pine forests at the middle elevations to dense oak and rhododendron forests and alpine meadows at the higher elevations.

By the time I got to Dhakuri Pass, I was breathing very hard and sounded like a guy in the orgasmic phase of a particularly intense phone sex conversation!! However, all the effort was worthwhile when we go to the Pass.

The view of the Himalayas within literally stone-throwing distance and Maiktoli Peak in particular was awesome. The moment I saw the view, everything else went clean out of my mind - work, career, personal problems - everything. These mountains literally fill your entire consciousness. The Himalayas do not dominate the horizon at Dhakuri - they are the horizon.

I felt humbled and ennobled at the same time - humbled by the sheer magnificence and scale of these mountains, and ennobled to be part of something that has existed for millions of years, and will still be there long after this poor trekker has shuffled off this mortal coil. There is magic, power, beauty in these mountains. It was one of those life -defining moments.

What else can I say? Everything else seems a let-down after that view.

It was also great to meet Sanjeev and Rekha - we went for a 7 KM forest trek upto Binsar at 8,000 feet. We were privileged to see a deer leap across the forest trail in front of us - a real pleasure to see a wild animal in its natural habitat.

Who is Reverse Osmosis Baba, you ask? An interesting hermit I met during my travels in the mountains - but that is another story I will save for another post.