Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
night, although the relentless climb up from Lata to the top of the ridge at Lata
Kharak can't have helped.
Late in the afternoon, as we counted loads, we realised that two were missing.
Two teenage porters had not arrived at our high alpine meadow and it was nearly
dusk. An older brother volunteered to go find them. I emptied my Kelty pack
frame, threw in a couple of head torches and together we descended steeply back
through the rhododendron forests slick with mud. We found them nearly 2,000
feet below. One of the lads was clearly struggling. He had taken on a double load of
sixty kilos even though he had a bad cold. Alex appeared at the same time, and we
broke down the load, divided it between us and climbed back up to our camp on
the grassy ridge by headtorch. Their friends cheered as the three Lata boys arrived
for their late supper. Next day, they all seemed well enough to carry on.
As we traversed the delightful high ridges on the morning of the second day, a
mist came in. Within an hour, it began to rain heavily. An hour later, it was snow-
ing. The route that day was at 13,000 feet for much of the way, finally crossing the
Dharansi Pass at 14,000 feet before dropping 8,000 feet back down to the en-
trance of the Rishi Ganga. It was a miserable trek for the porters. The combination
of the altitude, the cold, double loads and covering two stages in one march resul-
porters went on strike.
K. T. and Sher Singh spent the morning negotiating. We stayed out of the way.
Fortunately the sun rose above the enclosed valley, and quickly warmed the atmo-
sphere, drying clothes, tents and blankets, reminding the porters that their god-
dess Nanda was waiting to grant wishes only three days away. We agreed two days
of single stages and an extra allocation of
bidis
. Fortunately, the sheep were not
smokers and weren't on strike. The porters had an early lunch and by noon we
were winding along the initial south walls of the famous Rishi Gorge.
We crossed the river but after Ramani, the next camp, we faced a problem we
had not anticipated. The sheep could go no further as the walls of the gorge
steepened. We recruited some of the porters who would have returned at this point
and increased our own loads to around forty kilos. Then it was steeply uphill and
across the slabs which Bill Tilman had pioneered in 1934, tottering high above the
roaring Ganga. It occurred to me that Calcutta was 2,000 miles away, but to begin
the journey, you had only to drop a thousand feet.
Two days later we arrived at a meadow of delicate flowers and grass, strewn with
granite boulders. It was immediately opposite Nanda Devi's impressive north-east
face. A glacial river sped past between our camp and the Nanda Devi glacier op-
posite. We paid off our now happy porters and they immediately began the run
