Apr 6th - Day 2 - To the Campsite we go with ILPs and all

Day 2 - Drive from Sombarey to Hilley, the starting point of our trek.

Trek: Hilley to Barsey

Our walk commences through temperate forests laden with Silver Fir, Hemlock and Magnolia . A

gently sloping path leads us to Barsey where we camp for the night - 1 Hour Drive, 2 Hours Walk - 2744 m

Tea with awesome views from the Balcony Area

Woke up bright and fresh to an awesome view from the Balcony….”Maybe we can just stay here for 6 days and trek for some time each night”… to which Mona gleefully hopes “If we don’t get our ILPs today… we could do that J”…

Venky wakes up, bright and fresh?

Several cups of tea, sweet ones by the support staff, and special strong tea organized by Venky and Mona, followed by YOGA !! Alright, Yoga instructors, Ron and Anuja, owners of Almaden Yoga, got the rest of us together to stretch ourselves out with some amazing Yoga poses. This will be a daily routine for us in the wild and it started well J

Group Yoga at Sombarey Guest House

Venky makes me fly

Omelet and bread and more tea followed for breakfast and while we are out of electricity still (duh), and the geysers (water heaters) won’t work, we still got 'Running hot water'… Vishnu style. Nice (last ?) shower done… packed up… and good news has reached us that ILPs have been earned by Ganesh. We should be able to head out in a couple of hours when he gets up here and we have confirmed that he has Anuja’s passport J

Breakfast @ the Forest Guest House - Aden

With our bags packed, we head out for a small hike up the road. Great weather, somewhat cloudy. We can already see some rhododendrons. Also bamboo. Piran tells us that the Bamboo flowers every 10-15 years and when they flower, they bring on the rodents. In about 1955, when that happened, the rodents ate up the regular crop as well, causing famine, and the central govt ignored it. Thus started the first armed resistance in the the north-east (Mizoram, I think).

We get back to the guest house, and get ready to leave. All loaded up (really ??) we head out to Hilley. Ganesh is going to meet us there with our passports and ILPs. Awesome drive up to Hilley with Mrinal drying her clothes outside her moving car. We get to the entrance of the Barsey Sanctuary, from where out Trek begins.

Bags are unloaded, porters join us here to pick up our bags, we sit down in one of the local  houses (Monozh, our local guide and leader of the porters has arranged this) for a great lunch of Momos and Noodles. Ganesh gets here with our passports and ILPS (it has really happened, we are re-united with our passports) but now ‘Kahani mein Naya Mod’ – New twist in the story – Venky has left his bag with his and Viji’s Indian passport back at the Guest House. Panic !! (First we tried to reach the drivers to figure out if it is in the car, but find it in the Guest house instead). Now we have to manage without that? Well, Venky and Viji manage to convince Ganesh to get someone to bring the bag up for an extra charge and cost of fuel. All ends well? Lets see, when it does show up. For now, Viji and Venky are without their passports and some other essentials L

The Trek Begins –“I am loving it”… like that guy from the Xoom ad. We are walking in the clouds now. The trees and flowers through the mist/fog/clouds look amazing… not sure if any of our DSLR camera’s can capture this beauty. “Rhododendrons are the Keystone flower of this ecosystem” Venky reminds me several times on the walk. I love this cloudy weather too, reminds me of Bombay.

 A good hour of lovely walking and talking (learnt all about Mrinal’s new job in Florida as a Forensic interviewer for Child abuse cases and her last job as an investigator in the Sheriff’s office). Nepali is written in the Devanagri script we realized as we read some of the signs on the trail. Couple of light breaks, pictures…And then it starts to rain… and pour…and the skies open up. Some ponchos come out… Mona wears a garbage bag on her !! and we trek on. Need to get to our campsite before dark !! So we trek through heavy and light rain for an hour as Venky and I get engrossed in a discussion of the role of Govt in civil society. Education, Health and Employment? The last one I disagree on… I say it should be in enabling commerce not direct employment generation…. Minoti and the others start to trek down a muddy road following the porters. Piran tells us there is a better road if we went straight. Anu, Ron and Mona are not here yet so we wait for them while Piran goes on the better road. When they join us, we continue on the better road. Ron said something about going down that same muddy road, but we said we know better J Venky obviously has a socialist bent of mind and it’s a hard struggle to get him to see how Govt intervention doesn’t help… Creating SEZs for tax shelters for MNCs doesn’t solve anything… shit we are lost !! Anu is calling from behind and we catch ourselves climbing up a steep climb. This can’t be it. So we start walking back to where we had split up. Retracing out path (thank god it was still well lit) take the path that Minoti and others had taken and lo’ the campsite was right there. Anu and the others were pissed… Well, Piran had told us that we could take a better road and we waited to Mona, Anu and Ron and went down the path Piran took… “Well, I changed my mind and went behind Minoti” Piran adds sheepishly… “duh…” well it all ended in laughs.