Where The Ganga Begins Its Journey

The next day we set off for Gangotri by jeep. Alongside us, several herds of sheep and goat were being shepherded up the road to Gan-gotri, in search of greener pastures.

At Gangotri, we checked into an ashram, then spent the day getting acclimatised by go-ing for short walks or running up the steps cut into the steep slopes of the hillside.

Our trek began early next morning. We walked 14 km to Bhojbasa the first day, stop-ping at Chirbasa for lunch. All of us were strug-gling with the exercise and the altitude, both new for us. We reached Bhojbasa late after-noon, tired but still excited.

The next day we went up to Gaumukh, 4 km, and then on to Tapovan, another 4 km. At Gaumukh, we clambered a short way down the boulder-strewn path to get to the very mouth of the river.

We could see it emerging sluggishly from underneath the cavernous mouth of the glac-ier. The wall of ice that towered above was a cu-rious blue-green colour.

After Gaumukh, the path was difficult. First, we had to find our way across the glacier. Then we were faced with the daunting, almost vertical, 400 m ascent up the rock to Tapovan. We reached Tapovan at 2.30 pm and it started to get really cold.

That night I packed myself into the sleep-ing bag wearing almost all my clothes — two T-shirts, an enormously thick parka, thermal in-ners and jeans. Still, I was cold.

When we woke up the next day, we found that the stream close to our camp had frozen. But the sun, when it came out, was so hot that we could walk around in our T-shirts. This was our day of rest. We lazed around, slept in the sun, went for a brief stroll and generally re-laxed. We were overwhelmed by spectacular views of snow-clad paths disappearing allur-ingly into the distance.

The ice-capped peaks of Shivling, Bhagi-rathi and Meru looked down on us with indul-gence, while we looked back in awe.

By around five, it started to snow, so we abandoned the tents and beat a hasty retreat to the deserted shack of a sadhu. The next morn-ing, we breakfasted heartily and set off down-hill. The fresh snow lent a completely different flavour to our return journey from Tapovan. We followed Ustaadji’sfootsteps and found ourselves sinking sometimes knee-deep, quite unexpectedly. We avoided crossing the glacier and crossed the freezing waters of the river in-stead, just below Gaumukh.

We reached Bhojbasa late that afternoon, dog tired, stiff, sore, and starving. The next day was easy—a mere 14-km stroll on a clear path, all downhill. We reached in time for a late but hearty lunch of parathas, before finding a taxi to take us down to Uttarkashi.

It had been a wonderful trek. We had hopped across rocks and boulders as large as cars, made our way over crisp white ice and waded through the soft, deep, silky freshly fallen snow. We had crossed a stream on a bridge made of a couple of logs, walked for miles alongside gushing waters.

It was like heaven on earth, an experience that I won’t forget… ever.