Maldaru Lake Trek Part 1

Hey guys,  happy Diwali! (Festival of lights)

If you don't know, I was in on a week long  hike last week to a high altitude lake called Maldaru Lake, which  is 4200m above sea level. It was amazing and was one of my best weeks here. I'm going to write a summary of each day but if you want more info about anything just ask,  I'll be very happy to talk about it.The first paragraph for each day will be what we did, and the second will be my thoughts on the day and any other things I wanted to mention.

DAY 1 Friday 10th October

It was a 5am wake up today as we had a 8 hour long  bus ride to look forward to.  The bus ride was 8 hours of misery due to the bumpy roads and not being  able to get any sleep. The seats weren't very comfy and it felt like the trip was forever.  Finally we got to a town called Sankri. Here we stayed the first night at a reasonably good hotel,  well for India that is.  I was feeling pretty sick this day,  I had a really sore throat,  my nose was running like a tap and I just felt out of it and tired.  As soon as we got to Sankri I slept until dinner which  was rice and dahl , my favourite :p.  At least it was slightly better then the schools rice and dahl which  tastes like concrete.

 

The leaders for our trek were Mr Conrad, who usually takes me on all my treks and Mr Shantanu. Mr Shantanu works for hanifl centre as well as an outdoor education company called NOLS. He was pretty cool and has convinced me to do a NOLS course after school. 

DAY 2
Today we woke up at 7 to try be in Jeeps by 8. We had to take a 40 Min Jeep ride to a town called Taluka. Here we met our guides Tikum and Bhagat. They both didn't know English well but as long as they got us to our camp sites I was happy. We also met our Porters here,  the Porters are the people who carried all our food and cooking supplies.  None of them spoke English and I don't think they were encouraged to communicate with us so we didn't have too much to do with them. We walked about 5 hours today, the first hour was relatively flat but got really steep about half way through the day as we climbed up the ridge. It levelled out after that as we passed through small villager's. It was cool looking up the valley and seeing the snow peaks. This was my first good view of the snow peaks and they were as good as I expected. They were so mesmerising and epic, it won't be a moment I forget soon. The first campsite was alright, it was in a little clearing/meadow and there were some alright views. That night we just stayed around the campfire keeping warm while eating dinner (rice and dahl was every night from now on). 

My group was all grade 11 boys, 12 of us all together. For good friends I had Cory and Isaac and the three of us shared a tent together. I knew all the other boys in the group some a bit more then other's but it was great to really get to know a few more boys better. I've never really talked about Cory and Isaac to much in this blog so ill give you a little run down on them. Cory is a incredibly smart kid from Washington state in the U.S. He has a+ in all he's subjects and is steadily on track for doing medicine at Harvard. The fascinating thing about Cory is that he also has a very big heart for the outdoor's. He is an avid rock-climber, bike rider, hiker and a lot of other things and always has a good story up he's sleeve. Isaac was the very first friend I made here, he's from Georgia in U.S. and is a bundle of laughs and joy. He's into video  game's like league of legend's, but since coming over to India he's grown to enjoy the outdoor's a lot more. He is in the cross country team at school, plays the saxophone and piano and love's his american foods. Both Cory and Isaac are new to Woodstock so the three of us, along with a kid named Emmett who is also new have faced all of our challenges together and it's made the fitting in experience for me relatively easy. They have become my family since we do literally everything together and it's gonna be hard to say by to them in a few months.

Conrad looking where we're going

DAY 3
My Birthday!! Wooo. First gift of the day, fresh, steaming hot chai brought ride to the tent at 6:30am by the porter's. This brought a big smile to my face as the three of us sipped our super hot chai all huddled in our sleeping bags.  The boy's wished me happy birthday and then we started to pack our bags and take down the tent. It was a pretty chilly morning around 3-4 degrees. Every morning this week was as, I like to call it 'Operation Campfire'. You pack your bag, take down the tent and run to the campfire for warmth as quickly as possible. We would have breakfast shortly after then start on the walk. Today wasn't set out to be too challenging of a walking day. There was a fair bit of uphill in the early morning then relatively flat. We spent lunch in this amazing meadow that was huge! There was a view of snow peaks spanning 180 degrees and the weather was beautiful, not a cloud in the sky, what a birthday treat!  After spending an hour for lunch we continued on a short hour long walk to our second campsite. Once again we set up camp and since we had a few hours to kill till dinner Cory and Isaac decided to set up there hammocks between 3 trees. It was a great afternoon just chilling in the nice weather having a deep conversation with Cory and Isaac. Dinner came around and the sun started to set. We had a very nice campfire set up that provided heat for many hour's of laughs. Just before bed we all looked up at the stars, and oh boy they were beautiful. The milky way actually looked like milk and shooting stars were everywhere. It was quite a touching moment because Isaac had never seen shooting star before that night and he went berserk when he finally saw one. Cory and Isaac ended up sleeping outside in the hammocks that night so I had the tent to myself. I spent a few minutes reflecting on the day and then went to sleep.

What a way to spend a 16th birthday! My whole outlook for the day was that I am gonna have 80+ birthdays in my life, might as well spend one of them in the himalaya's trekking with good mates. I did feel a bit more homesick then usual this day. If I didn't come to India I would probably be going for my L's test and lounging around at home. But I'm grateful I get to spend it over here. I'm learning and experiencing new things everyday and I wouldn't give that in for any amount of Xbox's or nice clothes. 

Cory and Isaac's hammocks

DAY 4
Once again I woke to the porter's yelling 'Chai!' and banging on my tent. With no Cory and Isaac I got packed up quickly and checked on how the boy's in the hammock went. Somehow they survived and it appeared that they enjoyed it. The following 'Operation Campfire' followed and before we knew it we were off walking again. Today was once again all uphill. We reached some really nice open area's that took our breathes away and it was an enjoyable walk. We reached camp around 2 o'clock. This campsite was easily the best. It was on a little bit of flat land between two hills and had a beautiful little creek running through the middle. That afternoon a small group of boys, Mr Conrad, Mr Shantanu and I decided to go on a little exploration and climb up to the top of the ridge. It took as an hour of steep uphill walking but eventually we got to the top and the views were spectacular. Mountain ranges spanned as far as you could see and Mr Conrad reckoned we could see Tibet. Up on the ridge we saw our first bit of snow for the trip, just tiny bits under rocks but it was cool. We slowly made our way back down back to camp in time for dinner. We were all pretty tired and there was only a little campfire (no more tree's at this altitude) so sleep quickly followed dinner, oh and only if we knew how much we needed that sleep...

Cory on the ridge

Looking back at the campsite from the ridge

Stay Well,
Lachy Wild

Nag Tibba trek. 6th of October

Hey Guy's,

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to go on a hike to a mountain called Nag Tibba.  My hiking teacher/leader person, Mr Conrad, emailed me on Monday asking if I would like to go on a hike leaving Thursday morning  and coming back Saturday night.  It was short notice but I managed to negotiate my way out of a dentist appointment I had on the Friday so luckily I was able to go.  So Cory,  Isaac,  Emmett, 3 girls,  my climbing instructor Titu,  my hiking leader Mr Conrad and I left early Thursday morning.  The Wednesday before we had packed our gear food so we could leave early.  I had to get up at 6:00 so I could reach Hanifl centre by 7. Hanifl centre is the outdoor education hub for the town of Mussoorie and is a branch of Woodstock school it's about a 1km walk from school. Here we started our trek by jumping into Jeeps and riding for 2 and a bit hours.  The ride was beautiful. 

Nag Tibba peak on the left

Woodstock and Hanifl centre do about 4 trips to Nag Tibba every year but this time it was a bit special. We were doing a route that had not been attempted since 2008. It was more challenging then the normal route Woodstock take and requires 15 km of uphill climbing and a walk along a ridge.  They hadn't done the route in 6 years because last time they  attempted it it proved too much of a challenge and people had to be carried up the hill.  Luckily, no one had to be carried up this time around. 

The first day was by far the most difficult day.  The climb pushed all us to our limits but it was incredibly satisfactory when we got to base camp 700m short of the summit.  On the first day we climbed 1200m high.  Base camp was a cleaning  on the side of the ridge just before the peak.  There was a bungalow there designed for hikers,  but over the years it has been turned into a landfill and not even close to liveable.  So we set up our tents and prepared dinner,  which was mac and cheese.  It was so good but unfortunately there wasn't enough for seconds.  We were all really tired for the big day of walking so we ask fell asleep by 8 o'clock. 

The base camp with Bungalow

The next morning we woke up to the sound of boiling water as Titu was making chai. Titu is one of the coolest people I've ever met.  He's been working at Hanifl centre for 10 years or something and knows so much about this area.  Legend has it that when he was 12 he walked from the centre of Mussoorie all the way to Nag Tibba in one day. He's such a chill guy and is great to talk to about anything outdoors because he pretty much knows everything. So Titu was making chai tea for us all and it was so good.  We then made pancakes for breakfast which were pretty good,  but if you've ever made pancakes while camping you know how much of a pain it is to clean the  pans.  I was scrubbing for a good 15 minutes to get all the burnt pieces of pancake off the saucepan. 

At about 11 o'clock we packed day packs and climbed to 3000m,  the summit of Nag Tibba.  It wasn't too hard of a walk,  and  took us about an hour.  When we got to the top we were all really happy with what we had accomplished.  It was unfortunately a really cloudy day so we couldn't see the snow peak Himalayas or anything else really.  I still haven't seen the snow peaks but I'll just have to wait for the activity week this friday because we're pretty much going into them. 

Group photo at summit

So we climbed back down to base camp and packed up our gear.  We had to walk another 8 km to our next camp sites.  It was all downhill but that did not mean it was easier.  Every step I took I had to take with extreme caution because it was so easy to fall. I rolled my ankle like 30 times and my knees were acking afterwards.  But it was all worth it because our next camp was in a super beautiful area.  I'll just let the photos tell you how beautiful it was.

We had a few hours before dinner to spare so the 4 of us boys just sat in our tent and had probably the funniest conversation I've ever had here.  It was non stop laughing for a hour and a half,  good memories were definitely made. 

The boys from a local house where we got water. We gave them some peanuts in return

That night we had some Indian dish I don't know the name of.  It was a rice based dish that had curry of some sort.  It was damn tasty and luckily the other boys didn't like it so I got to eat as much as I wanted.

That night the boys stayed up till nearly 11 talking about whatever.  I woke myself up at 5:30 in the morning to try see the sunrise.  There wasn't really a sunrise,  the sky only got slowly brighter because it was cloudy but it still gave me an opportunity to just think.

It was great being alone on the hillside. For once I felt like I was by myself.  Something very rare for being in a country with a population of over a billion. There was a silence at that time that was mesmerising. There was still plenty of noise provided by dogs and a nearby stream but it felt absolutely quiet.  It was so quiet I heard my thoughts echo off the surrounding mountains and harmonising with the beauty of nature.  For a few minutes I escaped all the school work,  all the homesickness and truly felt like someone had closed all the open applications that had slowed me down. 

The next morning we had a quick 20 minutes walk to the nearest town and waited for our Jeeps.  This Jeep ride was not as pleasant as the first. It was going pretty well until we hit kampa falls. This is the big tourist town and because it was a long  weekend the place was packed.  There is another road that dissent go through the town but when there's a long  weekend or holiday the local business men destroy the road so cars can only go through the town, thus generating more business for them.  It took us 2 hours to travel 3 km and it was absolute hell.  We weren't allowed to leave the vehicle and walk the rest of the way so we had to sit there and try amuse ourselves

. 

Isaac being annoyed with having to wait for the Jeep's

The traffic

Typical indian car, looks so much fun

Finally we got back to school at 6 o'clock.  It was such a great trip.  Definitely one of the best things I've done . By the way I wrote this all while waiting for the dentist,  bloody Indian hospitals. Here's a link to the rest of the photo's. I took over 400 so I had to cut down alot https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hekk4au7vh97ez1/AAC_a2-M1IZ0xKXJKEtjCE9Ea?dl=0 . Also there will be no blog next monday cause I'm on activity week.

Stay Well,
Lachy Wild