"It's always further than it looks.
It's always taller than it looks.
And it's always harder than it looks."
- The 3 rules of mountaineering
After a bit of fresh shy, the dawn gifted us clouds, and there, one surmised, the road to good luck ends for the day as a shutter-less existence begins… to be fair though, the rain holds on for quite a bit though…
One had thought rock hopping would be the first rigmarole of the day, it turned out the snow had a chilling, unrelenting white water in mind; another scruff up and down for a dry solution… and one does manage halfway before the dead end… the customary groans as the camera is repacked, the shoes are unlaced and another foray into that numb, icy slipperiness…
Five minutes of the chill later, the other bank smiles sheepishly, like a naughty young kid wanting to make friends with a prank, and the ascent that beckons next turns out to be a hour of unrelenting crawl… Vishansar lies on the left though as a constant soothe… and the twittering avian divas fill in for the mirage, albeit sonic…
The climb ends for a while at Kishansar lake, the lake smaller but colder and muddier than its counterpart down below, still hijacked by the glacial chunks playing rowdy on the surface, peeping askance over their shoulders for a better view of the road down below… but these valleys of Kashmir are immense, and the first glimpse usually the first faux pas…
From there it is the top of the ridge that beckons… an eternity up if one looks up stationary, another one of those daily ordeals if one keeps moving… for ascent is never the tough part as anyone would tell you… one would rather say it is the easiest of the lot if it can be managed on feet alone…
The mountain hides numerous folds, and one pants up swift rather amusingly as the backdrop starts turning away to glory, the twin lakes embedded in their turquoise stillness at the foot of the brown and green massif…
The top of the ridge lands one on to another sheet of white sloping down the next deep valley… Gadsar pass, as one stands on it, would be the highest point on the trek, run the whispers…
A marmot holds together a group of photographers enticed at the top, but one is not given any luxury of time as the chubby squirrel ducks under the rocky mass quick, and one sits and hopes on the twin jewels down below, now a remnant of the valley past…
If Nichnai glacier was a test, Gadsar was a step ahead, no ascents or flats, the descent twisting sharply in all of that slippery iciness, as the marmot peeped out from the top, unable to hide his curiosity… one wonders how the mules would make it on feet numbering four, when the slope seems fatal enough for two…
The glacier finally trickles into the now so welcome slush, before the next couple of hours are spent in battling a dozen ice bridges, slopes nearing seventy degrees punctuated by stale stony ice, all leading up that crystal blue hypothermia a couple of hundred feet below… Yamsar and another smaller lake give a brief appearance before the slopes let one look no farther than the two dicey steps ahead…
Amidst the jamboree of snow and slush, Gadsar gives a precise idea of the immensity of these valleys, meadows punched with the yellows and the blues grace one side of the lake, almost similar in size to Vishansar, and chunks of glacier dropping in from the massif on the other side urge one to keep moving… finally the rain waiver is lifted and one wades through the meadow wrapped in polythene of all shapes and sizes… the ideas of camping near the lake now seemingly too dangerous with the hydrous all around…
The sun never comes back but the rain relents… and the meadows, washed in green, wind down to the first army camp, a shortcut is attempted and a canine at the other end chills the disposition with his, well, aggressive display of the dental… and it is only the fear of a dog bite in the middle of nowhere that keeps the fear of the dog itself away, staring unceasingly at the pointless growls…
The permits are checked and one sways down further down the valley, camping near the gurgles emancipating from the lake above, now hidden in these innumerable folds of green and purple and yellow and blue, some blessed patches of blue come up to the sky as the wind dries away rest of the clothing and twilight…