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By Sam Oppenheim As I mentioned in my previous travelogue, I spent my last week in India in the Himalayas. On a tight budget I skipped from station to station in crowded busses and jeeps, sometimes crushed between 5 people in a 3 person seating space of the jeep, while others rode on the roof and hung on the back and sides of it; it was a zoo. After two days of non-stop travel by these slower means (they stop whenever someone has to get on or off and run at their own slow pace, the engine groaning uphill) I made it to Yamunotri. Yamunotri is the holy village and temple at the source of the Yamuna river. This is such a beautiful setting, it is a cul-de-sac of mountain peaks and over 25 waterfalls all running together in the valley to form the source of the sacred Yamuna River. To get there one arrives at Phul Chatti and then has to hike 7 kilometers (3.3 miles). Hindu pilgrims who are rich, lazy, old, or out of shape may take donkeys. Some even take the less comfortable and less respectable chairs hoisted by 4 men. Some light women and children sometimes ride on the back of a porter, in a precariously placed basket hung from their forehead. I walked with a 20 kilogram (40 pound) hikers' backpack on me, full of heavy camera equipment and cold weather clothes. ![]() After climbing up to 3,600 meters I began to feel some more affects of altitude sickness: difficulty breathing and lightheadedness. Therefore I stopped and took some photographs. Then I meditated for an hour on a rock in the sunshine with a view of 7 waterfalls. The sound of rushing water in the air alongside the beautiful smell of pine trees and spring flowers invigorated my mind and body, so that afterwards I continued uphill. ![]() ![]() Finally, I reached a small ice pack -- like a miniature glacier hanging onto the side of the mountain. The snow was packed tight into ice and if one slipped down it, he would end up at the bottom of a waterfall, smashed upon rocks, if he couldn't stop himself on the icy slide down. Therefore I took two birch limbs from a dead tree at the 4,200 meter tree line, and picked footsteps into the ice with the walking sticks. I therefore created my own safe footprints to climb across the glacier. Then I reached another patch of ice and snow and a huge waterfall. At this point I decided I had gone far enough, and that traveling alone was not the safe thing to do so I sat down and wrote into my journal and read my book. ![]() ![]() Because I had now met others and they were continuing up further, I felt relatively safe continuing up. We scaled the second glacier and drank from the fresh waterfall waters coming down the rock. Above this point the oxygen became more scarce, but we hiked two full kilometers uphill. Our path wove through the brushy, weedy landscape that was all brown and green, the grasses holding the thin soil to the steep mountainside and providing us with easier walking surfaces than rock and glacier. We zig-zagged up a series of 45 switchbacks in about an hour before coming to another change of scenery, the final series of waterfalls, glaciers, mountain rocks, and natural springs. It was here that I rested face first into a pool of fresh, clean, cold mountain spring water. ![]() I drank deeply of the best water I had had in a long time. I filled up all my water bottles and left my backpack at the spring, choosing to continue up the rest of the ascent less encumbered. I had hiked up 8 kilometers, to about 5,000 meters, with a 15-18 kilogram backpack on me, all in the name of 'training' my body to be equipped for camping and hiking with gear. Meanwhile my diet had begun to be quite squirrel-like, for two days and the next 4 more I would eat mostly dried fruits and nuts. At dinner, however, I would often find dal and rice at an ashram. The benefit of this was that I toned up my body, felt great, and lost weight while gaining muscle. It was 1:30pm and we had to turn around soon, but we all wanted to ascend to the top of the peak and pass. We had all begun to feel the affects of the high altitude: deep breaths, soreness of all muscles, and the need to rest after nearly every step. Another sign of altitude sickness is sinus or cheek pressure and headaches, both of which I begun to feel as we hiked even higher. ![]() From these flat slate rocks above 5,400 meters, we lay down on our backs and watched an amazing dance choreography in the clouds which were so close you could touch them. ![]() On the climb back down we all reflected on the amazing experience, we had climbed to a height, by foot, higher than I had flown to and jumped out of an airplane when I skydove. We went above the vegetation line, the flower line, the tree line, the oxygen was so thin my lungs were sore the whole next day, as were all my muscles, but it felt so GOOD! Walking down the hill, at times running, we embraced our lives, our bodies, our oxygen, our soul. All that makes life worth experiencing became vivid to us as the oxygen increased in our bloodstream. We saw quails and birds come back from winter migrations, butterflies playing in newly blossomed flowers on the mountainside. Finally we watched the sunset through the lower levels of a pine forest as we approached Yamunotri. ![]() Somehow I managed to arouse my sore body and talk it into hiking another 7 kilometers downhill at 7am, finding Shekhar waiting for me at his Hotel, we took a detour to a quaint old himalayan village and visited a beautiful old wooden temple in the village. We then bade goodbye to the Yamuna valley and continued via jeep to Uttarkashi. Soon we found our way to Gangotri .... (continued) |