Uttarakhand

Corbett and I (Pt.2)

Corbett and I (Pt.2)

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…By now it was already the 27th of October and getting cold and then word came from the headman of Thak that a man from their village was missing…

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Corbett and I

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it is not possible for those who have never lived in the upper reaches of the Himalayas to have any conception of the stranglehold that superstition has on people who inhabit that sparsely populated region…with us we had fifteen of the keenest and the most cheerful hillmen…one of these men, Bala Singh, a Garhwali, had been with me for years….i noticed that Bala Singh was sitting apart near the camp fire with a blanket over his head and shoulders. After breakfast I walked over to him,….Bala Singh saw me coming and made no attempt to greet me, which was very unusual, and to all my questions he returned the one answer — that he was not ill. That day we did our two-mile march in silence…it was quite apparent that whatever had happened to Bala Singh was affecting the other fourteen men, for they were performing their duties without their usual cheerfulness…after a lot of hedging and evasive answers I eventually got Mothi Singh’s story, which, when it came, was short and direct…’while we were sitting round the camp-fire last night and singing… the demon of Trisul entered Bala Singh’s mouth and he swallowed him

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Rising Above the Clouds

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I could see why people rated Lansdowne so highly as a monsoon abode. Not everywhere do clouds come down so low and create an aura as if you were up somewhere in the 10,000 ft ASL range. Truly amazing experience it was. It was what I had made this trip for. To see it rain buckets full in unexplored and unexploited mountains. I had got more than what I wished for. I was in a state of pure euphoria. Riding no longer was a conscious effort on my part. My Bull and I were one with the surroundings.

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