Panch Kedar Series: Madhmaheswar

New places make you miss home and you often find yourself in the things-we-used-to-do memory thread. Since I moved to London, my pinings for Gol-Gappas made me try out ready to make golgappas at home and  those for Leh and Madhmaheswar made me make an essential trip to india. There are two schools of thoughts about going to Leh by road-there are some who say it is serious business and some others who say it is very serious. So I couldn’t convince anyone to undertake this 5 days leave +2+2 weekends, which is also touch and go,  along with me. So when Maithani, garhwali-bhula (bro) of the dodital/roopkund fame, pinged me online about his Madhmaheswar plans, I put all my energies in catching this plan. I almost caught the plan by landing in delhi on the friday decided. What I did detrimental to the plan was to go to Bercos. Bercos garden in Noida is the maker and breaker of plans, 3 hours in Bercos and I ended up making another plan with 2 other friends who were my original trekking buddies of yore, VG and SRD. They were hell bent on doing a roopkund kind of trek, without sleeping bags or tent- that was bercos speaking through them. Description of the ordeals I had faced in july last year at Roopkund were to no avail, but I was still prepared in my head to convince them to go to madhmaheswar midway on the drive. Delhi development authority flats lottery came to the rescue, mandating their return by Tuesday. Maithani started for the same destination at 9:30 pm with his bunch of friends on friday and we started 4 hours later.

Road route: Noida-Ghaziabad-Meerut-Mawana-Bijnor-Najibabad-Kotdwar-Pauri-Srinagar-Rudraprayag-Augustmuni-Tilwara-Okhimath-Uniana.

Trek route : Uniana-5-Ransi-6-Gaundhar-2-bantoli-2-Khadara-3-naanu-3-Kunnchatti-2-Madhmaheswar-1.5-BudhaMadhu

By Saturday 1230 afternoon we were close to Tilwara where the traffic was held due to a landslide. Came to know this is when Maithani and his group turned back and went to-no not roopkund- Mussorie. This was going to haunt Maithani till he does madhmaheswar again. We on the other hand were wondering where we would meet maithani and company and what reason would we have for crowding their paradise. We reached unyana by 3:30pm. The last 6-8 kms were very rough, would advise parking the car at okhimath and taking a bus or cab. We started immediately for Ransi on foot without a porter as the track till ransi is easy. Stayed at Bhat hotel overnight. Not much of a hotel etc, but with a view and local food. The village has its own 1000 years old temple of kaleshwari devi.
   

The next day’s walk took us through beautiful waterfalls at gaundhar and confluence of madhuganga with the one coming from kedarnath at bantoli.

Gaundhar, or gondar as the locals pronounce it, is usually the night’s halt if you started from uniana early morning.  The trek till gaundhar was easy to moderate. This below picture is how you would know gaudhar from all trekking guides out there.

But there are more…

After dodital I have had my lessons not to take bath in any tom dick or harry waterfall as it could simply be servicing a village above you. We now depend on properly earmarked water outlets like the one below for drinking water and enjoying a bath. Can you see the neat photography…(wink)

From Ransi we had employed the services of a porter and porters get a bang out of showing you distances by pointing out distant peaks which simply stupefies you and makes you want to turn back. We hadn’t even reached gaundhar when he played that trick on my friends, and started chitchatting with a village neighbour, laughing at our shock. I tried to downplay ofcourse. Note to Porter: Adapt, based on the bangali’s experience. Note to reader: Like I told you, by default you are classed into bangali or foreigner on the himalayas. Interesting note to all: Mr. Uma Prasad Mukherjee wrote a book in bangla about major trek routes in the himalayas in 1967 (? i think) which has led to good livelihood for the garhwal people.

A good thing about this trek is even though it’s a long trek, there are villages evenly spaced throughout and they give you a welcome relief in the form of tea / meals / tasty cucumber with spicy salt even.

Salt being prepared for a cucumber treat-

We got a lot of photo opportunities on the way and made a lot of friends on account of it.

If you can delay your lunch hours, try having it at Nanu at M/s Panwar lodge, it was really good and they even  took care to provide curd raita, a smattering of green chillies and salt added to the appeal. All of us proclaimed this was the best food in the whole of Asia (that impresses them). All of this rest and satisfying lunch at Nanu was taken care of by the steep and very long next 3 kms to kunnchatti. I will rate it moderate-hard. We agreed with satya’s take on it : Both heaven and hell are here on earth.

Heaven at kunnchatti-

After kunnchatti we found ourselves walking in the clouds like in the movies. The background music score was by very loud crickets with unabashed mating calls.

We got to Madhmaheswar by 6:30pm.  Total of 16 kms today. Was much relief to find a decent dhabba hotel and chitchat on tea. Reaching your destination at the end of a tiring day is a very happy feeling. I thought of a happiness bottling plant up here but c’mon, there is no market. I have a few samples if you are interested.

Morning at 6, Vishal and I started for Budha Madhu, the real charm of madhmaheswar (from a trekker’s angle)- if the skies are clear, you see Chaukhamba’s reflection in the three ponds at the budha madhu summit. For reasons beyond me (d’oh! SINS – for example refer line above about the real charm of madhmaheswar, did I know there is 5500 years old temple there, in my defence it is not really 5500 years old), my treks are never blessed with such views so I will just give you what I got.

Not photoshoped (up)… Not Photoshoped (below)

Budha-Madhu is the highest point around and you can see Okhimath, uniana, and other towns around this place. To facilitate this, there is a ladder fixed at the vantage point.

Oh by the way I did get some reflection in the pond. See?

Stairwar to heaven ?

Satya did come after his lazy tea but turned back halfway with good judgement seeing the clouds. Madhmaheswar below from budha madhu

The climb was tough, the descent tougher. After we came down, the skies started clearing up over budha madhu. Perfect!

Since we had to go down all the way and start driving towards delhi the same day, I didn’t bother to go back up and let it be for another trek. The Madhmaheswar temple below (find the story behind it in my previous blog on Tungnath):

Met this shepherd on the way down from madhmaheshwar. Shepherds here have a hard life. Two such shepherds go to the high meadows of Nandi kund for 6 months, tending to hundreds of sheeps belonging to the neighbouring villages, for a rate of 50 rupees per sheep. They live in an open shelter exposed to the elements, taking turns staying up in the nights. It amounts to 25 thousand each at the end of it. Hence it is not profitable to go as a team of 3. A single person would die. 2 is optimum. This year our porter’s dad and an 18 year old boy went up. The porter told us how at times one of them has to come all the way to madhmmaheswar, a distance of 40 kms just because they ran out of matchboxes or their supplies got wet. It is customary to carry matchboxes , bidees (cigarettes), sugar, tea if you happen to go visiting them.

By the time we reached gondar again, it was 2 pm, we had ample time to go down to uniana and drive but our legs wouldn’t agree. It was the strain of budha madhu and the knee breaking downhill to Naanu. We had gone bananas and kept laughing thinking about not being able to get back to Noida at all and people telling us  “jab utar nahi sakta toh chadha kyun” ( translates to biting more than you could chew). Stayed at Gondar for that night at the banks of madhu ganga and talked to the porter at length on the trials and tribulations of a high meadow shepherd. On the way back to delhi, enjoyed sumptous dinner and wine at the Midway resorts between rishikesh and haridwar. Next year leh then ?