Continued...
The above is a picture of the stupa at Sinchu la pass where we were spending the night (albeit clicked in winter). Imagine this place, without the snow and ice.
When you are a bearded guy, you know the pain of a wet moustache - it keeps going into your mouth. That was what was happening with me in that rain and how much ever I tried to get that one pesky strand of moustache hair out of my mouth, I could not. So I ask Lucky sitting beside me to take a look as to why my moustache was stuck to my lips. She takes one good look at my lips, and shrieks, "Leeeeeeeeeeeeecchhhhhh!"
The first ever leech that I get on my body, is on my lips. Dayyum! I asked her to pluck it out, but she couldn't. She was shivering, what with the cold, the rain, and the shock of a leech on my lips, shivering tho hona hi tha! I turn around to face Pavan and Sagar on the other side. The same shriek from Pavan, but he actually was trying to pull it out. I closed my nose and mouth tightly so that the leech would not go inside of me, and Pavan and Sagar try plucking it out from my lips.
Imagine this - all of us sitting under a tarpaulin at a Himalayan pass when it is raining and is frigging cold, and Pavan trying to pry the leech off of my face and me holding my nose closed. That is one for the ages. Finally the leech comes off along with a good chunk of my skin and I start bleeding profusely.
The rain was showing no signs of relenting and we were getting more and more drenched. The mercury fell to 4 degree C and Sagar was shivering so violently that we could hear his bones rattling. That was when we made a choice that would eventually save us from freezing to death on the pass. We decided to head back to the labour camp that we passed on our way.
It was pitch dark, and we only had 3 torches (flashlights for the American Englishmen ;) ) for the of us. The trek downhill was very slow. What took us 15 minutes to ascend, took us close to 40 minutes to descend as we were being very cautious so as to not get lost at that time of the day, what with bears in the vicinity. Pavan was leading the way down, and I was the last guy, trailing the group. Sagar was walking in front of me without any torch and it was my job to shine light unto his path!
When you are in such a situation, your mind starts playing tricks with you, and you need to realise what is actually real, what are imagination. All this while, I keep hearing sounds behind me and I was scared to death just waiting for the beast behind me to throw a paw and my misery over this Earth. Yeah, yeah that was too melodramatic, I get it, but you get the gist of the situation we were in.
By the time we reached the labour camp, everybody in the camp were sound asleep. We made our way soaked to the teeth to the kitchen area in the camp which was the only open space with a roof over it. We sat under the roof wondering how we were going to spend the night, mind you, it was only 1900 and we had 12 hours of coping to do. That was when we were introduced to the helping nature of people.
The very same people we were hesitant to spend the night with, woke up and came to us, realising the peril we were in, begin chopping up dry stored firewood and kindled a campfire for us to dry off.
It took us an hour to change into dry clothes (experience teaches you to pack clothes in plastic polythene bags to keep them dry) and warm up a little. Five of us, huddled around a campfire sitting on small blocks of wood to keep our asses off the cold ground, and as if we were not in enough trouble already, it starts to pour like somebody has cut open the bowels of the sky and dumped its load over us. Water started to flow through the kitchen area wetting our fire and dozing out its flames. We spent two hours in that position trying to stay warm and dry but to no avail, when the second time we were treated to the helpfulness and hospitality of the local people, who wake up and invite us into their tents to sleep.
The tents did not have enough place so we had to split up, Bose, Pavan and I went into one tent and Sagar and Lucky into another. As soon as we went into their dry tent, Bose and I unwrap our sleeping bags and cozy up and try to catch some sleep when all of a sudden the 15 labourers that we share our tent with, wake up and turn 180 degrees just because their feet were pointed at us. We were amazed by this gesture and were reintroduced to what it meant to be human and to care towards our fellow humans.
It would not be exaggerating if I'd say that we were reintroduced to humanity that day.
I slept cozily in my army sleeping bag and by the time I opened my eyes, the night has passed. I wake up to a choice - continue the trek, or return.
To be continued...
