Amarnath & Srirnagar

Amarnath trip:
July 9th 9.30pm: We boarded the Nagercoil-Mumbai express kickstarting our long journey - heading to Dhound junction near Pune, My cousins and their families joined us in Gulburga next morning. Home made lunch in the train was awesome. At Dhound we changed over to Pune-Jammu express. It was a very crowded train with a lots of army personnel travelling un-reserved in reserved compartments, then there were Pilgrims to Vaishovdevi and Amarnath. It was chaotic, we were a big group and largely remained un-effected. The train journey touched 10 states before reaching Jammu on 12th afternoon- a good 6 hours late.

At Jammu we had our guide pick us up and drive us to Srinagar - a 300km bus journey expected to be done in nearly 10 hours. We reached Patnitop (a beautiful hill station) at dusk. Here is where, we got our first taste of J&K - the cops had cordoned off all non-kashmiris from going further, we had to wait till dawn -my god! We were forced to checkin to a hotel - forfeting our hotel booking at Srinagar (what a waste). Early morning - we started to srinagar, we crossed the 2.5km Jawahar tunnel to enter Kashmir. The view was breathtaking. Kashmir was indeed very beautiful - maybe a 100x Ooty. The scenic valley was green - paddy and other crops being grown, lots of Arabic road signs - it looked very different than what you get to see usually in rest of India.

We reached Srinagar and managed to waste a lot of time :-) in getting our Amarnath yatri passes done. We left for Sonmarg in the evening and unfortunately we were yet again stopped by security and had to spend the night in tents. Food was no problem thanks to the Bandhars(langar), otherwise it was no where close to the basic ammenties we upper middle class are used to. Tents were clean but toilets and bathrooms were medevial or maybe pre-historic! Hahahahaha...

14th early morning - we managed to use the aadi-manav facilities and reached Baltal by 8ish, after elobrate security checks and prepartions to start the trek, we hit the dirt by 9.30am. To begin with 13 of us were to trek and 10 of them were to fly by choppers. Even before we could begin the 13 became 8, when 5 of them decided to ride on horse backs instead of testing their stamina. 8 of us - 5 elders and 3 juniors - my mother being the oldest at 63 and youngest being my daughter at 4 - started the trek.

We hired a pittu (porter) to carry Janu (my younger one). Sonu (my elder one) 9 years old - desired to not only trek but wanted to finish first. Yash - my cousin's son - about 12 years old - wished to trek at 2kmph - what a spirit! Aarti - my first cousin - was very committed and was very well prepared. Suraj - her husband and my cousin - was confident of trekking. My mother being a yoga freak was fit for her age to undertake the mission. Shobana & I were very well prepared for the trek and were eagerly looking forward to it.

The total distance is 14km - of which the first 2km is pretty flat, the climb starts then onwards. The first 7 km of climb was very tough, the gradient was pretty steep with few hair-pin bends here and there, the width of the path is at-times 10 feet and at-times less than 3 feet. One side is the mountain and the other side is a deep gorge, a slip most certainly means death, I did spot a dead horse in the deep gorge and also heard from the CRPF men that the average death rate was 1 person per day. However the chants of "jai Bhole" and "Bum Bum Bhole" kept the spirts up. Horses, palanquin (Palki), trekers were all jostling on the passage. Trekking is the safest land transport in my opinion. We did manage to trek together for a while before we got split into two groups. Our pittu was pretty quick, Sonu wanted to keep pace with him and Shobana & I had to be with her - net result - we were ahead of the rest with the lead widening.

Some where before the half way mark - we saw Suraj Bhaya overtaking us riding a horse, he had given up and switched over. We caught up with him shortly at the half mark resting place. He was resting - or was it the horse that was resting carrying a huge Suraj Bhaya...hahahahah...Here is where Sonu decided to switch as well. We relieved the pittu and the two kids rode on one horse. Suraj bhaya and the kids rode away, while we were still recovering. Shortly after the kids left - it rained, the whole trek hardly had any tree or shade to offer cover for rain, there were few Bhandars and make shift tents thats it.

Shobana paniced and worried about the children. She insisted that I run (imagine on a steep mountain) to catch up the kids to ensure their safety in rain. I obliged (as if I had a choice or wanted not to) and ran as fast as I could but the 10-15 Min gap between us - was too much for me to cover. I ran till a point where the road splits into the Pony trail and Pedestrain trail. I gave up running and just crashed on this junction. Few minutes later - I saw Mummy riding on a horse go past me, I waved at her and handed over the children's rain jackets that I was carrying to her.

Few minutes later at 3.50pm Shobana arrived. We made a quick mental calculation


(or assumption) that if we take the pedestrain route we may be able to reach before the children do. This trail had only trekkers, a pleasant change from the mess uptill now. After about a KM, the strech was very dangerous, we had to trek on slippery rocks holding only a rope for support, hop on pebbles & rocks across water falls without tripping, climb down a few rocks to reach what looked like safe ground. The safe stretch lasted for less than half a KM after which we had to trek on ice, this was night marish. One had to be very careful on Ice as it was slippery and a sideways slip will be a long slide in the wrong direction, this was initally very scarry but we did manage to get over this. Ice trekking is defintely slower and even more slower when you are dead tired. We drew energy from the fact that the cave was intermittently visibile from long distance. We could see our destination and proabably the divine forces helped us for the last leg of the trek.

After treeking for nearly 9 hours we reached Amarnath. We reached the gate at 630pm. The security stopped us for carrying a camera - we had to deposit it in shop nearby who charged Rs.100/- for safe keeping. The temple gate to the ice lingam is a steep climb - thankfully the temple had cememt steps - this is the first time since morning that we saw some cement steps. We were dead tired and these relatively easy steps looked herculean. Finally we reached the top, we conquered the trek, we made it. The feeling was ecstatic! We not only got a good darshan of the ice lingam, we were a party to the evening aarthi, we got the darshan of the white piegeon pair and we got more than enough prasad.

We meet some of our folks and it was a big relief to see them all but this was just half of the group in one tent, the other half had apparently arrived and were in some other tent, the kids were in the other half. With no mobile network, no electricity and no means of searching them in about 400 tents - we had to wait till daybreak to reach out to our kids. A million thanks to Santhosh bhaya for venturing out in pitch darkness to confirm that kids are safe and fast asleep. The tents are all laid out on Ice with thermocol and plastics used to insulate the

chillness, there are mattresses on top of this which are moist to the extend of feeling wet. The night was bitterly cold - it would have certainly been under -3 or -4 deg c. We could hardly sleep thro the night.

Aarti Bhabi and her son Yash were the other successful pair to trek, they did take the Pony trail - in retrospect - maybe it was a tad less adventurous but much safer.

Some of our folks - 4 heavy weights - made it till the helipad near the cave but could not trek the 6km between the helipad and cave temple. It was indeed unfortunate for them. Being obsese and old - they could neither ride horses nor did the palanquins dared to carry them.

At day break - we rushed to meet our kids - the kids were safe thanks to my mother and Suraj Bhaya. We accompanied the kids for the darshan and returned down for a langar break fast. At 10am we hired three horses to carry us back to Baltal the base camp. The horse ride back was very scarry but uneventful and it took us 4 hours to get back.

From Baltal we did head to Srinagar to stay in house boats for the next two nights. The house boats, the shikaras and the Dal Lake were all very beautiful - truly paradise on earth. We did a shikara ride the next day in forenoon and afternoon we made it to the 5th Century Shankarcharaya temple - and Mughal gardens build by Shah Jehan in 1600's. Kashimir is indeed very beautiful.

July 17th Saturday - after over a week since we had left home - we were finally home bound, we flew back to Bangalore. Namma Bengluru!