Nostalgia times: An unplanned “Trekking” experience of long time back

Most of us have hectic lives. We work, travel, attend to our official and family tasks. We eat, drink and then back to the endless tasks.
Yet, in our lives, we do have times which were not so boring or tiresome.
Times- weeks or days, or even a few hours.
It could be reunion with an old friend.
Or some good moments with our spouse or kids.
Or our parents.

I will talk about an unplanned “trekking” experience I had alongwith two of my friends.

Background

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Why I call it unplanned and why trekking in double quotes.
Well to understand it, here was the scenario:

It was year 2001. I was posted in Dharamshala, a hilly city in Dhauladhar range of Himalayas, and in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
I was staying with one of my colleagues at a paying guest(PG) accommodation for two months.
One of our colleagues who was posted in a nearby city came for a weekend.

On one of the Saturdays, we decided to visit a neighboring town called McLeodganj which has a very famous monastery and is frequently visited by Dalai Lama.

The journey to McLeodganj
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We were with just a few water bottles, and reached McLeodganj by around 11:30 A.M.
It was a warm August day, and it had rained a few days back, but rains looked less likely.
We had a visit to the Monastery and then had some good breakfast plus lunch kind of stuff!
I recall that there were a variety of restaurants and eating joints in McLeodganj.
After this we just started roaming.

The “Trek” begins
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The fun part began. We saw a path deviating from road, from where some people were coming. It was a bit steep but manageable. We became excited to see what was there.
We climbed and found a bakery shop there. I do not recall if we ate anything there, but we might have had some tea.
Then we proceeded. We walked, walked and walked.
But hey what is it?

We had been walking in a semi-circle for almost 10 minutes but that path with heavy vegetation and a lot of trees did not seem to end.
It was a bit frightening.
We turned back.

Then, we climbed a bit again. We walked and walked.
We saw a temple at a descent and visited there.

The desolated path
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Interestingly, we were not tied. May be, we were at a height and weather was great. We did not feel hot or cold.
We climbed and started walking on rocky terrain. It was not a very narrow path, but it started narrowing a bit.
We walked almost 10 to 15 minutes and nobody else seemed to be walking there.
I and one more of my friend was wearing leather shoes. The third one was better in sports shoes.
We were joking “what if a bear or a leopard came there?”
We teased and joked each other.

Now, we were without any water left, and no torch or matchsticks either.
Yet we were probably so excited that we did not feel any fear.

The end of Trek
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Now, I do not recall how much time we walked. But after perhaps 45 minutes or 1 hour, we saw a path taking towards a small lake, and some marketplace around it. There were some nomads with goats and tents nearby.
We slid down a gravely path with some difficulty.

Finally, we reached a marketplace.
We were famished and hot pakodas(Fried dumplings made from fine flour and masalas) and tea did us quite good.

The best part was when we came to know after a few days from a few locals that that path as “sometimes” visited by a few wild animals like Leopard!
Now, we realized that we had indeed crossed quite a dangerous forest area.
We had not preparation as well.
If it had started raining or if it had become dark, we would have been into a sort of trouble.

Anyways, not everyone has such experience, and I do remember that day till now.

Image Source:

https://pixabay.com/en/ama-dablam-himalaya-mountain-peak-2064522/

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