Hike in the Himalayas

This weekend, we had our quarter break. In the middle of each semester, we have a four day weekend to give the students and teachers an extended break from each other. Rather than simply lounging at home this break, we decided to make the most of it with a trek into the Himalayas. The starting point of our trip was a small village called Hanuman Chatti. We left as soon as school got done one Wednesday afternoon with our friends Nate and Joie and camped outside of the government guesthouse. Not exactly roughing it with a toilet nearby, but it was a good warmup.

The actual trekking started the next morning when we started up a donkey path toward the village of Khandola about ten kilometers up the hill. We saw lots of farmers digging up potatoes, large fields of chaulai (amaranthus), and plenty of cows.

The one constant was that the trail kept going up.

We passed a couple of small villages en route to Khandola and our first camp site. The shot below was taken just before we stopped for the day. We had started way down in the valley where the Hanumanganga River met the Yamuna River.

These fields were just above Khandola and just below our first camp site.

We found a nice comfortable cow pasture to set up our tents for the first night. The cows didn't seem to mind that we had invaded their territory and seemed to ignore us for the most part.

We had a bit of rain the first night that drove us into our tents early, so we had peanut butter and jelly for dinner. In the morning, we got the stove humming and made some Indian-style Malt-O-Meal to get our insides warmed up.

After starting back up the trail we shortly got a view of Banderpunch. This is the big mountain that we can see from the top of the hill in Mussoorie. It was nice to be able to see it a lot closer up than usual.

We had a really strenous climb up some slippery rocks later on Friday morning and finally reached a stream that was flowing clear and cold. We filled up our water bottles and made good use of the Steri-Pen that we bought before moving to India. This uses ultra-violet light to kills all the bacteria and other troublemakers in the water.

Our second campsite was very close to the top of the hill at a place called Sima. We fired up the stove again and made some Wai-Wai (Indian ramen noodles) for lunch and dinner.

At our second site, we got up close and personal and personal with the cows again.

After several failed attempts, we finally got a fire going (pay no attention to the can of fuel in the background) and warmed up our cold feet and hands.

Our third night in tents was extra nice because of the view that we woke up to. By the time we reached the top of the hill, the clouds had rolled in and we could no longer see Banderpunch. In the morning, though, this was the sight that greeted us from our tent.

Beth and Joie made a left their packs at the campsite and made a last push to the top to get some great pictures in the morning light. Dave and Nate stayed at camp and relaxed. Everyone was happy with the choices that they made.

The two of us posed for a nice picture in front of the mountains before the 18 kilometer trek going down 1,100 meters back to Hanuman Chatti.

After walking up ten hours over the course of two days, it was nice to have gravity on our side on the final day. It took us about 5 hours to make our way back down including some nice breaks for lunch and snacks. When we got to the bottom of the valley we found our taxi driver and got started on the six hour drive back to Mussoorie. After a shower, we went to bed and have been recovering for the last few hours. We're sore and tired, but we had a great time trekking in the Himalayas with our good friends. Unfortunately, we now have to return to school tomorrow and subject ourselves to parent/teacher conferences. If you want to see a couple more pictures of our trip, you can visit our website.

Dave and Beth