One Little Victory: Part 3 ( Day 3: Sangla, Batseri to Rakcham)

Relaxed, but aching in all sorts of ways after our trek, comfortably seated in our car, we made our way to a village called Chitkul, which was at an altitude of 11,320 feet and situated in a gorgeous valley. However, with all the hype and excitement that went along with the idea of the last village before the Indo-Tibet border when travelling Eastbound, there was nothing much to the village, except for being a tourist spot, or some sort of box to be ticked when visiting the area. Being about 90 kilometres through devastatingly rugged terrain away from the border, one can understand why this village nestled in the lap of serenity is the last publicly accessible point (apart from a few treks in the area).

Once we got over taking photographs and the much-percieved hype (took us all of 10 minutes to re-focus), we hunted around for food and a chilled beer. While we were successful in our endeavour to find food, which consisted of standard local fare (dal, rice, roti, kadhi, and rajma), the beer, unfortunately, was unavailable and was thus replaced by chilled Coke and Limca. Satiated, and ready to kick back and relax, we got back into our vehicle and set off back to the campsite at Sangla. 

This little one hour journey had two fabulous highlights:

The first: The HP state bus drivers behaved like they were meant to test their skills, their vehicles and the roads to the absolute limit. One could argue that this was a different and daily run version of the Great Himalayan Rally when you witnessed first hand how these folks drove. 

Consider this: You're sitting in an Innova, which slows down at sharp turns, stays to the centre of a snaking road, and all in all moves carefully at a moderate pace when on these roads, that are still coming together in that they're a little better than rough mud or gravel tracks. In the opposite direction, hurtling at you, at fairly regular intervals, are mid-sized (from a city person's point of view) public transport buses, wherein the driver is literally pasting this bus through the most efficient racing line on this road, inches away from the edge at some places, a credit card's width off the mountainside at others, with enough speed to warrant someone sitting there with a stopwatch to benchmark each and every journey for a rally stage. To sum it up, you even watch these guys drive with almost surgical precision, with your own heart in your mouth!

The second: Going back to the campsite, meant that we were travelling in the opposite direction from whence we came, but on the opposite side of the river. Only then did we realise that although it wasn't a long trek, the variation in terms of the terrain meant that there was no chance of settling into a rhythm, whether it was uphill, downhill or just walking. For the non-seasoned trekker, it felt like a bit of an achievement. 

Back at camp, there was nothing much to say or do, but just stretch, relax, and talk about the day's events which were all made much better by a few chilled beers, a much much-appreciated cup of fresh coffee, and then, of course, a nice hearty dinner. The latter part of the evening got rather interesting, as a certain Mr Negi, who was the camps outbound activities director, was back from a small trip he had taken some guests on, and we discussed the trek and other nearby attractions in detail, and he said that to truly enjoy Sangla Valley, one must come and spend about 4 or 5 days there at the very least. 

Well-fed, relaxed, and dreading the muscle soreness the next day, we retired to our tents ready to journey on to our next stop, while the moon rose and watched over us in all her serenity, with us not having any idea that this was the last time that we'd see her clearly, for a while.