Rupin Pass

The sun rays falling on the peaks of mountains far off – your default macbook wallpaper – as the rest of the world remains enveloped in darkness. The summit days of most treks begin in unearthly hours, and the one to Rupin Pass was no different. We woke up at 3.30 am, hustling about our campsite, trying to brush our teeth with water that froze to ice in the jug, or get our snow spikes and gators on right, hands stinging. But this is no place to begin the story.

A travelogue of my 7 day snow trek in the Himalayas

The story begins in a place similar to the cities we call home, to the fast-moving life we are all accustomed to. We reached Rohru, Himachal Pradesh by road after an exhausting 8 hour car ride. We met our trek team that night for dinner, getting to know one another and joking around – unsuspecting of the treacherous path that lay ahead of us.

The next two days were all fun and merry – taking a car ride to the base camp on the first day, and trekking to the village of Jiskun on the second. This village was the home of our trek guides, Anil and Hrithik.

They showed us around proudly, meeting us with the local chieftain and children, and explaining how their innovative buildings helped them adapt to the bleak climate. Their storehouses have a unique insulation mechanism that keeps their pulses from spoiling all year long, and their houses are structured in a way as to allow the village to function normally even when it is 7 feet deep in snow. They prove extremely vital, given their village is cut off during the winter for 4-5 months every year.

The people there have immense trust in each other, with the same locking system used for every building. The system itself is very complicated, making it impossible for any intruder to even attempt opening it without alerting all the neighbouring houses.

The days that followed marked our ascent, and we explored the connection that we, as humans, hold with nature. One activity that we engaged in was at a small clearing in the forest where we were asked to choose a tree each. This tree was assigned as our own and we spent some time exploring it. We could feel its bark, examine the organisms growing in its shade, or simply sit under it and breathe the peaceful atmosphere in.

We did something similar at a river spot too, where we felt the river through all five senses. The sight of the river was delightful and the smells of wet Earth and mossy stones filled the air. And perhaps, if you were lucky, you could find yourself a rock to meditate on, soaking in the sounds that surround you; the water gushing past, churning over the rocky bed, the birds chirping merrily in trees high above. You could let your feet into the water, which may feel chilly at first, but with a soothing effect. And if you were to taste the water, you would cup your hands, draw a tiny pool of crystal clear water in it and down it in a gulp. A water connoisseur, like you, would be sure to notice how different it is from the water they sell back down in cities.

Apart from these, we also connected with the greenery of our trail in a stretch of a kilometer or two, where we walked in complete silence. The agenda was to pick up any one item that we identified with. I took a picture of a bright yellow flower, perhaps a weed, that we had seen growing all over the trek. I loved it because although we were at such a high altitude where other vegetation was growing scarce, these flowers had been with us every step of the way, growing healthily, smiling, cheering us on. My sister had chosen a conifer cone that had shed its seeds, understanding it to be like the negativity she sought to shed from her life.

The campsite we reached after this was by the waterfall. The waterfall was ginormous and had three sections to it. They’re named, uncreatively, Upper Waterfall, Middle Waterfall and Lower Waterfall. The sections are separated by ‘Snow Bridges’, which is essentially a sheet of ice that has frozen over the river. Some parts of these bridges had gaps in them, through which we could see the river underneath, rushing past, leaving streams of bubbles in their wake. In fact, the waterfall is so iconic to the Rupin Pass trail that an image of it was put on the magnet we received on the completion of our trek.

We climbed the steep and tricky paths that ran parallel to the waterfall, seeking the grounds high and beyond. When we finally reached it, we realised that the lands had now turned white – snow white. Without prior experience of trekking in snow, we made our way through the path with caution; slipping now, steadying ourselves then. At one point, we could see our next campsite beyond, but with a sharp descent separating us from it. Clutching on to our trek poles with all our might and walking in zig-zag patterns, we slowly made our way through

That night, we camped at 13,000 ft. To set it in perspective, the peak of my first ever trek was at that height, where we spent maybe an hour. Having gradually acclimatized myself through the journey, I faced no issue with breathing or moving about. The biting cold, however, made it difficult to even think thoughts with clarity.

Desperate to keep our spirits high and find certain warmth in each other’s company, all of us assembled in our common dining tent after freshening up. It proved to be a very helpful decision, for we faced something every trekker dreads – a mini snow storm!

The hard ice came down aggressively on our tent cover, fighting for an inlet. The pole at the center that held the roof up began swaying vehemently, and the pegs holding the tent to the ground threatened to fly away in the unrelenting wind. Everyone on our team jumped into action immediately, some holding the pole steadily in its position, and others holding the sides of the tent down, disallowing the stubborn hail from entering.

Although the storm eventually passed us by, it left us cold and shivering. We slept in tents pitched on snow that night, and the temperature hit subzero levels. The trek leader and guides gave us a pep talk before we retired to our tents, assuring us that with the last stretch ahead of us, it would only get easier for us after crossing the Pass.

That is when it dawned on to me– no matter how terrifying the journey ahead of us was, it was the only way through. Going back down had ceased to be an option long back, but the realisation of it came with fear. It felt like I was stuck there, in a way, between a rock and a hard place. By 8.30, everyone was in deep slumber as I tried letting go of this thought and drift off to sleep.

By 3.30 am, everyone was up and moving about. The cruelest step of getting ready at this hour is changing out of thermals. One should not trek in thermals, for walking generates heat in the body that the thermal then traps in. So before beginning, we changed out of our night clothes, letting go with them the heat that we had generated. We ate our breakfast and then put on our gators and snow spikes.

Gators protect the legs knee-down, in case we step on weak snow and find ourselves two feet underground. The snow spikes allow us to have a certain grip over the snow that we walk on. However, given how tightly it should sit beneath our shoes, we need to wrestle to put them on, especially since our hands tend to hurt more in the cold. We were also given helmets to protect our heads from the loose pieces of rock and ice that fall.

This day of a trek, often known as the summit day, is the longest one, where we touch our maximum altitude and begin our descent. We reached our next campsite by 5 pm, clocking in twelve hours. We carried our lunch in our boxes and ate it on the bank of a stream.

Most of this stretch was over snow that we were now rather accustomed to walking over and crossed plenty of snowbridges. By 9 am or so, we were at the foot of the Pass. It took us more than half an hour to cross these 200 meters, for it was 80° steep. Our guides used their snow axes to make dents in the snow where we could place our feet and heave ourselves up. It was rather humiliating, I admit, to have the dog that followed us from Jiskun to trot beside us effortlessly.

The final view, however, was breathtaking and worth every bit of effort we toiled in to make it there. Picture a large expanse of snow till as far as the eye can see, the rise and fall of mountains in different places, the blue and clear sky. Everyone was beaming with happiness and pride, congratulating one another, close to tears. I made a resolve in that moment; that I would never feel like there is a single thing on the planet that I cannot do. Crossing Rupin Pass that day, we did not just overcome steep trails and snowy terrains – we overcame that mental block in our minds that imposes upon us fake limits.

The next morning everyone wrote postcards – some to themselves, others to people they love. The descent after the Pass felt like cakewalk, chatter and laughter filling the air as we spent time with each other; the people we faced the most daunting of challenges with.

As we reached our final site, most of us had gotten our mobile signals back and it was almost as if we were ready to dive back into the different lives we had all come from.

Almost.

But nothing was the same, ofcourse. We had learned a new perspective, learned of our capabilities, learned of grit and pure determination.

We took back with us a new way of living.