Next morning, I felt particularly lazy. Unless driven to extremes, I am a firm believer in the law of conservation of energy. We broke camp early morning and had a grand breakfast consisting of Muhammad Hussein's special parathas. According to him and the rest, the first two days were good for nothing but trouble. The walk from Kaiser's to Namla is torture for the uninitiated. Boulders move, rattle and fall all around you. Falling is second nature to walking and walking is not part of the routine. We clawed our way through rocks and crevices for seven hours that day. For some, this was the longest they had ever been on a glacier, and for me, the first time. Reaching Namla I secretly did a moral check. Today had been tough and any loss in moral now was going to spell trouble. Moral down? For the Snowlake team? Never. Not one of us had had any problems - though that was farther from the truth than I was from home.
For reasons that are rather obvious, I shall not go into the explanation
that Muhammad Hussein and Ali gave of the first two days. Their description
was in sign language and alluded to metaphors found in human 'basic instincts'
- I'm sure I've made the picture clear. If the porters thought this was
difficult, we were surely in for some rather nasty surprises. The first
of which came in the form of an icefall crossing in the middle of the
glacier. Lower down it was highly unlikely that we would run into sheer
ice walls. Its perhaps more unlikely that humans would be walking this
part of the world, hence their presence is justified or so I comforted
myself. It took us two hours to negotiate those ice walls - we climbed
45 degree inclined and 6-inch wide ice walls creviced on both sides. I
am not ashamed to admit that I was rather taken aback and frightened at
this particular moment in time. I have an aversion to deathly experiences.
Then arises the question of 'why we do this'? If religion centers around
the concept of a God, trekking surely circles around the answer to this
question. Have I found my answer? I think I did. Later.
Following the ice cliffs the terrain got worse. The glacier at this point
was being crushed in a narrow channel and the terrain was churned up.
Rock, ice, slippery, dusty and positively the uninviting surrounded us.
Then, disaster stuck. I was walking 3rd in line to Khurram and Atif. The
next thing that happened I wish I never saw - Atif flying through the
air somersaulting and landing on his knees. Our Russian was down, bad.
A man down in these areas is reason for trouble, for the nearest place
for help is a three-day walk back over the terrain that had injured him.
And even then we get to Askole, not a particularly health conscious place.
We took Atif's weight and distributed it amongst ourselves. There were
still four more hours to go. In the last 30 minutes of the trek he couldn't
walk any more and had to be carried up with the help of the porters to
camp. I was worried about him. But we stuck together. He was put under
Intensive Care, fed fruit and commanded to rest. Mango was a nice campsite
with an ugly view of the moraine. Behind us was Mango Brakk, a magnificent
peak with an ugly looking black glacier flowing down from it. The weather
had turned rotten and it was raining whimsically every half hour.
I have reason to believe that porters are very keen students of human
psychology. Even in my previous treks, I could not help but notice that
these species know how to lead, plod and push people beyond an individual's
capacity of pain, endurance, and suffering, might I add. They take things
one-step at a time, slowly and surely pushing the carrot a step further.
Baintha, according to MH was heaven. Lush green fields, open skies, plenty
of water, the only thing missing in his description were hot springs and
a midnight dance by insanely beautiful fairies. And the best of all amenities,
he promised an easy route to Baintha that would not be more then six hours
long. It took us eight and a half hours with three nervous breakdowns,
two lateral moraines and a stroll in the rain to get to Baintha.
The terrain from Mango to Baintha is better than that from the earlier
portions, as it has patches of ice where walking is easier then boulder
hopping. The moraine on either side, however, is difficult and long. Even
after crossing the moraine on the side where Baintha is located, one has
to walk for a good two hours to get to camp. It was during this last two
hours that most of us went through mental stress. For me, my backpack
began to give trouble. It began to rain and we still had an hour left
for camp. Most of us were suffering from lack of food and exhaustion -
physically perhaps we were all beyond the point of exhaustion but when
the mind gives up, its time to set camp. I had been walking alone for
the past thirty minutes mostly because I wanted to be alone, the knapsack
kept falling off my back and I would have to stop, hammer the harness
back in and lug the backpack on. Neither the rain nor my exhaustion helped
the situation much. For what seemed the twentieth time, it broke again.
Personally I was done for the day. I left my bag, and fell to the ground;
supported by a rock I contemplated possible ways to end my agony. Looking
for a possible place to jump off, I turned around, and saw what was the
most unearthly sight one can imagine. A rainbow so bright, it burnt through
the mist behind me, it was still raining and the wind made low lying clouds
swirl around the peak near me. For a moment, I was numb but then I yanked
out my cameras in the rain and shot more then half a roll of film. I liked
what I saw, most definitely. This one moment I will find hard to forget,
for I waited till it ebbed away before my eyes. When it had gone, it was
time to reach camp.
Baintha was beautiful and we decided to stay put for a day and dry ourselves. We figured that we had crossed rather rough terrain and deserved a day off. We were joined by the Germans the next day who roasted a lamb and offered us none. Hassan and myself spent good time shooting the area around Baintha, but the weather wasn't particularly conducive to good shots. If nothing else the rest day gave us time to regroup and look forward to Snowlake, glimpses of which we could start to see now. Right down the alley. Bajwa decided to get ill at this point in time. The usual chirps of this particular trek member were no longer heard, instead he took refuge in his tent and had the rest of worried about his mental as well as physical state. Rizwan having perhaps a more human digestive system was not able to wash down the silt we had been drinking so far and was going thru a mutiny within his system. The mutiny turned worse as his condition became serious.
The target was to double stage to Karfogoro, the terrain had become friendlier
and it seemed that we could push it. Just as we left Baintha, it began
to rain again. At this altitude, it doesn't rain and it doesn't pour.
It snows. Ice flakes, smaller then snowflakes began to fall from the sky
and I felt my beard freezing. A new and tingly sensation that left me
thoroughly disgruntled. The walking was easier with occasional crevices
to jump over, but perhaps we had not gotten over the stress from the days
earlier. We made it half way to Marfogoro in about four hours. It was
here that we were expecting the rest of our porters, rather all of our
porters except for MH, to be present with welcoming cups of tea. Nothing
was in sight. Not even footprints.
I was in the mood for running over to Karfogoro. A selfish and impatient feeling that I had was overruled by the rest in favor of Rizwan's health, and the approximate distance to Karfogoro, which was nowhere in sight. We had been carrying our tents but the porters had our food. Assuming that the porters would be somewhere around us, MH went looking for them while we moved into the side of the glacier towards Marfogoro. Our tents were up in 30 minutes followed by the last of the dates Khurram kept handy with him. We sat around in one tent, as was the norm before dinner, and chatted about whatever came to mind. Which was one of three things: food, drink and biology. It's a guy thing. Hasan doesn't like rain. I have reason to believe that for I found him sitting outside his tent reading the alpine guide to trekking, camped halfway up the Biafo. I would rather have written a guide and here was this person reading one. It must be the walk in the rain I thought to myself and yelled at him to come over. Having him in a tent is not the easiest thing to do. 'Make room' has a new definition all together. The six of us back in the tent, MH came back with good news and bad news. The good news was that the Germans had a doctor (the only thing missing with them was satellite television) and the bad news was that we didn't have food. The porters were nowhere to be found. We assumed that they had gone to Karfogoro. I was worried about them. They were supposed to meet us here, and more so because even if they did reach Karfogoro, the stove was with us. The dilemma was soon overcome by Rizwan's newfound hope of living a healthy life once again. The German's magic tablets locally known as 'emodium' did wonders to the rebellion inside his gastronomical tract. Soon enough we heard his resounding chirps.
I retreated to my tent after spending an hour inside Khurram and Bajwa's.
I was feeling rather hungry and very uncomfortable with the thought of
not having anything to eat. Kami felt the same, and I figured the best
way to make it through was to sleep it off. I took one tablet of Actifed,
and washed it down with ORS in the hope that it would put me to sleep.
It did, but soon after I was woken up by a whiff of what smelled like
food. I have never seen a sight so pleasing in my life as that of MH squatting
outside our tent silhouetted by a torch light and smoke rising from one
inviting plate of daal and two chapatis in the other. I greedily snatched
dinner from him, mumbled thanks and ate like a possessed man. The chapati
was gone before it could have contemplated its existence and I scraped
the last morsels of daal with biscuits. We ate in complete silence. I
slept feeling better, all set to tame this trek the next day.
We left Marfogoro a little late. Didn't have much breakfast except for
a cup of tea but we knew the walk from here on was going to be easier.
The flat, white glacier seemed inviting and the hope of catching a glimpse
of Snowlake made it more so. Crevices were much common on this part of
the glacier, contrary to expectations. We had to walk in a zigzag pattern
for what seemed like hours, but in the end Karforgoro finally came to.
A rock fall on the lip of the Snowlake basin boasts a name for itself
known as Karfogoro. The two camping parties were hard pressed to find
space here, and most of the tents were pitched on boulders. The best part
however was that our porters were safe and had been looking forward to
our coming. As soon as we got there the fires were ignited and the evening
rituals started. The weather was very overcast, gloomy, and rather cold.
We decided this was time for a feast. Soup, nihari, chapatis and coffee
were put on the menu. There has probably never been a more satisfying
meal on a trek than that particular one, squatting inside a cramped makeshift
kitchen with our nose stuck inside cans of nihari. It was splendid. It
began to snow as soon as we finished our meals and Hasan's tent being
the only one that did not involve climbing up to it, was ours for the
taking. Musing about the weather and if the next day's Snowlake crossing
would be possible, we talked to the German's guide who advised us that
both of our parties could leave together. It would be safer crossing Snowlake
that way, but we would have to leave at, 0330 lest the snow becomes soft.
We called it a day early, but none of us slept.