Most Risky Trek – Chadar trek memories

Chadar trek is the most beautiful & the most risky trek i have been to . This is the third part of the Chadar trek blog series, If you missed the first part start reading from here for better context & mind boggling nature. On the third day of chadar trek we moved from Gyalpo / Tsomo Paldar to Tibb Caves. Very scenic & spell binding.

Day 3 | Towards Tibb Caves | 14kms | 7 hrs | 10,550 to 10,760 ft

 From Jan few batches had returned even before reaching Tibb , only a lucky few had reached Tibb who in turn had returned without reaching Nerak. Today few porters had gone ahead early morning to check the stability of the chadar ahead and came back even before any one of us woke up. Super humans. Good news was that chadar was thin at places but the adjacent rock walls were easy to climb to reach the next chadar patch. Overall we were sure to reach Tibb.

We started of in the brilliant morning light.

Sooner we reached a narrow section of Zanskar where it was noticeably colder. I could see chadar from end to end with no river visible. In summers this narrow section would have lot of speedy torrents. But now it just has some speedy porters.

Today i felt there were just too many people on the trail. We had a brilliant start, but the chadar did seem a bit off at places. The ice was not thick enough at places. Dont don’t why the Chadar is not properly formed here as compared to last few years.

May be due to global warming

Or it is supposed to be that way to be charming

Or just too many people walking on this fragile eco system. Its harming

Chadar Paradox

In retrospect i wonder why so many people go to chadar. Cant there be a limit on how many people go here. Why do people like to crowd chadar.

Then I remembered my own example. From the time i saw the pics & videos of chadar I was a man possessed.  I could not think of anything. To consider the point that there would be too many people was just too trivial of a question as compared to this supreme beauty. I had to witness this. The immense beauty was too much of a pull.

This is a gold mine & gold lovers will be come till they find gold here. Chadar is not going to be here forever & every adventure monkey will like to have been a part of it.

Enough philosophy we enjoyed a lot of frozen waterfalls enroute. I moved with different speeds to capture the essence of chadar without too many people crowding it.

Most Risky Trek

After a while the chadar did start to seem a jittery at places. Loose ice to walk on was not a good sign. Soon enough we were walking on submerged chadar. Moments like this make it a highly unpredictable and one of the most risky trek.

Then came a point when the chadar was too thin to be walked upon. We had to cross it by climbing over the not so steep rock walls. Finally some adventure.

ADD VIDEO

There was too much of a traffic jam here. The porters couldn’t wait for such slow moving traffic & had to pass there extra heavy backpacks ahead . Real risky.

The crossing point from other side looked really good.

 After this heightened adrenaline experience everything else seemed like a cake walk. With a good chadar ahead porters were in mood for some fun.

We managed to reach the campsite by 1600 hrs. Because of the traffic snarls today we reached the camps with the super fast porters & helped set up the camps.

At Tibb caves campsite there was neither enough chadar to play football nor any high hills to climb, since they were all almost vertical. Also battery levels were to be preserved for the remaining 4 days meant less photographic options today. Only thing remained to be done was the Great Indian Timepass of playing cards.

I got bored by this and tried my hand at writing a poem for Chadar trek but didn’t quite get the right words flowing. Not quite one with Chadar yet. I moved around the camp observing other enthusiastic photographers having costlier cameras. Bade log.

Dinner was served. It was good. G-Double-O-D

11 unknown people had gelled up pretty good. In tonight’s camp fire since we had  highly spirited girls in our group, we started singing Hindi songs. Bloody hell we Indians even made the French couple sing songs.

The sky was a bit cloudy today. No astro photography tonight. Battery preserving mode.

The day ends. Our team of 11 over enthusiastic trekkers had fallen many times today. I still had zero falls. Small feat for me. Happy mind. Good Night.

END OF PART 3

The next day bought some MIRACLES with it

Zero crowd  on chadar trail

Frozen waterfalls  &  ice bridges

Ice caves & snow leopards

Yak meat & chang (homemade beer)

22kms of walk & homestays

Things just got squared….surreal squared.

Click here to read about the NEXT camp at Nerak 

PARTS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

 

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