Average Walking Time: 6 to 7 hours
If I were to sit blank and reflect on my self-afflicted passion for the Himalayas, it would be an indulgence in psychological avarice. As the mist kisses bizarre and varied landscapes of the mountains, men and women (in reverse order, for those forcefully liberated) of different hues, seek expression in spending quality time with themselves in the spiritual geography that one otherwise only imagines in dreams. But all this is an extreme form of obsession. Back in the well-built tree-lined concrete avenues of New Delhi, I reflect on the remarkable ugliness of all that man creates under the glorious name of architecture and then proceeds to run away from. And funnily, the frightful speed with which he escapes brands him as an "adventurer." The more petrified a man is of civilisation, the more bizarre the choice of terrain or locale of escape. A morbid terror of civilisation makes mountaineers out of men, sheer fear makes high altitude trekkers and plain fear - campers in the wilderness.
It was my sheer fear of the civilised terror of Lutyen's Delhi that drove me across the Rohtang Pass in the Pir Panjal range through the green and treeless wonder of the high altitude desolateness of Lahul and into the barren moonscapes of enigmatic Spiti. At around 14,500 feet, satiated by the psychological distance from New Delhi, I reached the Chandratal Lake, aptly named as it is, in fact, moon shaped. For theorists who proclaim that in trekking, unlike in other kinds of travel, the journey is itself a destination, Chandratal has a beautifully blatant way of disagreeing. In a sly way, this heavenly place makes it clear what a high point of a trek really means. I have returned to Lutyen's Delhi and even while I drive through the polluted fumes of development, my eyes momentarily close and play back the memory of a path on the green bank of a turbulent river, across the wonder of more than 20 glaciers, myriad clouds that block the trail with an ephemeral quality all their own...and then a mirrored sheen of peace, with more than snow-clad soldiers protectively encircling the magic called Chandratal....
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