Ascent

Working in and with nature

We were told by a friend that it was mostly samtal (flat land/plains) from the time that he remembered trekking in the area in the early 2000s. This assured us as we prepared for the adventure. Indiahikes.com said it was an easy to moderate trek up the Garhwal Himalayas. Another friend said, “…. you won’t get your morning Americano there, might as well do 10000 ft. back and forth between CR Park and GK2.” Birubhai, a native of Garhwal, and a friend of my partner’s from back in the day, when he used to trek in the area regularly, said “ haan, haan, it’s a good route, we should go.”

So we embarked on the Madmaheshwar trek - I being a complete rookie accompanied by my partner and his friend - the genial Birubhai. My only major experience trekking in recent years was Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Bhutan the year before. We had completed Tiger’s Nest last year taking a couple of hours longer than residents of the area in Bhutan, and were quite proud of ourselves. Knowing fully well that our fitness was not exactly top knotch. But here, we had the most trying and rewarding adventure in our recent lives.

It took us three and a half days to go up to Madmaheshwar starting from Raansi, stopping in upper Bantoli for a night, and up at 11473 ft. at Madmaheshwar for a night. And again, a night at Bantoli on our descent, and finally the last stretch to Raansi on mules (khachchars as they are called). Birubhai mocked us saying, “I have accompanied so many people up and down all these years, No one had to resort to a mule.”

Stomaching indiginities was the least of my troubles, as I was focused on managing my vertigo. I marvelled not at the wonders of high-mountain nature - the only places in India where you can drink water out of a stream or a waterfall - but at the agility and ease of people who called themselves “locals”. The “locals” would say, for instance, “main toh local hoon, do ghante main chadh jaonga.”

I am a local, I can climbd up in two hours. Which they routinely did.

This person - the local - was least affected by the routine bodily calculation of risk that I was engaging in. I was amazed at how risk was yet another membrane inside their bodies. It was a vastly different arrangement where risk spread across their whole bodies, rather than become concentrated in the mind. They were more worried about Forest Department officials (who created trouble by declaring their homesteads and foodstalls and other enterprises to be on Forest Land causing evictions) than the high mountains, landslides, rockfalls, cloudbursts.

Birubhai repeatedly held my hand and told me not to overanalyse the terrain while strategising my next footstep. Just look ahead and put your foot down, he said. Aage dekh, aage dekh. Look ahead, look ahead. As therapists often say to us about the best way we negotiate the vagaries of life. Look ahead, look ahead.

[Don’t rely on the support of railings, said Birubhai. Madmaheshwar, 2025.]

An attitude of measured recklessness as a way of engaging the world full of risk, unravelled before my very salaried, risk-averse self, as I made my way into the mountains. It rained in the last leg of the climb. We pulled out our raincoats. Climbed ever so slowly. Mindful of the 10000ft. drop on our sides, and slippery stone path on which we walked with the possibility of death in our mouths. Faith was not a choice, it was the only option. We arrived just in time for the 7pm arati at the 11473 ft high Madmaheshwar Shiva shrine.