I have set an MP3 file as an alarm on my smartphone. The lines 'Paramatma Paramanu Roopa Shri Thiru Venkatagiri Deva' from the Annamacharya song 'Sriman Narayana' sung by M.S. Subbulakshmi is my morning alarm. This way, I get to hear His name first thing in the morning.
At 5 AM, this alarm woke us up (and will be doing so for the next 14 days for myself and whoever would be my roommate/tentmate/campmate, till the trek gets over!) Getting a morning tea/coffee in this hotel immediately after getting up was out of the question. So, we completed our morning chores, had a bath—not sure when we would get our next, packed, and reached the reporting area located just opposite Hotel Shiva Vilas by 6 AM. Swamy confirmed he and his better half would be reaching in the next 5 minutes.
The vehicle whose specifications had been sent by the trekking company had reached the location. The driver of the vehicle, introducing himself as Uday Singh, helped us load our luggage in the 12-seater vehicle. This vehicle was to be our mode of transportation for the next 12/14 days.
The four of us, Ramesh, Vaidy, Vishagan, and myself, located a tea stall and ordered tea for ourselves. When we were having our morning cuppa, a distinguished-looking gentleman inquired whether we belonged to the Panch Kedar trek group and introduced himself as Ashis Pal from Kolkata. We had interacted with Ashis in the WhatsApp group created by the company for facilitating coordination and communication among trekkers and company officials for this trek.
Ashis Pal (whom we promptly started calling Dada after realizing that he was the seniormost member of the group) gelled well with the group immediately. Another lean youngster wearing the trekking company's T-shirt introduced himself as Anup, who was to be the trek leader for this batch. Before starting the journey, Anup suggested we have breakfast. A heavy breakfast of parathas for everyone followed.
We boarded the bus, and as Uday started the bus, group members chanted a loud 'Ganpati Bappa Morya!' And with this prayer to Ganesha, our trek had officially started.
The drive from Rishikesh to our next destination, Pipalkoti, was around 220 km, and it was estimated that the drive would take us around 7 hours.
Our first halt was 'Raghunath Mandir' situated near the Triveni Ghat and is dedicated to Lord Rama and Sita Mata. It is believed that the Ganga is joined here by the Yamuna and Saraswati rivers.
Around the temple, the atmosphere was serene, and I was surprised to see Tamil Vaishnavite poet Periyazhvar's slokas inscribed in granite stone and made available in this temple premises. The sloka which we managed to find had reference to the Ganga river.
A dhol wala was lazily banging away on his instrument, and Vaidy promptly requested the owner of the instrument to try his hand at this traditional rhythm instrument!
After having darshan of Raghunathji, we found a local cool drink stall offering rhododendron juice. The juice tasted extra sweet, probably due to the added sugar. The flavor was different, but I liked it. I made it a point to try out this juice at least once later in the course of the next 12 days.
Anup had planned another temple visit on our journey. This time the bus stopped at a location from where we had to walk down a few hundred steps and cross a man-made bridge to reach Dhari Devi temple, which was located in the middle of the river. Dhari Devi is considered the guardian deity of Uttarakhand. All of us sincerely prayed to this guardian Devi for the success of our trek.
Continuing our drive, we took a small break for lunch and tea. The road we traveled upon was a narrow one cut in the mountains, and it required drivers who are trained and experienced in navigating this terrain.
We faced a couple of landslides where JCB machines were working to clear the roads. We witnessed several other earlier landslides where a part of the fencing along the mountain way had been destroyed with nothing now existing between the rough road and the deep valleys except the drivers' experience...
It took me a couple of days later to realize that this sort of road was to be part of our driving for the next 12 days.
We reached the base camp at Pipalkoti by 5:15 PM. Stay arrangements had been made in Hotel Indralok. Immediately after reaching the base camp, we had tea and biscuits.
Anup called for a group meeting at 6:30 PM for general orientation, collecting the documents, and for a health check-up (BP and oximeter). Needless to say, the health check-up part was handled by Dr. Swamy. During the orientation talk, Anup instructed the members to have two separate offloading bags. One with just an extra set of clothes and other trek essentials like thermal suits, gloves, etc., which would travel with us on our trek to Rudranath, and the other which would be left behind in the bus. Since we had only two bags each—one the personal backpack and the second a larger bag which would contain everything else, we went out into the market and procured two big bags to segregate the things which we would leave behind in the bus.
Reaching our rooms, setting the alarm for the next morning at 5:45 AM, we dozed off not knowing how the next night's sleep would be. Next morning, tea was to be served by 6 AM, and we had to leave Pipalkoti at 7 AM.
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