17th October – Trek from Lyuti Bugyal to Sagar village & drive to Pipalkoti

 

For the first time after we left Mumbai, we got up without an alarm. The schedule for today was a sort of reversal of what we did two days back. On the 15th, we boarded our bus from Hotel Indralok at Pipalkoti, got down at Sagar village, and started our trek to Lyuti Bugyal. What we were to do today is an exact reversal of this: we start from Lyuti Bugyal, trek towards Sagar village, board the bus, and reach Hotel Indralok for a night's stay.

Kanni Swami again instructed us not to take this trek lightly. Readers would remember that after we started the trek from Sagar village, we reached Lyuti Bugyal by sunset time. However, now the difference would be that instead of ascending the mountains, we would be descending from exactly the same trail.

Now, I had a fair idea how the general trend would be. Ramesh, Vishagan, and Dada would probably lead the pack, with myself and Vaidy somewhere in between, and Swamy and Sumathi in the rear with Anup for company. The local guide would be with those who lead the trek.

We started our trek by 8 AM. Each one started at his/her own pace, and we started the trek together with each and every one of us within seeing distance of each other. Within half an hour, we almost reached the pattern I have mentioned in the earlier paragraph.

Sipping water from our bottles, occasionally having lemon juice/malda juice/rhododendron (Buransh) juice, we reached Pung Bugyal by around 11:30 AM. The three lead members of our group had already reached about half an hour back and were lazily resting in the lush surroundings.

Lunch was made available. Swamy and Sumathi joined us about half an hour later. Each group would wait for at least one member of the next group to join before proceeding ahead.

The long walk in the heat and the bright sunlight continued. Our quick-dry clothes, after absorbing the pouring sweat, would start emanating strange smells which affected our olfactory senses slightly. Fortunately (!), I had a running nose and could not make out anything.

After about half an hour's walk after lunch, a local approached myself and Vaidy and asked a few questions: "Have you seen a horse walking alone? Was it going up? Did it have any luggage loaded on it? Did three more horses follow it?" A strange set of questions indeed.

A few minutes after this incident, we faced a peculiar situation on the narrow trail/path. A horse facing towards us was standing, staring at the road. Three horses were standing behind this one, all facing in different directions. The local who had approached us some time back, asking questions about horses, was standing on the other side of the path, with a stick in one hand and a stone in another. Apparently, he was a horse-man, the four horses belonged to him, but having lost them sometime back, he found them, but the animals were in no mood to follow what their master wanted them to do.

The situation looked a bit comical with this person shouting at the rogue horse, threatening it with the stick, and throwing stones at it. I got the feeling that the horse wanted to go one way, i.e., uphill, the other three horses wanted to follow this leader, but the horseman wanted the horses to go downhill.

The situation took a more serious turn when the horses started moving towards Vaidy and myself menacingly, for which the horseman, gesticulating wildly, ordered us to move to the edge of the road on the mountain side and, if possible, climb into a short ledge on the side so that the horses could pass along without harming us.

We heaved a sigh of relief as the horses and their owner passed us, going uphill, leaving the path empty for us to proceed with our journey.

Within 15 minutes, the four horses, chased by their owner, crossed us, going downhill now. The owner was having an exasperated look on his face.

After this incident, gradually descending from the hills and walking the narrow lanes of Sagar village, we reached the point from where we started the trek two days back. It was now 2:30 PM. As expected, Vishagan, Dada, and Ramesh had reached the destination and were resting. Swamy and Sumathi joined us in some time, and we proceeded towards the local tea stall.

As we were having tea, we heard the sound of an approaching procession, with band-baja, conches blaring, and loud sloganeering of 'Har Har Mahadev.' The palki group which we saw at Pitra Dhar yesterday was returning from Rudranath temple with the Utsav Murti in the palki. The Lord was being taken to His winter camp at Gopeshwar temple, where He would camp for the next six months as His abode at Rudranath temple would be covered with snow during the winter time.

 

It was a totally unforgettable experience, having His darshan at His abode in the serene surroundings with mountains on all sides, and now having His darshan in the roads of Sagar village being taken to His winter camp at Gopeshwar village.

The drive towards Pipalkoti was like driving through the roads of Ayodhya during Diwali after the Pratishtha of Ram Lalla. Huge crowds thronged the narrow lanes to have darshan of Rudranath Mahadev's palki. Devotees were dressed as Ram, Lakshman, Sita, Hanuman, Garuda, Shankar with Parvati, Ganesh, etc. The overall atmosphere for the next 5 to 7 kilometers was like this. In each village, the sarpanch along with the senior citizens was ready with the Aarti plate to receive the palki.

At one point, the traffic got diverted to another road, and our vehicle got to move a bit faster. The hilly area gave the local inhabitants interesting ways to build their houses. We witnessed several instances where the parking area of the house was the terrace, which was at road level, with the drawing room, kitchen, and bedrooms at a lower level. Access to some of these houses would probably be from the terrace!

We finally reached Indralok Guesthouse by 6 PM. Hot tea and biscuits awaited us. I preferred to have a bath, courtesy of the hot shower in our hotel rooms. We went out for a wee bit of shopping and then went directly to Hotel Indralok for our dinner.

 

This locality provided us the opportunity to go for a short stroll after dinner. We headed straight to the paan stall and each member ordered the paan of their choice. As a celebration of having completed the first of the Panch Kedar without any hindrance, we treated ourselves to a sweet.

During dinner time, Kanni Swami had instructed us to be ready to start the next day by 7:30 AM.

After dinner and paan, we headed back to our rooms, where Ramesh and I opened our diaries to catch up with the notes of the past three days.

Click here to continue