Journey to Utopistan!

     


       The first light at 0445 hrs started us off towards Rohtang. Pretty soon we caught up with the teaming traffic and started snaking upwards. All the treks I had been to, all the vacations I had taken to far off places, all the sights I had seen (save for one) could not prepare me for what the nature was about to unveil before me.

      The bare uneven and rocky vertical mountain range, alternating constantly to my left and right with every turn, was fully awash with the morning light. The lower slopes had a grassy albeit boulder studded surface. These grassy slopes with tall pine trees had spread themselves unevenly throughout its side wherever they could find a flat enough surface. This physics vs nature matchup looked as though it had time as the referee, one who had a slight soft corner for nature and was allowing it to silently win. On the lower slopes there was one, just one, palatial size house in ruins. Someone with a lot of money must've had a great idea of building his home in a paradise of a place but soon realized his folly when boulders from the mountain rained down on him. It was nature's way of saying he was not welcome there any more. And in places high above streams of white mist were seen which had a long conical shape but then disappeared midair. On closer examination they were found to be mini waterfalls.

      Ahead of me the sun had painted one half of the yet another mammoth mountain side golden, with bare granite areas all over it shining like small diamonds. The other half still in the shadows was made darker still due to the contrast. The mountains had clouds safely under their wings as if they were their secret masters and the clouds returned the favour by trying their best to hide how high the mountains really were. In places where the clouds did cross the top, it looked as if there were pillows of steam coming off the mountain where somewhere within its heart giant machines operated.

      In the vast stillness of the mountain a small, almost indiscernible but continuous, movement could be seen. Huge trucks, Army convoys, big SUVs were nothing more than a tiny spec on this vast canvass. With this as a brief introduction we began our trip proper towards the martian landscape of Eastern Ladakh.