TOURISM INDIA MARCH 2019 TOURISM INDIA MARCH 2019 | Page 45

spirits. We were given soup at 6:30 and
we whiled away the time till dinner by
playing a comical game ofanthakshari.
Night time however, was the most
daunting task. The temperature would
further drop, and the sleeping bags
while warm invoked a sense of both
claustrophobia and breathlessness. Yet,
the team shouldered through the first
night to make it to another day.
Day two began on a somber note.
One team member decided to call
it quits. The path further would not
prove easy and perhaps she made a
wise choice. 18 of us set off ahead to
Tibb Cave, and this journey, longer
than the previous one proved to be
the happiest of them all. Trekking pole
fights, snowball fights and terrible
singing accompanied our trek across
the icy river and the cold did nothing
to freeze the glowing heat in our
hearts. We reached Tibb Cave and
realised that we may need to make a
small tweak to our initial itinerary. Our
plan to hit Naerakvillage was a bit of a
strenuous journey and we had begun
to hear word that the chadar would
not hold for us to make the whole
journey. We thus decided to trek to
the frozen waterfall in Nerak camp,
which was to be the highlight of the
walk and make our way back to Tibb
cave. Each and every one of us had
known the limitations that such a trek
would bring about, yet the absence of
amenities was ebbing energy from us.
That was a night of contemplation and
we needed to tap to the very core of
our souls to derive the strength to go
on.
We awoke very early the next day
to trek to the waterfall. Joyfully, we
abandoned our backpacks for a day
as we intended to return and set off
on the path. Here, the river Zangskar
betrayed us. Only 3 kms into the
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