There was Rain Before the Rainbow- Alive is Awesome

They say into each life some rain must fall. I say it is a given that in each trek some rain will fall! We were trekking in the Triund region in Himachal Pradesh and I had been lugging two heavy raincoats for the past two days. I asked my husband if he would carry the raincoats while we walked from Ilkaka to Lehs Cave and beyond. He refused and in a fit of anger I also dumped both the raincoats in the tent. After all it had been bright and sunny for the last two days and I was tired with all the weight in my small backpack. With hindsight I wonder why did I dump both the raincoats? I could have carried mine but such is the air higher up in the mountains and such is hindsight! The base for the trek to Triund is McLeod Ganj.

The third day on our Triund trek also dawned bright and clear. The walk up to the Lehs cave is gradual till you cross a nalla (small stream); after that it decides to go sharply uphill. Both us walk slowly, but we can walk for hours, so we were OK. We reached Lehs Cave, admired it, and then decided to go further.

Now when I look at the photos I can see the dark clouds even before we crossed the Nalla but at that time we were blissfully ignorant of that fact! And soon enough two fat rain drops fell and we decided to turn back. The trouble with both of us is that even though we don’t get tired, we descend almost at the same speed we ascend! And soon enough there was hail. By the time we reached Lehs Cave again I was wondering who had asked me to climb higher up ignoring all those clouds?

We asked Babu (our guide) if we should stop there and take shelter. He said, “You never know how long this would last. If we keep walking we would reach the camp soon.”

So walk we did in hail and rain and wind for two hours. My hands were quite numb by the end of it, but otherwise I was not too cold as we were walking as fast as we could. So after this unscheduled bathing experience we reached the campsite again and that chai shop made out of wood and plastic was heaven for us!

After a change of clothes we ran to the shop for food. We decided to go back to the tent and read our books. But the wind was howling by this time and we felt that the tent would be blown away. We crept out of it and ran into the shop again to confer with Babu.

They decided to put the tent down. In the meanwhile a nearby kitchen tent (of a marriage party, yes people sometimes trek to get married!) got partially blown away and had to be flattened too. After a while it was calm again and we had a peaceful night’s rest in our tent.

The next day the weather turned bad again but thankfully by that time we had already reached Triund and we were sitting inside one of the permanent huts. After a while the sun came out once and rewarded us with a magnificent rainbow. It was a great prize for all the soaking we got the day before, it was a truly Alive is Awesome Moment.

In the picture the colorful stuff on the ground is our tent, which had to be flattened once again as before the rainbow the winds and the rain were really trying to lift it off the ground!

PS. This post is part of Alive is Awesome Bathing Experience by Cinthol.

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