Trek to Sangla Kanda (Letter)

Dear Mayank

I am writing this letter to tell you about my recent adventure trip and I hope that this letter finds you in good health.

My school had organized a trekking expedition from Sangla in Kinnaur in the mountain state of Himachal Pradesh. It was amazing. The first day was spent acclimatizing to the weather and climate.

Next day, the trek started in a sunny but pleasant morning. First we went down, through the city and saw children going to school. We came down to a temple and from there our real trek would have a beginning. We crossed a bridge over the furiously flowing river.
 

From the bridge we could see the Sangla city set on the other side. We took a path and walked with great hopes. The guide gave us walking sticks to make it easier to walk on the steep mountain trail. We had our luggage on our backs but still we did not feel burdened at all.

We trekked at a slow pace first and soon our pace started to gain speed. We often stopped for breaks. Very soon we noticed that the vegetation was growing less and less dense. We set up our camp halfway through. Everybody was cheerful and enthusiastic at seeing snow atop the mountains. We were busy clicking photos when we were called off by our sir.

The next task for us was to go with the guide and one of our teachers and collect dry sticks to light up a small fire to keep us warm while we would be gazing at the stars. It was real fun as some of us didn’t know to how to differentiate between dry and wet sticks.

We came back and had some mouth licking food and went to our tents. Sleeping in a tent for the first time was a great experience.

We were all set for the next day’s trek after having a hearty breakfast. The next part of the trek was hard and the path was rough. Many of us had bruised legs and hands but we did a little bit of team work and gave a hand to those who were tired and falling behind. We still had short breaks, but the hard trek made it look that they were to catch our breath, not to sit down and relax. Suddenly we noticed that the trees had grown short to bushes and grass, and there were clouds above our heads and the weather had grown cold. The guide predicted rain so we took shelter and soon it came pouring down. It stopped soon but we all were relaxed after that. The break had provided us the well-needed rest. After that we went short of water but the guide took our bottles and filled them from a very narrow stream coming up from the mountain. It was cool and the sweetest and purest water I had ever tasted. We started to see lot of farms up there on the mountain and we even saw horses there. At the end of that trek, we saw a huge lake. There we noticed that the snow was very near (though it was not as near as we thought). We camped there and relaxed.

The whole evening we sat by the lake from where cool winds came and relaxed us. We kept great caution as the lake could be deep and even freezing cold. We slept soundly that night and knew what awaited us the next morning.

We had our breakfast and started our final and most arduous trek to the snow. The cold wind made our hands and feet numb and after a lot of hard work we reached our final destination. We ate some hot food with butter to keep us warm. I was excited and sneaked off to make some snow balls secretively. Nobody noticed me and suddenly I threw a snowball at my classmate and everybody went mad, they not even cared to make snowballs, they just filled their hands with snow and threw.

We told these rules to our teachers and requested them to be referees. It was a lot of fun. We lost our players very early by fouls but we held on and at last the opponent team was wiped out. I took two players down and sustained two snowballs. After the game was over we walked back to our camp near the lake. Walking back was a lot easier task than going up.

Down in the camp we had hot food and relaxed the whole day and during the evening we went out to enjoy sunset.

The next day we went downwards but this did not take two days rather it took us only seven hours after taking short breaks. It had been a fun filled trip after all.

Back in Delhi I keep dreaming about that trip and hope that we go there once again. It is not necessary though because exploring new places has its own new thrill.

Say ‘Hi’ to Prathu

and give my regards to aunt and uncle.

Your friend

Raichu