Bird's eye view:
Today we drove back to Uttarkashi from Harsil, a distance of 75 km. With that, we now start our return journey to home and hearth, which will still take 8 days.
We started as late as 10.00 am from Harsil, maximising our stay at that pretty place. With a couple of stops on the way, we clocked our arrival back at Uttarkashi at 3.00 pm.
We were back to 3,800 ft, and it was a sunny 24 degC that welcomed us to this ancient city.
Leaving Harsil (10.00 am):
Among all the places we had visited till now, we found Harsil to be the most complete package. Fast-flowing river, check. Pine forests, check. Mountains, check. Snowy peaks, check, Orchards, check. Seclusion, check. Air like champagne, check. Nice Homestay, check. Like Joey said famously in Friends when eating Rachel’s dessert disaster: “Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, good. What’s not to like?”.
We didn’t want to leave, but we had a schedule to adhere to. The next two bookings were already in place. So we decided to extend our checkout as late as possible, viz 10 am.
Meanwhile, the Harsil night had truly dropped to 3-4 degC. It had snowed in the surrounding peaks at night, which we could make out next morning from their glowing whiteness, and the cold had quietly rolled down the slopes into the valley. At night I found myself wearing a vest, a thermal inner, a T-shirt, a half-jacket and was finally cocooned in their excellent quilt. A woollen Matryoshka Doll, is what I felt like.
But for all that, waking up in an orchard is so thrilling. To get apples, though, we will have to visit again in October. We sipped tea on the deck and got to know our neighbouring guests a little better.
Turns out, they were also on the road for a month. Two childhood friends with family in two cars, one from Mumbai and one from Bangalore, joining up at Lucknow and then launching into Uttarakhand. Unlike us, they were staying for 4-5 days at each place, and today being sunny after a couple of cloudy days, had hung out 35 clothes to dry. Very nice people. It was at their suggestion that we could finally taste the butter tea we had been looking for since Munsiyari.
So, some parathas (oilified roti) and sabji (hydrofied veggies) later, we walked back for five minutes through the flora again, to our car.
Visit to Bagori Village (10.15 am):
Our conversation with our compatriot road-trippers had revealed that just next to our homestay was the village of Bagori, which might be able to provide us with the elusive butter tea.
Bagori is an ancient village, home to the Jadh Bhotiya tribe, with around 150 old wooden houses, now interspersed with concrete buildings. Being close to the Tibet border, it was a prosperous trading village, like the Mana village, which lost its position after the Indo-Chiina conflict in 1962.
The one-road village was a no-vehicle zone (except the odd delivery vehicle), and we strolled down the length of it, admiring the quaint buildings, a lot of which were sporting Homestay banners, the shops selling woollen garments, and small cafés here and there. They depended on tourist traffic, no doubt, but were a little diffident about it, not in-your-face commercial like the religious towns.
Incidentally, Harsil really gets a lot of snowfall in winter and most of the inhabitants of Bagori migrate for a few months and the town becomes a Ghost Town.
Meanwhile, the snow-capped peaks visible at the end of the lane kept on blowing cold mountain air at us, and I was thankful that I had decided to keep on my thermals.
At last, Mandakini Cafe appeared, a small self-effacing alcove with two small tables up five stone steps, and the owner nodded when we asked for butter tea. In fact, we went the whole hog and ordered some local 'Chaura' tea as well, which was actually a herbal infusion, with a tangy flavour quite different from anything we had tasted earlier. Butter tea was of course salty, and buttery, and with a faint background taste of 'Khera' (as told by the owner), which is actually grounded stalk inside the stem of that plant. The whole thing is whisked for a while, then served warm. Tea here, is a method of preparation, not the tea leaf. Everything is tea. Incidentally, there is a Tibetan butter tea as well, called Po Cha, which actually uses tea leaves, together with yak butter (traditionally), water and salt.
Butter tea does have the ability to increase body temperature. During our short walk back to our car, Panna felt sweat break out on her forehead and took off her coat, while I distinctly felt a need to remove my inner thermals, but restrained myself on grounds of decorum.
A bluish river for a change (10.45 am):
The Bhagirathi had been exciting, no doubt, and its proximity at Gangotri and Harsil had filled our hearts with her borrowed power. But all said and done, she was muddy. The rains had deposited a lot of soil into her jet stream and we missed the bluish or greenish tint that we associate with mountain rivers.
As we were driving out of Harsil, we crossed a small tributary of the Bhagirathi, feeding into it without name or credit, the purest bluish transparent water that we had seen in the recent past. Maybe it was tumbling down a rocky path, without much soil erosion, that enabled it to retain its pristine colouring. We, like many others, stopped there for some pictures, and found that a camp ground had been provided there for campers to pitch tents. In many ways, Harsil is the place to go to, be it trekking, camping, or just chilling in a homestay.
Lunch at Gangnani (1.30 pm):
The road back was not unfamiliar to us, and the challenges well-known - narrow stretches, dominating buses, aggressive cab drivers, and occasional bouts of rain. Police presence is noticeable every 10 kms or so, especially in localities, narrow sections and bridges. Very reassuring.
We stopped for lunch by the body clock, and dived into a small shanty by the wayside, ordering, to our unalloyed pleasure, okra fry and roti. Makes a change from the universal mix veg that all places volunteered to serve on this circuit. Small pleasures give big satisfactions, no?
Reaching Uttarkashi (3.00 pm):
Rolling into town at mid afternoon, we thought we had managed time pretty well, till a bunch of policemen - six, no less - kicked us off the road that led to our GMVN booking, made us cross the Bhagirathi, and travel for 3 kms through unknown terrain on the other side and then cross back again. Seriously, we had had enough of one-ways during this trip. A one-way in a metro city might be a diversion of just 100-200 m. In a hilly town, where the town planners never expected to plan for a deluge of visitors, one-ways may cause a detour of 3-5 kms. All in a good cause, but, at the end of a 4-hour drive, rather exasperating.
Our GMVN, which we had booked blind, so to speak, was not stingy in space, nor was it very old, but the furnishings were very disproportionate, and I think the staff had not been fully recruited and trained yet. The young lad, Himangshu Panwar, who brought up our luggage, plonked them down in the corridor and pushed off! A telephonic order of french fries resulted in an attendant appearing after half an hour asking us what we wanted. We are used to dealing with idiosyncrasies with a smile, but sometimes our smile tends to crack a bit.
So, after evening tea with french fries, which is always a mood-lifter, we finished the day with a simple dinner of matar-paneer and roti.
Tomorrow we travel to Dehradun via Mussoorie. We can surely expect some gastronomic variety at these places. Just you wait!
Photo credits: Panna Rashmi Ray
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