Today we drove around 115 kms, mostly northward, ending with an arc to the east, reaching Uttarkashi, hailed as the gateway to both the Gangotri as well as the Yamunotri. For our purposes, it was Gangotri who lay just one more step away.
From Tehri, the road was mostly single lane for around 50 kms, when it joined NH34, a grand two lane business till Uttarkashi, after which it petered out and reverted to the old narrow single lane, bumpy and crowded. Our homestay was 10 kms beyond Uttarkashi. The Bhagirathi, whom we had stuck closely to throughout, gurgled close by.
Weather was fair all through. Just five minutes before we reached the homestay, around 2.00 pm, hell broke loose and it began to rain felines and canines. Looks like it will continue today.
Uttarkashi is at a height of 3,800 ft, and the temperature is a healthy 22 degC.
This time we had decided to take a 5-min break every hour, since a 100 km drive in the hills could be as strenuous as a 400 km drive in the plains. So we stopped as follows:
9.30 am: Random in the hills (deliberate)
10.30 am: After we were lost near Dobra Chanti bridge (confused)
11.30 am: Gangotri Yatra check post (forced)
1.00 pm: Matli for lunch (go with the flow)
Details follow.
Leaving Tehri Dam (8.30 am):
Water and hills together does some magic to the human system. When we sat on the parapet in front of our cottage at 6.00 am and watched the sun top the hill in front, beaming a golden reflection on the lake surface which was beset with fine flurries raised by the morning breeze, it filled us with a feeling of completeness, that whatever may be happening in the world, in the larger context, it was all good. The Universe happens, and we are lucky that we are there to watch it happen.
We had had a thought that we would leave before breakfast, catching something on the way, but yesterday’s experience, though adventurous in its own way, was a suboptimal start, gastronomically. Moreover, our GMVN helper, Anshu, also reminded us that breakfast was included in the price, and there could be no better argument. One plate AP and some toast later, we loaded up, paid up, anchored up and floated off, saying goodbye to Tehri lake.
Being 44 kms long, it did not say goodbye easily, and the plump version of Bhagirathi travelled with us, bend for bend, for the next 2 hours, when finally it thinned down, its green colour deepening to a more muddyish tinge.
It was evident that it was char dham yatra season, as we faced-off bus after bus bearing down on the single lane road, travelling from Gangotri to Rudraprayag via Tehri. On a side note, passing oncoming vehicles on a hill road needs two types of judgement. One, transverse - is there enough space for us both to pass, or should one have to reverse, then who? Two, longitudinal - do I need to speed up or slow down in order to each a ‘passable’ spot? Often, I would see a bus coming 50m off and just stop by the wayside at such a point till it passed our car, then meekly carry on again. In the hills, ego kills.
The Dobra-Chanti bridge (10.00 am):
This bridge should not have found a place in my accounts, not because it was unimportant. In fact, it pips the post at 440 m, being the longest motorable single lane suspension bridge in the country, crossing over one end of Tehri lake, joining the above two villages and reducing travel time on that route by over 4 hours. However, this bridge was not in my planned itinerary, till Googlemaps suddenly decided that this route to Uttarkashi, travelling along the east side of the Bhagirathi instead of the west side, was shorter by a few meters, and maybe more scenic, and shunted us over the bridge, putting us on a old single lane road, rutted and gnarled. In fact, we started wondering where all the buses vanished. Traffic was sparse but we bounced more than we wanted to, and could foresee 2.5 hours more of similar action. The car’s suspension also deserved consideration, and not just the bridge’s. Nation-building cannot be the only motive for everything, just saying.
We stopped the car and weighed the option of returning part of the way to catch the arterial longer route to Uttarkashi. Turned out that we will have to cross the DC bridge back and veer off along a narrow road for a short while till we hit the NH34, after which it was daisies all the way. We would have just lost around 20 mins, which was a fair price to pay for a more peaceful drive.
So we turned back, like Forrest Gump after his run had dried up, and descended to the bridge again. It was a nice view from the top. For some strange reason, Tehri lake had two distinct colours on either side of the bridge - one green downstream and one muddy upstream. We were not able to figure out why.
Apart from the bridge, we could also see a bunch of cottages right in the middle of Tehri lake, known as the Floating Huts of Le ROI, a high-end property. We could not make out whether one had to go there by boat, or whether it had stopped operations when the walkway got destroyed. Either way, it must have been a unique thing around here.
Gangotri check post (11.30 am):
The number of checks on the Gangotri marg seemed to be higher than usual. Around 11.00, we were once flagged down and asked to enter our vehicle and passenger details in a register. Then, an hour before Uttarkashi, all vehicles were being diverted into a huge parking lot, for char dham yatra registration check (and doing the registration if not done on line). We had done it already and waved the papers around. Even then, we needed an entry into another fat police book before we were allowed to proceed. All very courteous of course.
Lunch at Matli (1.00 pm):
After we caught the NH34 again, the next 40 kms or so was like driving miss daisy. Very wide two lane road, where overtaking was easy for everybody, and no face off of course. I loosened my death grip on the steering wheel and even whistled a bit, hearing which Panna switched on some Bhangra on Spotify. Life was good.
Around 10 kms before Uttarkashi, the NH sort of lost interest and stood aside gnawing its fingernails and letting old habits revive in the form of the original single track, just one car wide, with cars randomly plonking themselves in the middle of the road chatting away to neighbours when passing through a locality. Matli was one such locality where we also needed to stop. Our homestay owner, when asked in the morning regarding the booking, had gently suggested that we complete our lunch somewhere and then check in, in order to make life simple for all concerned. Matli was just before Uttarkashi, and we found a safe looking Shri Krishna restaurant, and dug in. Want to know what we had? Not mixed veg (come on, we are adventurous folks), but alu jeera instead, with rice and daal of course. Incidentally, we both unloaded half our rice portions!
Reaching our homestay (2.00 pm):
Uttarkashi is an old town, and a pretty big one, with a population of 350,000. It claims to attract holiness similar to Varanasi, the downstream Kashi. Pretty congested, of course, like all old mountain towns.
Our homestay was 10 kms beyond Uttarkashi, not in the chaos of the town, which was the way we liked it. But those 10 kms saw a sea change in weather. We were anyway noticing wet roads around here, which indicated sporadic rainfall. However, by the time we had parked on the roadside opposite our homestay, it was raining hard. We left our luggage in the car and just scooted up to our rooms.
Our homestay, and I kid you not, was called Hotel Spotted Dove Homestay. Unfortunately, the owner Pankaj himself was away in Mizoram, with his family running the Homestay, otherwise I would have collared him for this choice of nomenclature. Could he be a Wodehouse fan?
That said, it was very spic and span, and the river just a 5-min walk away. With the inclement weather, it was a risky proposition, so we did our favourite thing instead. We slept for a couple of hours. When we woke at 5.00 pm, the rain had abated to a spitter-spatter, the air had cooled considerably, but we still did not feel like venturing out, preferring to sit and listen to the river’s muted roar instead, interrupted periodically by the horn of an irate driver making a point.
Homestay dinners are the usual soothing stuff. Panna opted for a Maggi, while I for the conventional roti sabji daal.
Tomorrow we will drive to Gangotri, four hours away, and then retrace our steps for an hour to stay the night at Harsil.
With that, we complete a month of being out on the road. Ten more days to go.
Photo credits: Panna Rashmi Ray
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