No posts, no dentistry, no routine for the last ten days. Lord Badarinath decided that I should visit him at his abode Shrikshetra Badarinath -590 kms from Delhi and so I did. With his will and our driver's skill put together (both in large quantities) we returned to Delhi yesterday. I am not keen on pilgrimages. I decided to undertake this pilgrimage as I thought that being close to Himalayas it would be full of new sights and experience. Indeed it was. And I do not want the experience again. The Gharwal range, with its peaking green mountains covered in mist, and the Alakananda flowing rapidly at the bottom, is a feast to the eyes and fills the heart. Provided your heart is not filled and overflowing with the fear of landslides and the chance of losing your life. We performed a journey of about eight hundred kms chanting narayana- narayana all the way and earned enough "punya" (god's goodwill?) to last for two lifetimes.
I had heard that the journey to Badarinath is risky even in summer and that the risk increases during monsoons. I had read about land slides and accidents on the way. But it was from very far. I had no idea how it could be, when you are on the spot. Now I know. It scares you like hell.
Almost all the way from Hrishikesh, the road is narrow and very bad. Distance of approx 350 kms. There is hardly enough space for one vehicle to move but we have two way traffic. The whole of the mountain range is sort of rubble and boulders- fist size to truck size- loosely held by sandy mud. Continuous drizzle washes the soil off and huge masses of boulders and mud come sliding down. The boulders fall randomly from thousands of feet above. If you are in the way, you get crushed or you go down along with the mass into the Alakananda flowing thousands of feet below. FEARFUL. (If you avoid the landslide you get into the chaos and traffic jam that follows which is not less fearful.) In most places such slides take down part of the road with them and the wheels on one side are right on the sliding margin. Few inches out of the way and you are on your way into the ravine. The driver needs to watch the heights for falling stones and manage to avoid the ravine at the same time.
I have not experienced extremes of fear or scare. I can remember two or three occasions which have scared me a lot. One was when I was learning to swim. I had beaten my legs till they could not move any more and then tried to stand in waist deep water. The floor of the pool was slippery and I slipped on to the floor on my back. I tried to get up resting my hands on the floor and they slipped. I tried to roll and my back slipped. I do not know how I managed to get up but I did at last. It was scary but lasted few seconds
But here, I had a scare every km or two, lasting two to five minutes each, over a distance of 300-400 kms. The road is winding and looping continuously. I saw a huge land slide from afar on the opposite side of the valley. It looked fresh. I casually asked the driver- who had made dozens of trips on the route, if he had seen slides of that magnitude on the road too. He said that the road we were travelling, loops and passes right in the middle of the land slide I was pointing at! I started asking him about the tyres, brakes, and the time required to pass through the slide etc etc. He answered as best as he could with out causing further scare, and added “aap ko yeh ek din ka rastaa hai saab. Hum hafte me do bar aate hai. Chinta mat karo badarinathji par viswas karo” There was nothing else I could do. Even if I got out of the vehicle and walked back, I would have to pass through all those slides walking. So I kept the faith in badarinath as advised and performed the journey to and fro. The pictures here give a zhalak of the landslides and the fate of the car that was ahead of us which though got hit by the boulders was lucky enough not to go into the Alakananda. When seen live on the spot they were enough to shake any faith in any god. I have many things to write about our trip and badarinath. But after the trip, landslides were pervading the the mind and I put it down first.