A Trek To The Pindari Glacier

The Pindari Glacier in the upper reaches of Uttarakhand demands sincere endeavours by serious trekkers for the extraordinary views it offers.

- Sathya Saran   

IF I HAD KNOWN what 1,000 metres up meant, I might have had second thoughts about embarking on my adventure. It was not too late; I could still give up and turn back. But the call of Pindari Glacier was strong, so I tried my best to ignore the signals that my body was sending out in no uncertain ways.

Pindari… In a geography textbook that bored the schoolgirl in me to tears, it had been the one chapter I had read avidly. Perhaps the photographs of the icy glacier winding down from snowy peaks entranced me, but I nurtured a secret desire to set foot on Pindari some day. That it could be done was also evident. Of course, as a student who thought geography was a bore, I had no awareness of where Pindari was or about how one could get to it, but the word held its magic, and buried itself into my subconscious.

The universe was obviously eavesdropping. And so, 40 or more years later, here I was on my way to realising my dream, as I toiled up, step after breathless step, on the first day of my trek.

A day earlier we had driven from Kathgodam station (which connects New Delhi to the Himalayan mountains) in Nainital district, Uttarakhand for two days to reach Loharkhet (1,760 metres) where a rather basic Kumaon Mandal Vikas Nigam Ltd. (kmvn.gov.in) guest house building gave us shelter. Tantalising views of snowcapped peaks, which revealed themselves at our first night halt at a roadside guest house in the tiny village of Deenapani had stirred the impatience in me. But the road through the mountains will not be hurried, and when it finally took us to Bageshwar (another small town), we bore the brunt of a hot afternoon as we grabbed our lunch and started out for Loharkhet. The road petered out at Song village where we had to transfer our bags into a 4x4 that would take us up the rest of the way.