ZGMs graphic account of Kausernag is marked by sensitivity of thought, love of nature and cute descriptive sense--his Sunday Nostalgia continues to brighten Sunday morning, as he takes Kashmiri society down the memory lane--read & enjoy the dance of nature by a mater builder of words: Trekking to Glacier Lake Trekking to high altitude lakes enthused me the most ZGM Smaller Default Larger When everyone at home got busy in putting things together for trekking of my elder brother or for weeklong camp in the mountains, I felt envious of him and his school- CMS Tyndale Biscoe Memorial School. My school, Islamia High School, for its games, gymnastics, theatre and band was best in the city. Many boys had mastered cycling and cycle-acrobats. Surprisingly, school that excelled in everything did not encourage trekking and mountaineering. And whenever, my brother left for trekking or for camps, I also started dreaming of going up the Mahadev or Zabarwan peaks that were distinctly visible from Kani (top floor of our house). My brother on his return from trekking turned a storyteller for me. Stories about twin sister alpine lakes of Tarsar and Marsar sounded to me like pages read out from the Arabian nights. The beauty of these lakes had even waxed the last king of Kashmir Yusuf Shah Chak lyrical. To satisfy urge of going up the mountains, I and my schoolmates, often cycled to the foothills of one or other peak in the Zabarwan range and after covering a certain uphill distance returned and cycled back home but never made to the tops. The stories about trekking to high altitude lakes enthused me the most. With everything around anthropomorphized, the travel stories sounded like those picked up from Roman and Greek mythologies, where every natural phenomenon had been given image of a god or goddess. Of all the lakes, the travel stories about Kounsarnag attracted me the most…in my imagination I looked at it as an abode of lovers, with Roman goddess Venus standing on an iceberg and Aphrodite- Greek goddess of love bathing in its icy waters. I trekked twice to this high altitude lake, once in class nine and then during my college days- perhaps 1968. The impressions of second travel are sharper than those of the earlier one that we had from a village amidst dense forest in tehsil Shopian- if I remember the name of village correctly, it was known as Sa’dow. Those days hiking and trekking was alien to downtown boys and no shop sold trekking equipment in Siraj-Bazar-our own Oxford Street. We had no haversacks and sleeping bags, all that we knew was that for travelling in mountains we needed canvass ‘hunter-shoes’. Having heard legendry stories about Kounsarnag, one fine morning four of us decided to trek to this ‘glacier spring.’ We stuffed some food items in small gunny bags and in the morning started our journey in a bus. It was by about nine in the evening we reached Aharbal. The Chowkidar of a forest hut was good enough to provide us shelter in an unfurnished room. In morning hours we started our journey through dense forests and then through long tracts of sloppy meadows, it was in the afternoon we reached Kungawatan. Staying for night in a forest hut at Kungawatan, in the morning we started our journey towards Kounsarnag. On seeing translucent lake, with icebergs looking like glass-rafts floating on its placid waters every one of us went into trance; conjuring one or another myth about the lake or weave a story about fairies singing songs of love in and around the lake. There are more tales to tell about journey to the lake
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 02:38:29 +0000
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