How do you Like your Tea ? Kadak Chai !! - By Girish

As a child, reading about the mountains in books or watching someone standing in the snow on TV, I  used to wonder whether it would be comfortable up there, going by the whitey white look & smiling faces of those people. But little I knew that such climates are far from luxury. Rather, we should feel  blessed to be living in a city like Delhi where every season is moderate or even if it is not, we have all the facilities that provide protection against extremities in the weather.  Having said that, normal life gets boring and we have to face such situations once in a while to feel alive, to find ourselves at least once in the most ancient of human conditions.

 

 Our camps on the first day evening

                                                               

kitchen hut in the background

Here I was, standing in the middle of a storm looking at six camps in front of me, two of which were giving way to the wind with speeds comparable only to the bowling speeds of fastest bowlers in the world.  We had just returned from our attempt to climb Nag Tibba Summit. Everyone had settled inside their camps.

Moving Towards the Summit

 I & Rupendra were sitting in the kitchen hut which was around 50 steps away from camps on an uphill slope.  The weather was not on our side since the beginning of this journey. Weather forecast had changed from “mostly sunny” to “Thunderstorm & light shower”.  Till now it was drizzling at its best but soon the weather was taking a twist & within a matter of seconds, the valley was filled with clouds. And then it began! At first, the raindrops partially turned into a white fluffy material. Subsequently, the proportion of white substance went on increasing till the entire vision was filled with a layer of white snow. Through this layer, we could see our camps in a blurred vision. Frankly, the snowfall was not a problem, but the winds were. As the wind started blowing, the vision became even more blurred. Then someone from the kitchen staff shouted “chai ban gayi!”. Now the question was “chai to ban gayi !! lekin kiske liye ?” Everyone was inside the camps, except me & Rupendra and we were not in the mood to have all of it. Tea was rather a secondary thing to worry about. We could have prepared it again. What was bothering us more was the fact that two of our camps were giving way to snowfall & wind. During a snowfall, it is advisable to keep shaking your camps from inside so that snow doesn’t pile up about your tent. But as it all happened in a matter of seconds, there was no time to pass this instruction to inhabitants of the camps, for most of whom it was a first experience of this kind.  It was too late for two camps that had started leaning to one side because of weight of snow piling onto them & continuous blow from the winds.  I asked the kitchen staff to carry out a heroic stunt. They instantly got ready without a single thought. The two jobs that they were supposed to do were : upright the two camps which had leaned to one side & distribute tea to everyone inside the camps.  It was a team of two. They wore whatever waterproof clothes they could put their hands on & one of them took an umbrella also. They ran towards the camps shouting out loud , I don’t know what. When they reached to the camps, the umbrella went upside down . But they did their job pretty well. They distributed the tea to everyone inside & also fixed the camps in the best way possible in that situation. While coming back, they passed on the instruction to everybody to keep shaking their camps every few seconds. They were also shouting something which was unusual. “Hamari Photo kheencho!!” . Seeing their plight, this request even Yamraj couldn't have denied. Rupendra took out his SLR & clicked a shot of our two heroes.

Inside kitchen hut

  Our heroes doing their job

                                                              

After a few hours the storm subsided & winds stopped. Everyone came out of the camps. We lighted bonfire & started our evening session. Life became normal for sometime .