Mountains are the extremes of our world. Their immensity breaks down the delicate balances that allow life to flourish. Their beauty surpasses what our eyes and minds can handle. Their high walls create borders between animal species, ancient cultures, and modern nations.
Some mountains, though, represent a gateway to another world entirely. These special few smash normal reality so completely that the visitor cannot help feeling the presence of the supernatural.
The Northwest Indian Himalayas are proof of the spiritual power of mountains. Ancient Buddhist monasteries command the frigid, far-flung deserts of Ladakh and Spiti. Legendary mosques and dargahs adorn Kashmir’s valleys. Sikh gurudwaras crouch by lakes and hot springs above 10,000 feet.
Most famous of all, though, are the Hindu temples tucked back into the sky-high glacial valleys of Uttarakhand, a state whose name means “North Land.” Four of them- Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Bardinath- form a circuit of crucial spiritual importance. Each one sits deep in truly massive mountains and has a fascinating religious and modern history.
Kedarnath Temple, for example, is at 12,000 feet and directly in front of a 22,000+ foot peak. Some claim that it was built in the 8th century AD, then survived hundreds of years inundated by a glacier. This may not be historical fact, but it is true that someone built an incredibly strong structure, very long ago, at mind-bending altitude. The temple has walls of stone six feet thick, and was already an ancient place of pilgrimage by the 1800’s. Despite being the epicenter of 2013 floods that killed over 5,000 people, it survived unscathed. Each summer, countless people of all ages who have lived their whole lives in the plains make the 10-mile trek from the last roadhead to the temple. The allure of the mountain gods overwhelms any fear they might have.
Easy access to the high mountains is a lucky by-product of this flood of religious pilgrims. It is possible to drive on a paved road to Gangotri, at 10,000 feet, and hike in a single day to the foot of mountains above 20,000. Mountains of such power might not be so accessible anywhere else in the world.
The Road to Gangotri
With COVID settling down and Indian states opening up to Delhi city-slickers in late 2020, Mallika and I jumped at the chance to visit the gods in their snowy abodes. We did minimal research on permits, got our backpacking gear together, hit Krishna Supermarche hard for vacuum-packed chana masala, got our PCR tests, and hopped on a flight to Uttarakhand.
Dehra Dun, the state capital, embodies the sleepy hill town gone big in the new India. Roads wind over green hills, packed now with hundreds of hotel and upscale malls. We visited Mallika’s paternal family home, where the extended family spent infinite summer days lounging under fruit trees. The land is still in one piece, but it is now a school on a paved road in a neighborhood of clear wealth. Mallika’s relatives bestowed an incredible feast upon us, as well as a quality camp stove and sleeping pads for the trek.
We set off from Dehra Dun under the care of Sanjay Rajput, a driver of serious initiative. He brought us through the COVID checkpoints easily, and never missed a chance to negotiate with farmers for fruits either recently harvested or still in the field.
The roads into the Indian Himalayas reveal their incomprehensible scale. An hour into the drive, we stopped for chai on a ridge and spotted the immense Himalayan wall to our North. We drove towards that wall for the next twelve hours on good roads, covering 70 miles as the crow flies. The unending, steep ridges, with their hill villages and terraced fields, were hypnotic. The upper Ganga slid languidly past us. We crawled slowly higher, crossing an invisible border where old men began wearing Nepali-style caps. Sunset brought tantalizing glimpse of snow peaks, closer now, but forgotten in a final wave of motion sickness. We pulled into Gangotri town in chilly darkness.
Sanjay spotted a local group huddled around a fire by a roadside hotel and yelled “How much does it cost?” We had found our place for the night.
Permit Madness
Dawn revealed Gangotri as a stunning town squeezed between vertically forested ridges, above a glacial Ganga tributary. We had little chance to enjoy the beauty, though. Stopping by the park office the night before, we had learned that the Gangotri office was somehow not authorized to permit us for the hike we wanted. Only the office in Uttarkashi, four hours back down the nauseating road, could do it. We resolved to bargain harder in the morning, seeking any solution, but struck out again.
A conspiratorial-looking man engaged us as we came out of the office. We did not yet know that he would both enable our drive and drive us absolutely crazy. Short, stringy, well into middle age, Rakesh Rao was a Gharwali hill-man who worked Gangotri’s trails in summer to supplement the family farm’s income. He promised us that he could get us on the trail through a strategy understood only by him.
The complexity of permits for our planned route made us skeptical that Rakesh could deliver. We wanted to do two separate three-day hikes. The first would take us up the Bhagirathi River valley from Gangotri town to Gomukh (the “Cow’s Mouth”), which is the yawning mouth of the Gangotri Glacier. Water collected from Gomukh is spiritually priceless, since it is the first source of the Ganga, the world’s holiest river. We would top out at Tapovan, a meadow above Gomukh where hardcore Hindu ascetics meditate and holy peaks hang above. Returning to town, we would then set off for the second hike up to Kedartal, a legendarily beautiful lake.
We could go to Gomukh ourselves, but both Tapovan and Kedartal required a guide like Rakesh, and the right permits. Which, officially, we could only get in Uttarkashi. We grabbed breakfast and discussed. On the one hand, Rakesh was just asking us to trust him. Because everything was happening in Hindi, Mallika would have to bear the full brunt of any unexpected issues at checkpoints. On the other hand, we hated the idea of driving back now that we had come so close; and we wanted to hit those mountains, bad. We decided to pin our hopes on Rakesh’s skills.
Hike 1: To the Source of the Ganga
The trail from town climbed into a wildly picturesque valley full of unexpected color. Fall had already touched the land, paining the leaves orange and gold. The river raged milky-blue through chaotically strewn boulders. The top slopes were a deeply fissured grey granite, and a few bright snow ridges reminded us that winter had already come to the peaks. The weather was perfect, and we were deeply content.
Our only worry was the permit situation. We came up to the checkpoint praying that Rakesh’s confidence was justified. The soldier made some small talk and seemed friendly enough, but seemed to be stamping a permit that would let us go to the glacier, but no farther. We walked away for a while, admiring the well-tended garden and beautiful view at the post. When we came back to pay, the word “Tapovan” had appeared scrawled on the permit. Success!
We continued through the pristine glacial landscape. Many side-valleys brought in milky-blue tributaries of their own. People had used local wood to build bridges across them, and we loved how rugged and remote they made the trail feel. The combination of fall colors, rough-made bridges, and an empty trail made this feel more like Central Asia than a well-travelled Indian pilgrimage route.
The stunning pyramid of Bhagirathi Peak appeared in the afternoon, and we used its snowy promises to pull us forward as the challenge of altitude increased. There are two camps on the trail. We had decided early on to press for the second, but began to question that decision as the sun dipped behind the western ridge. The permit struggle had forced us into a late start and we were playing a risky game with the dark, cold, and altitude. The flip side of Gangotri’s accessibility is that we had driven straight to 10,000 feet, slept one night, and then continued immediately to 12,500.
Our packs felt like lead. The terrain of the higher valley turned to glacial rubble, and we had to fight to keep moving forward. Mallika spotted a herd of the legendary Bharal, Himalayan Blue Sheep, which are quite difficult to see almost everywhere as they stick to high ridges far from humans. In this land overseen by gods rather than people, it seems they have no fear. The cold October weather must have also helped to bring them down. Their curving horns announced our arrival in a real Himalayan cathedral.
Finally we crested a ridge to a view beyond belief: the whole Bhagirathi Mountain laid in front of us, immense and solid yet graceful, catching the orange glow of the dying sun on its snowy summit. There is no way to describe the visual impact of such a mountain wall, which seems to combine every aspect of natural beauty in its power, grace, calm, chaos, sharp lines, and soft snow. The breath-taking sight felt like a divine reward for the effort of the drive, the permits, and the trail. Our camp for the night, an ashram-and-lodge settlement called Bhojwasa, sat below the mountain.
The lodge at Bhojwasa was an eclectic mixing of worlds. We slept in a snugly packed room with a variety of travelers, most notably a European woman who had been doing yoga in Rishikesh for months and explained how Bill Gates was preparing to inject the world with microchips via COVID vaccines. There was a strong smell of smoke and a film of ice on the hand-washing bucket. Enjoying his time on our dime, our guide Kedar got the most deluxe dinner available, outspending me and Mallika combined.
Before the next dawn, we were hanging in a welded metal box on a cable above the roaring Ganga. Along with some others from the lodge, we were the first to cross that morning. That meant that I got to hop in the box and pull myself halfway across, then climb down the rope hand-over-hand onto boulders and scamper the rest of the way across. The guides told Mallika and the bizarre European to bring up the rear so that we could fully pull them across. Mallika was a great sport and had a huge smile despite the annoying gender dynamic at play.
The trail took us gently up the widening valley under Bhagirathi’s massive wall. We were above the tree line, but long grasses swayed in the morning light. Bits of ice that had coalesced in the shape of flowers overnight started to melt. The valley continued to open, revealing more snow peaks, giving the distinct feeling transitioning between our world and another.
Leaving the last grasses behind, we came into the tremendous boulder-field left by the shrinking Gangotri Glacier. Kedar told us that the glacier has been retreating up the valley at 25 meters per year, which we later confirmed with NASA data. Gangotri’s retreat is a good example of the disease that climate change is afflicting across Asia’s high ranges, which are the water towers for the physical and spiritual needs of billions. The brutal no-man’s-land left behind, scoured of any life, made for a surreal hike.
Tapovan and the Quiet Baba
The glacier’s famous mouth loomed ahead. Instead of visiting it right away, we scrambled up the rocky slope to its south and reached a high meadow called Tapovan. The name alone shows its significance: the word tapovan comes from two Sankrit roots, the first denoting religious austerity and the second meaning a forest. Over time, tapovan has come to refer to any natural place where sadhus and ascetics meditate.
Though India is full of such places, the Gangotri Tapovan easily overshadows them all. It lies hundreds of feet above the great buckling form of the glacier, and right at the foot of stupendous summits. When we pulled ourselves over the last boulders onto Tapovan, the beauty of Mount Shivling smacked us in the face as its perfectly proportioned ridges sliced into the air above 6,500m.
Crossing the meadow, we gained views of the miraculous mountain panorama encircling us. Every direction revealed thousands of vertical feet of rock and ice. A figure dressed in a sadhu’s robes approached us across the meadow and added to the spiritual energy of the scene. To our surprise, the figure turned out to be a white woman, proving that you can never stereotype a sadhu.
We continued to the small, rock-built ashram that houses Tapovan’s lone Baba [Guru]. The Baba’s legend precedes him. Called Mouni [Quiet] Baba, because he took a decade-long vow of silence, he has lived alone in the quat rock huts of this remote Himalayan abode for 14 years. It is hard to imagine any human being with the mental strength to live in silent solitude above 14,000 feet for so long, enduring the ravages of winter with no support. The Baba, however, is the living proof that it can be done.
Luckily, Mouni Baba had opened up to the world a few years before we arrived. He had started talking and even made a trip down to society for a medical operation. He was happy to receive us, and we found him surprisingly young, witty, and urbane. We sat on a blanket spread out in the open and talked. His voice was barely audible, but the glint in his eye exuded warmth. When Mallika told him that she had grown up in Bombay but now lived in Delhi, he joked about the idiocy of such a maneuver. He was also very happy to hear an unending flow of town gossip from Rakesh.
Sitting on that blanket with Mallika, and the Baba, and the mountains, I felt a genuine wave of bliss wash over me. I had been dealing with substantial unhappiness, from work troubles to the oppressive isolation of the Indian lockdown, but it just didn’t seem to matter. I was looking down on my life from above and it looked fine. Everything would work out. When I opened my eyes, I realized that everyone was chuckling at my blissed-out state.
The time at Tapovan was golden. We wandered the gentle meadow and took in the spectacular peaks from every angle. We frolicked in the sandy streambeds snaking through the grass, and investigated rock caves that had sheltered sadhus before the ashram’s construction. Mouni Baba brought us into his kitchen hut and served us an impressively bountiful dal mix, literally forcing us to eat until we were in real danger of throwing up. We all grow up with the cliché of a Himalayan holy man starving in an ice cave, seeking enlightenment, but it was genuinely special to meet the real thing.
The Holy Water of Gomukh
Cutting our stay short to return to Bhojwasa before dark, we scrambled back down the boulder slope to Gomukh. We were able to walk right up to the cave where the glacier ends, the finale of an ice sheet as deep as a tall building and twenty miles long. The cave lived up to its name, looking like a yawning mouth dropping chunks of ice the size of a tennis ball every few seconds.
Mallika scooped up some sacred water to bring back to her grandparents, and we reflected on the power and importance of the place. It was fascinating to imagine the course of the Ganga descending from this point: the holy temples and ghats of Rishikesh and Haridwar, the rural towns of Utter Pradesh, the burning bodies in Varanasi, the pilgrims in Bihar, and the final muddy sluicing into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganga, in both its real and spiritual forms, ties together the lives of a billion people. All of it starts here.
We ripped ourselves away from Gomukh and flew down the desolate glacial spillway, soon reaching the grass, the river crossing, and the lodge at Bhojwasa. The day had blown us away. Bhagirathi gave us another fantastic sunset show, and we bedded down filled up with more beauty than we could process.
The walk back down to Gangotri felt like a victory lap. The famous October weather favored us once again, and we rode the deep blue skies and golden leaves down the Ganga’s curves. The effect of acclimatization was obvious, relative to the same route two days before and the folks we saw coming up the trail. Some were hiking groups with outdoor gear, but others were city families with jeans and walking sticks. It was inspiring to see people of different ages and fitness levels pushing themselves higher and higher. India’s mountain pilgrimages probably lead to countless cases of altitude sickness and twisted ankles every summer, but they get a much more diverse group of people into the mountains than you see anywhere else.
Each minute of the hike demonstrated why we go through the hell of permits, transport, and planning to reach such heights: a glorious combination of natural beauty, physical health, and the satisfaction of a goal well achieved. We bid farewell to Bhagirathi and coasted into town with sore feet and high spirits. That night we attended the aarti at the important Gangotri Temple, and the flames flickering under the indigo sky were a perfect finish to a hike at the doorstep of the gods.
Hike 2: To the Heavenly Lake
The next hike promised different challenges than the route up to Gomukh. The goal was a high lake called Kedar Tal. The lake lies at the head of the steep, narrow, and wild valley of a tributary that runs into the Ganga at Gangotri town. There are no pilgrims, no lodges, and few places flat enough even to pitch a tent. We geared up for serious backpacking.
Our relationship with Rakesh was still good, but we knew that the unsupported structure of the hike would bring challenges. This time, he would have to sleep in a tent, eat our food instead of his trademark deluxe thalis, and carry some weight. We soothed him by showing our stock of food and carrying almost everything ourselves. He had come through in a big way by getting the real Kedar Tal permit, and we felt we had a good chance of success.
The route started aggressively. The tributary valley ends in a near-vertical pine forest, which the track switchbacked endlessly. We were well acclimatized and rested, though, and churned uphill easily past a loud group of Bombay guys.
Up past the tree line
With the steepest part behind us, we fell into a smooth rhythm through stunning, healthy forests. The first few hours were more fall colors and pristine waterfalls. Climbing higher, we transitioned into a pure birch forest with textured mountain walls as a backdrop. A few gnarly obstacles added excitement: we wriggled up a smooth slab and white-knuckled our way across landslides on loose scree. The wilder aspect of this trail was making itself known.
Rakesh told us some fascinating local stories as we lugged our packs up the valley. He comes from one of the countless small farming villages that dot the ridges of the Garhwal district. He said that, before 1991, few people in the village had ever seen money. His family used only two jugs of water per day because they had a long walk down to the river to collect it. Most roofs were thatch, and they would frequently burn down.
In 1991, two transformative forces converged on the villages of Garhwal: the liberalization of the Indian economy, and a disastrous earthquake. Most people in Rakesh’s village had their houses destroyed, but received a big payment from the government to rebuild. They had cash for the first time, and with the economy more than doubling every decade, their lives changed fast. Rakesh claimed that people keep their cows in better buildings in 2020 than they lived in themselves in 1991. He has three children, all of whom work salaried office jobs in cities. Although rapid development has its downsides, and Rakesh’s kids may now face a challenging urban grind, it is amazing to hear how much can change in a lifetime.
Further through the birch forest, we passed the route’s first possible campsite. A hilarious group had already taken up residence. There were two trekkers, a guide, and two porters, taking a decidedly heavyweight approach to hiking. We saw one of the porters unpacking a 3-kilo bag of rice and a full-size pressure cooker from his massive load. They must have had over 100 pounds of extraneous gear for a hike that is four days at most. Nothing wrong with hiking in comfort, but we got a good laugh out of the contrast between their setup and ours, with our tents lashed to the outside of our packs with bungee cords.
By the late afternoon, we broke through the last trees into an open, sloping scrubland above 13,000 feet. The autumn’s paintbrush on grasses and flowers had made every patch of ground complex and beautiful.
Looking ahead, the massive form of Thalay Sagar muscled into view. The highest mountain of the trip at 6,904m/22,650ft, its conical form and snow-capped snout made it look like a massive spaceship ready to take off. Walking right towards the spaceship, with clouds swirling around it like exhaust fumes, I felt like humanity had selected us for a mission to colonize distant galaxies. We were taking our final walk on our native Earth. And what a walk it was: the valley ridges were topped with sharp spires, the glacial river rushed far below, and green life strived through every crack in the rock. We would have to give up so much to reach the stars, but Mallika was coming too, so it was all right.
Dog tired from the heavy packs, relentless uphill, and altitude at 14,000 feet, we reached camp. It was a few flat platforms chopped out of the scrub on a steep hill, utterly exposed, but with spectacular mountain views in every direction. We set up the tents and had a little squabble with Rakesh as he tried to give us too much instruction. We quickly forgot this, though, as light flakes of snow started falling and we realized how epic our location really was. It doesn’t get much better than camping way up a wild Himalayan valley in an October snowstorm.
We closed the day with some Garhwali magic. Rakesh led the way directly up the hill, off trail, to some stands of dwarf juniper. Our goal was to find dead branches for firewood. The hill was so steep that I moved on hands and knees, foraging in the snow, tossing each branch dozens of feet downhill into a pile. This felt like true local mountain stuff. My delight overrode my knowledge of the slow environmental degradation that would occur if every group did this.
The fire deeply warmed our bones, and we settled in for the night, hoping to open the tent-flap the next morning to a clear view of Thalay Sagar.
Tangles with Rakesh, and a Meditation on Guides
“CHAAAIIIIIII!”
We opened our eyes through the tiny airholes we had left open in our mummy-style sleeping bags. Condensed ice was covering the inner walls of the tent. The sun had risen over most of India, but not this steep-walled valley, and it remained blisteringly cold. Thalay Sagar was miraculously clear as the stormclouds had passed in the night. Unfortunately, Rakesh would not let us sit and enjoy the stunning view.
“Mallika! Get up, you need to make chai! Mallika! Get UP!”
Mallika, unfortunately the exclusive target of his wailing, crouched in the freezing cold for 10 minutes and made him a cup of chai over the camp stove. Rakesh stared at her from inside his sleeping bag, complaining about how he was cold and she needed to hurry up. He finally shut up once fed, and we huddled in our bags for another hour to wait for the sun.
We were ready for the three-hour hike up to the lake, but our relationship with Rakesh had officially broken down. He had seriously gotten on our nerves the night before by micromanaging the camp setup and loudly complaining about how long dinner was taking. The subsequent morning explosion was the continuation of the theme.
To make matters much worse, Rakesh exclusively addressed his complaints to Mallika because his English was no better than my Hindi. This gave Mallika the massive burden of constantly dealing with him. At the same time, he had started throwing out some genuinely mean and sexist comments to bring her down. My linguistic inadequacy made me useless to help. That morning, building to the long-awaited crux of the hike, our and especially Mallika’s experience was substantially worsened by the requirement to bring a guide.
Government policies that require hiking guides make sense in theory, but often not in practice. It is easy to understand why governments make such policies: they aim to create employment, improve hiker safety, and increase supervision of hikers who may otherwise break rules and cause ecological harm.
The problem is that hikers and guides usually have misaligned incentives that can hurt the hiking experience. Hikers want the freedom and independence of the outdoors; guides want to control the hikers to make sure nothing goes wrong. Women want to do all-out, intense hikes; guides’ worldviews do not fully accommodate that. Hikers want to see every possible mountain, go to the very top of the trail; guides are paid by the day, not by the beauty of the view, so often argue to skip challenging optional add-ons. Of course, these are extreme examples that a good guide can avoid. But the central difference in goals makes it very tricky to have a fully positive guide experience.
There must be a better way to achieve the employment creation, safety, and supervision objectives while reducing the risk of negative guide experiences. Perhaps more rigorous guide licensing, or even hiker licensing, could help. I would personally pay much higher park fees to move the needle on this.
The Indescribable Wonder of Kedar Tal
Our somewhat tense, unhappy group left camp and quickly entered the most dangerous sections of the trail. Cliffs on the valley side forced us to descend all the way to the river, then cross a few hundred meters of scree with serious dangers of rockfall. A boulder coming down at the wrong time would be hard to avoid on the slippery scree, and could sweep a hiker into the river. We moved quickly, and luckily got through fine.
Thanking the mountain gods, we ascended to a grassy bench above 14,000 feet. Distinctive boulders sat in the field as if plopped there by a giant hand. The impressively horned skull of a Bharal welcomed us to the true highlands.
The meadow gave way to a tortuous moraine. Each step required jumping from rock to rock, estimating which ones were stable. Progress was slow but we strained forward to the dream of Kedar Tal. After more than an hour on the moraine, covering very little forward distance, we crested a final ridge and there it was.
Even among the long list of stunning mountain lakes, Kedar Tal stands alone. The first sight was genuinely shocking. The lake is marvelously deep blue, and sits right at the base of nearly sheer cliffs that top out 2000m above. There is not a single plant or anything else to soften the harsh view of rock and ice, except for the impossibly graceful lake. If the gods do live in Gangotri, it makes sense that they have designed Kedar Tal as a perfect place for reflection. Seeing this with our own eyes made the whole trip easily worth it.
Of course, I jumped in. Kedar Tal was the highest lake I had ever swam in and vaulted me to the top of the high-altitude swimming contest. Mallika shot the video for proof. I was so cold when I got out that I tossed on my full parka. We munched on some tuna wraps, and Mallika snapped a picture of me looking like some lost explorer holding a tortilla on the moon.
The walk back down the moraine was victorious. Perfect afternoon lighting on the facing ridge gave highlighted the incredible complexity of the Himalayan landscape, with deep ridges and fissures spreading across the rocks like braided rivers through sand.
Down to the Lowlands and their Wonderful Humanity
Back at the high meadow, we ran into the heavyweight crew with their pressure cooker already whistling with dinner’s bounty. Rakesh, who had complained about how bad our food was food all day, did not miss the chance to mooch some of their uncooked rice for later.
The rockfall zone again let us pass through without a scratch, and we made it back to camp in time for a dazzling sunset on the immense pyramid of Thalay Sagar. The snow turned gold, then pink, then a deep purple. We marveled at it endlessly as the air chilled and cleared, seeming to bring the mountain closer and closer. Far better entertainment than any TV show can provide.
Dinner was another adventure. We wanted to make couscous in order to eat quickly and avoid complaints of slowness. Instead, Rakesh demanded that we cook his newly acquired rice, but relentlessly told us how it was taking too long to make. Then, our deliverance arrived: a three-man group showed up and started pitching a large tent next to our site. Rakesh happily ditched us to sleep with them and join their morning parantha session. Mallika and I happily let him go. We shut the door on an intense, but impossibly beautiful day.
The last day on the trail flew by, all downhill. The birches leaned towards the river entrancingly. Lower altitude brought a feeling of easy contentment, and we were able to put away all worries and just coast down through pungent pine forests and the soundtrack of running water. Gangotri town quickly appeared, and we descended the final slope amazed at how we had ever managed to climb it.
Sanjay Rajput was there to whisk us back on the nausea-inducing mountain roads. We said goodbye to the fascinating rough-and-ready pilgrimage town with its main street full of shops selling brass urns for Gomukh water.
The local autumn rhythms fascinated us on the long drive. At Dharali village, famous for its orchards, succulent apples spilled over the tables of streetside markets. There was a new apple stand every two minutes after the village. Past Harsil, a rowdy flock of sheep flowed like a river down the road. The shepherds looked like true hill-men, bounding down rocky slopes with no hesitation. They drove more and more sheep onto the road, trying to get them to cross, and the flock squeezed past our car on both sides. Sanjay told us we were witnessing the yearly movement of flocks down from high summer pastures.
We made it to Uttarkashi in the dark and saw the lights of at least seven different weddings strung out across the hills. The Dusshera festival, which is an auspicious time for marriage, had coincided with the relaxing of COVID restrictions to allow these joyous gatherings. We drove right through one, with middle-aged men wildly dancing in the street. After a week in the wild, it was deeply comforting to return to a visible panorama of human happiness, strung out in flashing bulbs and blasting music down the valley.
The hotel where we holed up for the night had no other customers due to COVID, but it was clear that people had not forgotten their festivals, and the unique charms of the hill country would never go away. We had seen with our own eyes why Uttarakhand claims the name Dev Bhoomi: the Land of the Gods.*****