aveek iKons : Diary of a Road Tripper A few glimpses for you from the road.

Our car slowly made its way, disturbing ever resting loose pebbles, into a valley, Chatal. As we stepped down, nature greeted with all its beauty open to us and the sky blushing behind. Strokes of monsoon land slide coupled with green patches having tiny moving white dots on them, most probably lambs, on the snow capped range presented an awesome landscape. A jovial white thread had been playing hide and seek with the stones through its curves. Had I ever imagined being here, I thought. It was practically unbelievable for a teen from orthodox Bengali family to come all across the country alone for a trek with an unknown young couple to some even more unknown hill top, Chandratal. I remembered how troublesome it was to convince my Mom about the safety of the journey while myself having doubt.
Our base camp was set up by the stream side. As we finished our delicious Tibetan dish made by our cook cum guide Kamlesh, cloud covered us completely and started raining. It was chilling cold outside and rain subtracted few degrees more. We took no time to get inside our sleeping bags. None knows when we fell asleep. It was around two o’clock when I, in half sleep, heard Debamitra and Satabdi talking. Soon in utter surprise, I got fully awake trying to make out what had made them chitchatting at that time. But they were not chitchatting; fear and alertness were alternating in their voices.
“What happened?” I asked.
It was Debamitra to answer that something outside had been trying to invade our tent.
“What something! Animal or human!” I asked again.
“May be wolf or any mountain beast.” Satabdi this time.
“May be yeti also!”, I joked as I hadn’t felt their mental condition yet until I experienced a heavy push from outside.
Hoof! What’s this! I would have jumped inside my sleeping bag, if possible.
“They are many.”, someone informed.
The tent on my side had carved with its load as it was trying to climb up. I got up immediately peeling my sleeping skin.
“We must check outside.”
“No, wait. They may be dangerous and we have nothing to face them.”
I searched for torch and used it through the ventilation gap. But it did no good but to increase our heartbeats when the light bounced back from some glowing eyeballs. The tiny opening didn’t allow anything more to see. All we were left with was to check outside so we made up our mind and fastened shoe laces. It was still raining and we slowly crept outside holding our umbrella. But as our light swept the valley what we saw was just unbelievable. Countless lambs with proud possession of curvy horns had come down to the valley. Getting puzzled we tried to woke up Kamlesh but even in his half sleep he told very confidently not to worry and sleep. Next morning we had to thank those lambs for being too dull to use their horns.