Trekking, back then
“Like all great travellers
I have seen more than I remember
And remember more than I have seen.”
— Benjamin Disraeli
An Indian Army medic, Major Francis Day, stationed at Ooty and stricken by acute homesickness, decided to introduce Rainbow Trout from Scotland into the lakes of the Nilgiris in 1897. Likewise, Maj Frank James Mitchell of the 5th Gorkha Rifles had introduced Brown Trout in the western Himalayan lakes, beginning 1908.
My wife and I had partaken of Major Day’s largesse in the Nilgiris in 1969, and four years later, we set out for a tryst with Brown Trout in the Dodital lake (10,913 ft), in Uttarkashi district. After an arduous journey in crowded buses, we felt revived when the District Magistrate readily permitted the use of PWD bungalows for night-halts en route and even enrolled two Nepalese, Teg Bahadur and Amar Bahadur, as our Man Fridays (MF) for the excursion at Rs 7 plus food per day! However, in the very next breath, he left us nonplussed by stating that as Dodital fell beyond the ‘Inner Line’, it would be mandatory to hand over the exposed camera film-rolls for scrutiny!
Unforgettable first sighting of Bandarpunch from atop Darwa saddle. Photo by the writer
We purchased foodstuffs, pots and pans and hired six porters. By the evening, we had readied eight convenient man-loads for an easy, 8-km walk to Kalyani (6,270 ft), our first destination.
Pitching our tent by a stream away from habitation, we had company for better part of the evening of a dandy Blue Whistling Thrush; entire plumage bright Prussian blue, richly spotted with white dots and a chrome yellow beak. The fancy traits of this bird were best scripted by Lt Col RSP Bates (India’s pioneer bird photographer, a veteran of the Jat Regiment and a friend of Salim Ali) as “…hops and flies from boulder to ledge, from cliff wall to a branch, keeping up his melodious whistle, both a call and song that carries above the gurgle of rushing torrents”. Little wonder that this Thrush goes by two names in vernacular — ‘Hazaar Daastaan’ for his melody and ‘Kastura’ for his gorgeous plumage!
The countryside up to the second destination at Agoda (7,500 ft) was awash with terraced fields, ablaze with a bright, magenta-coloured crop, entirely new to us. The locals said proudly that the ‘Marsa’ crop was a boon granted by their deity. Though the harvested cereal was valued for making laddoos, but from our day-long observations, it was also much cherished by the debonair Kaleej pheasants!
The 12 km to Dodital and the hillsides around were cloaked in the pristine growth of deodar, oak, pine, rhododendron and birch, a zone of tranquil solitude.
Lekhi Singh, the chowkidar of Dodital bungalow, who had joined us at Agoda, kept up a lively, loud conversation with the porters on purpose, to ward off the wayward black bear and leopard!
Our first visual of the lake at the turn of the last ridge was at once dramatic; three lofty and thickly wooded ridges meeting in a tight horseshoe enclosed and showcased the serene blue waterbody, the size of a regulation cricket field. Fed by water from snowmelt and a few perennial springs free from all agents of pollution, it created perfect nirvana for the trout to flourish in abundance.
The bungalow was damp so we pitched our tent and the MF moved into the vacant log hut used by the pastoral Gujjars. The trout were simply not wary of us, and we limited ourselves to a combined catch of four per day. Remainder daylight hours were devoted to leisure, reading books and scanning with binoculars for birdlife, or simply marvelling at the grace of Lammergeier vultures riding the thermals upwards, till reduced to dots and soon after vanishing altogether into the blue sky!
We had planned to climb the Darwa Saddle (13,800 ft) situated above the apex of the horseshoe, both for a panoramic view of the Bandarpunch valley as also chance spotting the elusive musk deer. Only upon gaining the last foothold atop Darwa did we get to see Bandarpunch (20,843 ft), resplendent under the morning sun.
When with supreme effort we detached ourselves from that sublime visual and turned about upon that very spot, lo and behold, 3,000 ft below our toes lay the mesmerising Dodital; and the composite experience of the two visuals taken together was a precious whole to live for!
Descending through an open patch, we were lucky to spot the exotically coloured male of the Himalayan Monal, “…metallic green head, spatulate-tipped crest, brilliant metallic green and bronze on hindneck, iridescent blue upper body, cinnamon brown tail and velvety black underparts”, best described by Grimmett and Inskipps.
On the eighth morning, MF informed that our rations were down to two days’ worth. We made another attempt to close with the spooky musk deer, but had no luck. Late in the afternoon, under circumstances considered the least favourable for angling, I decided to cast for trout. There was mild drizzle which turned into sleet, followed by hailstones, lightning and deafening thunderclaps, yet one Brown Trout, the largest that I was ever to acquire, found the spinning bait irresistible!