Trek Day 3

By 4:30 AM I felt too chill and I pushed myself to wake up to get some early morning photos. Once I got out of the tent I felt better and warmer. I went to the top of the tank which is only 30m away from our tents. The sky was bright and the clouds were down the valley. All our trek route was on the other hill of Aizawl and hence the clouds keeps closing the valley and looked like a white blanket in the valley. I saw few more shooting stars in the early morning and captured few of them in photos. Thoughts about Diwali came through my mind. Now I could listen only to my heart beats and the gentle cold breeze. By 5:00 AM the sun rose and spread its golden yellow light all over the place.

When I came back to the tents, Kavitha was also found to be roaming around the tents. By 6 AM everyone woke up and exchanged Diwali wishes. We had nice tea and breakfast before we started to trek. We were required to carry our lunches. They were mostly Pooris and sometimes fried rice. By 8 AM we started trek and we were climbing up the hill. I started at last and pushed myself to pickup speed. Climbing up in the mornings with nice trail is awesome. The trek route was a jeep track. The route was slippery due to the morning dew. After sometime we reached the grasslands. The top of the peak had a watch tower and we were down the final small stretch. I dropped my backpack and went along with Chucks our guide. He took a winding route instead of climbing directly up and showed the older campsite and a small stream which originated there. He was mentioning that the campsite was moved because of less water availability at the top of peak.

The peak was awesome and the valley was covered with clouds. We were able to peek only for a brief time whenever the clouds moved away. There was a river running between the hills. It had another mizo story. In ancient times there was a fight between good and bad wills and the bad won the war. The good will were required to give the portion of the hill to bad and hence they split the hill and made river as the boundary. We took lot of photos on top and Moses was giving titanic pose with Mansi. Gautam and me started capturing few macros of butterfly.

We were required to walk down the hilltop to reach the third day campsite. It is all the way down. There were few wooden benches on the way down the top and gave some good views. It reminded me the views of Ombattu Gudda, a famous destination for trekkers in western ghats. Once we climbed down the grasslands, we entered the thick jungle with bamboo and teak. We were following the jeep track in the jungle. We were greeted by lot of school and college students who were climbing the hill. Some were tired and asking how long to reach the top.By 11:30 we reached a model village which had models of houses. There was a open air auditorium in front of the village and there were cement benches bordering the central flat structure.

The ancient mizos houses can be divided into several groups. The village chief is considered very high of the society and had the biggest house in village. Only village chiefs house is supposed to have windows. There is another big place where the boys and few of the elders stay together called Zwalbuck. It is the place the boys learn good habits and learn from the elders. All the houses are maximum 20mx20m size and had every essentials in that place. A small fireplace for kitchen, a small place to sleep made of the same bamboo. The houses were supported by teak. Each house had some small cages for birds.

We finished our lunch and started down the hill again. There was a small village and me and Gautam rested in front of a home and were waiting for others to join. The guides came from down and pushed us to continue downhill. The village was beautiful and each house had a small flower garden well maintained. We went through the village before we hit the jeep track.

The track was going down which stretched the calf muscles and knees. The professor from Gujarat was very happy in his shift to slippers. I was walking along with Bhagat. There were few deviations and the front group took a wrong path down the hill before they realised it as wrong route. They trekked back up the hill and took the right deviation. Sandeep Da was enjoying saying he had paisa vasool for the day!!!. I found a cap on the route and it was inviting me to take it up. It was army cap and already torn and adjusted by a safety pin. Someone in my group said it was Manasi's. I thought of giving it back to her once I reach the campsite. I thought that she was ahead of me and dropped the cap. I was surprised to see her back of the group and noway she could drop the cap. I asked about her whether it belonged to her. She was trying to grab the cap physically which I didnt. This small instance lead to funny incidences in later part of the trek and the great last day when I realised the power of Brotherhood.

We reached the campsite around 4:45 and was greeted by the campleader and the chief cook. The chief cook was from Assam and very nice guy. The campsite was in the middle of the bamboo jungle. The whole place was carefully cleared and made for temporary stay.