Ko goes to India and...: Trip to Dodi-tal

So 2 weeks ago, we had our first opportunity take some time off and go on a vacation. We decided to take trek into the mountains. It was exciting to finally get to go out into the mountains that we look at almost every day. It was a little different from backpacking in the US because we went through little villages where we were able get nice warm dal-chaval (lentils and rice), and the place we went to (Dodi-tal), like so many other places, is worshiped as a god. Here's a bunch of pictures (most of the pics are from my friend harry, check out his flickr, he's got some awesome pics):

This is the view from our office on a nice day. Even though you can see where we went to, it takes about 5-6 hours to get there. We got a taxi to take us out there, but there were it was a regular Indian (ie small) sedan. Our solution was to put a sweater on the e-brake to make a bench in the front. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought, but whenever he reached for second gear...

Us getting a nice meal before we start hiking.

The first night we stayed at Agora.

At Agora, there was a mela (festival) for the local idol. People from the surrounding villages all came to dance to the sound of the beating drums, but then...

...a fight broke out. We met this interesting guy when we first got to the village (he kept telling us he's a guide and we can stay for cheap at his father's house, which seemed to be every building). Well, he's a pretty crazy guy, and he broke off from the line of men dancing, tried to sneak into the ladies' line, got kicked out, then he proceeded to do a leap frog kinda dance around the idol, but he accidentally hit it. Some guy runs to slap him, then some other guy (maybe the crazy guy's father?) came out to slap the slapper, then the mob mentality broke out. People start yelling, shoving, little fights break out everywhere. It was strange, but after a while, most of the people happily and peacefully resumed the mela.

Speaking of idols, here's another one, a tree. People come and jam coins in it. Trees can be holy or evil.

After lots of hiking, we finally got to Dodi-tal, "Uttarakhand's most beautiful high altitude lake." Some interesting things we saw there: urbanites coming to worship the lake and offer the lake's temple's idol food, kulis (Nepalese men, pretty much human trucks) and donkeys that carry supplies for trekkers. The day after got to the lake, we did a day hike up to the ridge that's on the top right corner of the picture.

Hiking up to the ridge was one of the hardest hikes I've dones, especially cause we started at about 10,000 ft and went up 3,500 - 4,000 ft. But...

... it was so worth it!

But, we were all so exhausted, so we had some lunch. What's for lunch...?

...B**F!

It started to snow, so we started to head back down. The altitude makes such a huge temperature and weather difference. The next day, my friend Harry and I decided that if we left really early in the morning, we'd have a good chance of getting clear weather on the ridge, so we left around 6.

And when we got there, there was only one dinky cloud in the sky! We could clearly see Banderpoonch's peak, over 20,000 ft!

By then, we were quite tired, and our bodies were tight, so we did some stretching.

Then we decided we should keep hiking along the ridge. This was probably not the best or the safest idea because the south face is almost a ragged cliff face, and the north face was covered in snow. But it was worth it because it gave us a clear view of Gangotri.

This is Gangotri, one of the holiest places of Hinduism. It's the source of the holy Ganges river. We were originally planning on treking there, but too much snow.

On the way back, we stopped by this small villages with really cool vernacular buildings. The whole village was abandoned. We were thinking maybe it's a summer village for people living in the valley during the winter, or a tourist village that comes back to life during peak tourist season.

On our last night, we stopped here to get some dinner. The food was great (everyone basically force feeds you) and the women there was really sweet.

Later that night, we were playing cards, but our game got interrupted by a herd of goats. (on a side note, we saw the remains of a goat that got eaten by a mountain leopard, cool)

And here are some random pics from the trip: