Madness at Chakrata - part 2

At about this time, we discerned what looked like an isolated cottage, down in
the valley below, a good 200 meter snowy slope leading all the way to it. By all accounts, it should have been the fairy tale cottage that we intended to reach. Barely visible, it had a sloping roof covered with snow and wooden, dark brown sides. Anand had a sudden reflex to get on his haunches and slide all the way to the cottage. After a heated altercation,  he eventually dropped the idea since we were unsure whether it was all solid snow or whether a ravine or cliff lay concealed.

We took a collective decision to turn back. Unfortunately, we got split into two groups. Memory fails me as to what exactly led to this- BAK and Anand wanted to rest on one of the rocks, take a breather, tie their shoe laces or some such trivial reason. The other three were impatient to get back to civilization as quickly as possible. Altitude affects thinking. We left Anand and BAK on that rock and proceeded. I still recall BAK, his grey jacket and the rock when we parted ways.

No cell phones then. We had to rely on sounding a whistle at every bend and have BAK and Anand respond to it so that we knew they were following at a distance. The protocol worked quite well over a few bends, but was error prone. Sometimes, we sounded the whistle and the response was late. We attributed it to BAK and Anand acting funny and simply went ahead with the assumption that the other two were in tow.

The snow still came down lightly. Though the sky was grey, it was evident that the sun was now behind the mountains and it was getting darker by the minute. How puny we really are, stacked up against the expanse of nature!
Pin-drop silence except for our footfalls and the sound of heavy breathing. To top it, we had no torches to navigate through the darkness.  It may look comical now to have a group of full-grown college students reciting loudly whatever prayers that they knew, but desperate situations call for extreme, unusual measures. Some of us pledged to walk the Seven Hills should He extricate us from this crisis!
The Lord of Tirupati did respond to our plea!  We spotted a few lights at a distance, on the mountain slope. Human settlement at last! Quite impossible to convey the emotion at that moment. We walked in the general direction of the lights.

It was pitch dark by the time we made it to the army camp. Wet shoes, bruised sore feet, hungry, and worn out mentally and physically- we were in tatters! Army folks were bewildered why some of us were loitering in this inhospitable neighbourhood and in such bad weather. We were unnerved by the tone of their questioning, punctuating their sentences with choice expletives. They gave us a small shack to stay and a bowl of hot noodles. That's when we broke the news that we had two more friends missing. Where were Anand and BAK ?

- to be continued