Shipton's Lost Valley

by Martin Moran

Part 2: Rawan and the Rishi

Work is worship, said the Rawal, if you are determined you will reach your goal.. Our team of ten sat cross-legged in an annex of the Badrinath temple early on 24 May receiving the high priests blessing. The four Indian members, Pandey, Heera Singh, Naveen Chandra and Sobat Singh Rana, hung spellbound on his every word. To have this private audience with a man revered by the many thousands with a man revered by the many thousands who come from all over India each year to worship of Badrinath was a special privilege and conferred symbolic significance upon our venture. Outside, in the chill clear air hundreds of pilgrims were taking their ritual bath from the hot water springs, by which a temple has been sited for at least 1200 years. Drum rolls, murmured chants and a cacophony of bells mingled with the roar of the Alaknanda river and some 10,000 ft above the temple, the snow cap and veils of Nilkanth glowed in the first flush of down. Even we British sensed the charge in the atmosphere and our western masks of cynicism slipped away.

We asked the Rawal about the story of the high priest of long ago who held services at both Badrinath and Kedarnath on the same day. It was this legend which provided some of the inspiration for Shipton and Tilmans venture in 1934. The present priest suggested somewhat improbably, that there might once have existed a tunnel through the mountains which enabled this feat to be performed. Ramarkably, the direct distance between the two is just 24 miles (38 km) but we expected to walk three times that distance in order to make the overland crossing.

3 km north of Badrinath lies Mana village, the last outpost of civilisation before the great glaciers of the Kamet, Chaukhamba and Gangotri ranges and access point to the land beyond the Inner Line. We had finally gained permission to attempt the route as a joint Indo-British team.

Our path crossed the Arwa gorge and swung west into the Alaknanda nala after 5 km we left the trail and crossed to the south bank of the river by a huge snow bridge formed from the winters avalanches debris. Some 3 km further on we camped on an old lake bed in the lee of a lateral moraine, directly opposite the free standing falls of Vasudhara. Our valley was hemmed by granite walls which were cleaved by snowy side gorges. Having got out of a bus at 3100m in Badrinath and with a height gain of some 2300m from there to the col, we needed to take the approach trek slowly in order to acclimatise. We had 19 porters with us to ferry two weeks food to the base of the col Our second day took us through meadows bedecked with primroses and bergenia to the snout of the Satopanth glacier.

No Garhwal glacier is complete without its hermits and holy men and here we met a haramukh of the Rishi sect who we had seen leaving the Badrinath temple on horseback the previous morning. This man told us that he was sickened of the crowds and pollution down in Badrinath and was going to the mountains to be alone. It was just his bad luck that the first western expedition to the Satopanth for half a century should arrive on the day he began his retreat!