The Great Himalayan National Park

A Great Rosefinch fluttered right by my nose and perched on a shrub. The red side of my reversible jacket had piqued his curiosity.

- Anuranjan Roy

All of yesterday, up at Nara Thach, camera in hand, I had stalked one of his cousins with zero success. Now, noting the absence of any optical weaponry in my hands, he plonked himself within cuddling distance of me, in all of his ‘Angry Birds’ grade redness. Inspecting me thoroughly and fully convinced that I wasn’t competition, the most photo worthy expression of my life flew away.

Oh, well. That was that then. Evening was closing in on Shankha Thach and I had come as far as I would on this trip to the Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP). If I hadn’t been crowned Mr. Landslide 2017, destroying softened trail edges and fresh rain-fed vegetation with methodical precision in my often shaky understanding with gravity, I would have continued. It was only early June but the incessant unseasonal rains had put paid to my plans to hike to Tirath Glacier... and to my toughest pair of khaki cargos. Tomorrow morning, I would start my three-day journey back towards Rolla Camp.

The cave we had captured for our night halt at Shankha Thach was nice and toasty by now. The cooking fire was being tended to by Dileep with Maggi noodles on the boil; Ishwar had run out to fetch some water from the Tirthan raging alongside, doing his goral-moves on co-operative rocks; Basant Singh sat joking in Pahadi – after 33+ years of guiding in this wild country, there was nothing he couldn’t laugh about.

June, he said, was a good time to stay in this cave. If it were the winter months, the resident landlord, a sheim (Himalayan brown bear), might have objected.

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