Karin: We met up with our taxi driver this morning. He is to be our guide for the next 5 days as we set off to explore the Uttaranchal section of the Himalayas. We had been given a recommendation by a Sadhu a few days previously to visit a sacred shrine called Shri Badrinath that is at the end of one of the mountain trails that reaches deep into the Himalayas. Our taxi driver spoke hardly a word of English, so after some jumbled negotiations, we decided that it would be easier to drive back to his boss’s office at Triveni Travels to discuss the requested changes to our itinerary. What, in England, would probably be a simple 5 minute conversation, turned in to an hour-long audience with Bhuta Ram, the big boss at Triveni. After tea and much waiting around whilst Bhuta Ram conducted business on the telephone, we finally negotiated our new itinerary which was to involve an extra 2 days of traveling (for the 24-hour drive to Badrinath and back(!!!) and some 3,000 extra rupees. After buying supplies for our trip we set off for our 9 hour drive to Josimath, from where we would make the 3 hour drive along single track roads up to Badrinath at 3,065 meters.

Dan: When we stopped for supplies in Laxman Jhula, I went into a new shop, one that I hadn't been to before - I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was a westerner's shop, in that it sold all manner of things that one would expect to find back home – such as Pringles, Lindt chocolate, Dove soap, shampoo… and cleaning products!
I bought some chocolate as a treat, and mentioned to Karin that we should stop by the shop when we got back to buy cleaning supplies for attacking the bathroom.
 

Karin: Neither Dan nor I could possibly have known what we were letting ourselves in for – 9 hours of the most treacherous, disintegrating roads I have ever had the joy to travel along. About 20 kms along the 263km road to Badrinath we encountered our first of many landslides that had partially blocked the pass. Even with my spirit for adventure, I must confess that my heart was in my mouth for much of the following 3 days as we negotiated mile upon mile of these treacherous trails. The little car that transported us all this long way was an 'Ambassador' – an Indian-made car modeled on one of the early British cars brought to India during the occupation. In spite of the challenging terrain, it proved itself to be incredibly steadfast and reliable. Having said this, some 30 or 40 kms into our first day of driving, the car developed an alarming rattle. After several stops and a lot of poking around in the boot, our driver decided that our rattle was not critical and so we squeaked and clattered our way a further 50 or so kilometers until finally the errant part must have fallen off as, blissfully, although somewhat worryingly, the rattling suddenly ceased. We soon forgot these concerns as we peered up at very large and precarious boulders that perched above us whenever we negotiated a severely eroded section of road. And so on we went, and on and on, until finally at 7.00 or 8.00pm we finally reached Josimath.

 
Examples of the type of road we were following (click to enlarge)

Dan: Our driver made frequent chai stops – a stop for a cup of tea and possibly a pee! I must admit, I'm getting very fond of the sweet spiced tea, so was alwas very happy when we stopped!


Typical road-side chai cafe

As we got further and further away from Laxman Jhula, we noticed evidence that we were leaving tourist frequented places – the signs stopped having a double translation in English, and the people in the roadside cafes quite often didn’t speak English.
We stopped for lunch at a little café where we had some dal (the local curry served up here) and some roti (kown as chapati up here – basically unleavened bread).


Karin and Dan at lunch

We arrived into Josimath at about 6:00pm. Josimath is at an altitude of about 2000m so it was much colder than it was down at Laxman Jhula - fortunately, we were prepared and had packed our thermal underwear - which we quickly dug out and put on.
Having checked into the guest house (and requested a bucket of hot water for the morning - there was no hot running water) we went out for dinner to a local restaurant.
We discovered the food up here is a lot hotter than down south - I almost burnt my mouth out on biting into what I thought was a capsicum, but was instead a green chilli... Doh!
There were some teenage boys in the restaurant, helping with the serving, and they were having great fun practicing their English on us, calling each other "dunce-heads" and generally just calling each other names!
I was quite impressed that there was a large poster showing Mt Cook (in New Zealand) on the wall – go little NZ!!
We got back to the hotel at 8:00pm, and our driver told us that we would need to leave at 6:00am for the 3 hour drive to Badrinath – apparently the road up the mountains is single lane, and they only let traffic go up at certain times. Badrinath is 1200m higher than Josimath, at about 3200 metres.
We were alarmed to see that our driver, Sandar, was going to sleep in the back of the car, but he had a thick blanket and seemed quite happy.
So we piled into our sleeping bags.. I'm not looking forward to the temperature tomorrow morning!