activity week.

early last sunday chris, myself and our teaching buddy darab headed out with a group of students deep into the hills for weeklong trek for activity week. we drove around 6 hours to the trail head of hanuman chatti along the winding yamuna river. there was a small temple above the village where this sadhu was hanging out.

we had the rest of the first day for organizing our mules, guides and of course some good old rock-throwing-from-bridges-to-try-to-make-a-big-splash. the local man was pretty intrigued with our strange behavior.

here's a picture of the whole crew, including the dogs. these village dogs will join whatever group that seems to have potential for left over food. yes they followed us for 4 days, at first we were annoyed but after some animal encounters at night we appreciated their company.

this is what we woke up to our second morning at the summer pastures of seema at around 11,000 ft.... lots of frost. now i remember telling the students to not leave anything outside, i guess this is one way to learn... nothing like frosty boots to climb into in the morning.

our second day of hiking was beautiful, traversing a high ridge with banderpunch right in our face. last year we were shin-deep in snow here, but this year there was nothing but the bitter cold. we were a little dissapointed as we had carried a snow shovel with us hoping to build some snow forts. lunch was a bit of a struggle as we tried to eat our crackers, cheese, tuna and salsa with our gloves on...

this is our 3rd night campsite, just above the treeline. we managed to scrounge some wood from below to get a little fire going to huddle around. we heard animals in the wee hours of the morning this night as well. our guide said he heard a large cat outside the night before so we were a little reluctant to go out for a late night bathroom break. they told us it was most likely a snow leopard... yikes....

here's our water source nice and frozen over. after a little ice smashing we were full again.

here's a picture at the darwa pass... all the uphill finished, just 2 and half days of downhill cruising left.

this is the sacred lake of dodital. we met another group of woodstock hikers here who were coming from a different route. after they left in the morning for a day hike we made sure to put a bunch of rocks in their empty sleeping bags.... i think that was the highlight for some of our kids.

as we descended from dodital we passed through a few villages. life up in these places always amazes me, these people live such simple yet hard lifestyles... and the way technology is slowly creeping in crazy, like seeing a man with an oxen plowing his field then stopping to answer his cell phone, or women hauling massive loads of hay and wood on their backs to their houses where they have a satellite dish.