Trek Himachal

They call them 'The rubbish pickers'. Its part literal, part derogatory. Its because they dont care about the mountain and cannot fathom why would someone spend better part of 2 days a week cleaning up a ridge top called Triund. Walking along the trail, getting down into ravines to pick plastic bottles, reaching the top, cleaning and segragating the chai shop waste, finding historical dump sites, putting gloved hands into ancient rotting garbage. Its not really exciting life! Is it? Most people dont seem to think so.

I was with The Mountain Cleaners this last Tuesday. There were just the 4 of us, a day with less volunteers. We had to walk along the ridge south of Triund to clean a new guest house. Its not a place you would normally go to if you were at Triund. The natural tendency is to climb up and not go down along a ridge. The guest house is a good 15 minute walk from Triund. Even with The Mountain Cleaners who normally have a double digit set of volunteers, not everyone goes down there. So, the only 2 reasons I walked down to the guest house were because I was cleaning the mountain and there were too few of us.

The sun was setting, lighting up the Dhauladhars in an orange glow. A few clouds were floating deep in the valley below. A saintly group of cows was grazing on the ridge. Some had enough and were just ambling around, making for some beautiful silhouettes in the setting sun. A yellow flag was waving in the wind. Wherever I looked, I was enchanted. Cleaning a mountain is not only about picking rubbish left by others. Its also about sitting speechless at the sudden changes of weather on a high ridge, about seeing the magic the mountains weave around you as the sun sets. May everyone get to clean rubbish in the mountains.