Much like the vastness of the landscape at Shandur or Deosai, the Ratti Gali Lake too, has a humbling effect.
Day 1 - 4am
In front of me lies the paratha, laden with butter to an extent that there are literally puddles on its surface. Fitting, I think, for I am still in Punjab. I devour it with a plate of daal chana at the dhaba which is alight and buzzing with customers even at this ungodly hour.
I am at the halfway point on the historic GT Road between Lahore and Islamabad, headed for the valleys of Azad Kashmir. Twenty-five other young individuals accompany me on the trip. And while food is, undoubtedly, always central to any outing (inter- or intra-city) in Pakistan, this is not meant to be an epicurean adventure. In fact, everyone in the coaster is waiting to succumb to another primal instinct: getting closer to nature.
We intend to trek to Ratti Gali Lake in the Neelum Valley. I am particularly excited as this is my first visit to the Kashmir region, after hearing legends of its paradisiacal beauty my whole life.
Day 1 - 11am
Our bus has had to come to a stop. As I wake from my slumber – I am yet to figure out why sleep, while travelling in buses (or trains, for that matter), is disrupted as soon as the bus stops – I realise we are not in a market, so this cannot be a snack break. And anyway, I am sure the last meal is still fresh in everyone’s memory and digestive tracts. Maybe someone's facing a bathroom-related emergency? But presently, I don't see anyone dashing out of the door.
The mystery ends as I sit up in my seat and look through the windshield ahead. Marching towards us, amidst clouds of rising dust, are hundreds of mountain goats with their dark, mane-like coats, the uniformity disrupted only by a few sheep interspersed amongst them.
These herds, consisting of 500 animals, tended to by half a dozen herders and forcing us to a stop every half an hour during the remainder of the bus ride, belong to the nomadic Gujjar herdsmen who pass this area at the end of summer after having traversed the Baltistan region’s Deosai Plains.
I notice that tailing these herds are a dozen or so horses carrying the belongings of the herdsmen – colourful quilts stand out amongst the luggage – and I try to imagine how exciting it would be to tag along for an entire cycle of this transhumance.
Day 2 - 9am
I am sitting on a jeep – on top of a jeep, that is. And it is trudging along a jeep track. Many would say that treading along the extremely narrow tracks snaking across Pakistan’s Northern Areas is always a highly risky and uncomfortable undertaking. They would be correct too. But this particular journey seems to be a whole different ballgame altogether, in terms of both risk and discomfort.
Grasping onto the rods of the luggage carrier fixed atop the jeep, my two friends and I hang on to dear life. However, perched on top, we are blessed with magnificent views of the forestation in the valley. This, coupled with the wind pushing against our faces, is enough to make us forget the perils of our situation.
Not for long though. At one point, the shaky wooden bridge below the jeep almost gives away. The locals with us get off the jeeps and begin to re-engineer the bridge. They rearrange the logs that form the bridge, and all of us are now crossing it on foot. After 15 minutes of wrangling and adjusting off the logs, the jeeps too cross the bridge successfully.
At this point, a friend aptly points out how the infrastructural challenges to travelling in these areas are still all too real, which is why local help can so often prove indispensable. For me, imagining this as a daily routine – as it often is for the people who live in these remote places – is startling.
Day 2 - 3.30pm
A little over four hours of trekking over a fairly hospitable, sun-drenched landscape, I now stand knee-deep in scarlet flowers – their ubiquity adds a shade of red to the valley’s grassy slopes, and more importantly, gives the Ratti Gali Lake its name.
The lake sprawls out in front of me, but I have to say, I am not blown away by it at first sight, probably because I am spoilt from my countless tours to similar lakes in the Northern Areas. Also, the surface of Ratti Gali Lake does not reflect its surrounding landscape as starkly as do the surfaces of Lake Saif ul Mulook or the Kachura Lakes.
The reflection of the surroundings – crags on three sides, the lower reaches of which still have specks of snow – is smudgy. And other than the slight red hue in the background, the current view does not offer a rush of colors either (as is the case with, say, the Naltar Lake).
But somehow, it still has me transfixed. The flurry of photographs around me suggests everyone else is under a similar trance. The slight shimmer of the surface against the late afternoon sun makes for quite a serene outlook.
Much like the vastness of the landscape at Shandur or Deosai, the Ratti Gali Lake too has a humbling effect, the overhead crags making you feel like a tiny a speck in this grand setting.
Day 3 - 10.30am
Descents are not the most exciting part of treks. Thus, as I descend now – back towards the humdrum of daily routine I had meant to escape through this excursion – I fall back behind the rest of the group. Even though my saunter is punctuated by ample photography breaks, I feel the pictures do not even remotely capture how it feels to actually be there – to be able to smell the air, breathe it, to look all around, walk over the damp mud.
Therefore, when my guide points out that he hopes the jeep track is functional next summer, I am not particularly excited. Call me selfish, but I have an idea of how jeep tracks can transform such areas, and I certainly do not want this piece of paradise to be ‘developed’ when I visit next.
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