Camping at Hatu Top: Improvised tent, improvised stove, unadulterated fun

Hey Guys!

Recently a fellow xBhpian, Aamir, shifted to my city Chandigarh from Hyderabad..
Unlike xBhp Hyderabad, xBhp Chandigarh chapter isn't huge, in fact just 2 were here (don't know if there are others but I could only contact one from thru this forum).. :P

So, in order to welcome him to the Chandigarh chapter, we planned a ride..
Then we discussed, "We keep on riding, let's get out of our comfort zone"
Now the question was, HOW?


Plan:

1. Destination: Hatu top.
2. Activity: Camp at the top without commercial tents.
3. Cook own food (Maggi)
4. Light a bonfire and have fun :P
5. Get back

Tent design: hmmm... this is interesting. I made a sketch to accurately depict the tent design. :P



With this "not blue blueprint" tent design was perfected. :P
We were to use our bikes (total 3) as walls and tie my car's cover as roof :P

PURRRFECT!!

Cooking:
Aamir Googled out a design for making alcohol stove.
Three of us made a stove each, in case one fails..
Question was, where to procure fuel (absolute Ethanol) from??
I am doing Ph.D. in Biotechnology from a reputed institute, where in ethanol is in abundance... so I took 500ml of it... :P :P



So, we were to leave Chandigarh at 0400hrs... and we were on time! Yes!

First stop was made after Dharampur, tea.
Then at Kandaghat to meet a friend, Siddharth (xBhpian).



Then we went straight to Narkanda, wherein we had Ginger-honey-leomn tea at the Himalayan Dhaba and packed some parathas.
We had planned to eat the parathas in Tani Jubbar lake near Kotgarh.
To our dismay, the lake was less b'ful than expected. It is a man made lake, and you can see the base of it, which is quite shallow. :/ :/
But a lake is a lake, and hills were picturesque, so no complaints :)


Anyways, we had our tasty parathas there. When the dhaba guy was packing the parathas, he asked us if we wanted curd, black peas, and pickle. We thought it was included with the parathas.. It wasn't.

After the paratha munching, we went forward to Kotgarh wherein we wished to visit a church which was built in the 1800s..


After a lot of asking, misdirections, and a bit of steep ascents, we reached there... Church was closed but the people on hearing that we came all the way from Chandigarh, opened it just for us! That's generosity! :)



Now was our main event going to take place.. We went back to Narkanda. Calculated the amount of water needed... Aamir said "3L each, 1 L for cooking." So it was decided, 3x3=9, + 1 = 10L of Aquafina water bottles were packed. 1 bottle of milk was bought, for tea. Bikes were checked once. I bought a spare generic clutch wire as I was being paranoid.. :P
So, we started our ascent to the Hatu top.

Reached there by 3 pm.. It was sunny there... We located a place to tent up, spotted some drift woods for bonfire, and sat on the benches, waiting for the crowd to go back so that we may freely tent up..
We were enjoying by doing nothing, listening to the blowing winds as it gently cleansed our souls.
We also visited the well made artistic Hatu Temple.













It was soon 6:30pm, wind started to gain pace and sun started to go down, we decided to tent up as we still had around 30mins of sun before pitch dark!

We relocated our camp area near the temple as we found a workbench there which could be used as our 4th wall of tent :P
Also, the temple had one light.



Pace of wind was so strong that Adarsh said "Nah! It will fly away!"
I said "Let's give it a try", Aamir said "Hoooollllldddd it Adarshhhhh! It's gonna fly from your end" :P

We had 2x 10m nylon ropes and 4 bungie cords, tent (car cover) was relying on it :P

Boy! Temperature fell like crazy! Thermal liners were attached to the jacket.

Now it was the time to cook.
We went to a constructed but closed area where the flame could hold in the wind.



Maggi was made and we gulped it instantly..... directly from the pan, no plates... :P
The whole place was dark, the only light was from a bulb hanging on the temple.
Ghost stories were shared just to scare each others... Wind, dark, hills and trees make a perfect audio-visual setup for scary movies :P

It was time for tea. We forgot Sugar. :P Black tea was made. And it was awful :P

We went in our tent and decided to take a nap before the wind blows our roof away.. :P

We were carrying quilts and wearing our riding gears... still it was freezing cold!!!!
Slept anyhow, woke up in the middle of the night to see the stars and MILKY WAY!!!!
So many stars are there in the sky... we can't see them thru the polluted skies of the city...

Woke up early morning, 5:30AM to capture the rising sun!





























Ok, number of photos per post exceeded.. Anyways major photos have been uploaded...

Further we went down to Narkanda, had breakfast in the same Himalayan Dhaba and moved on..
Next stop was directly made in Dharampur haveli for lunch..

As we neared Shimla, mercury rose up to an uncomfortable level...We were wearing our riding gears and it was getting uncomfortable...
And we crossed Shimla, we were sweating badly, but carried on home..... :) :)
Apart from the last few kms, the ride was a bliss!!!

Attached Images