The sky ambles blue, broods black and bleeds white… look at any high mountain panorama and you’d see the analogy ticking away incessantly through dawn and dusk, that play of shadows and light, of heat and cold, of hope and despair, the quintessential play of yin and yang if one were to ponder, or suffer, long enough…

One sunny December afternoon found us at the campsite of Samethi, enroute Kuari Pass or Pangarchulla Peak, whatever we could afford with the time at hand and the mood of the weather gods… turned out we did neither and hiked up to Mini Pangarchulla peak, but that is another story…

The camp was windy and crowded, and I’d have been chagrined had it not been for the massifs of the Greater Himalaya looming over the horizon… this trail is completely dominated by the Dunagiri massif which is closer than any other big mountain…

It was just too windy to stay out for too long unless one strayed away from the camp into the oak-rhodo canopy for some relief, even the campfire was finding it hard to heat anything beyond a feet… but if it’s not raining or snowing, these are just trifles, and I spent the better part of gazing at Dunagiri and the Hathi Ghoda massifs… Chaukhamba was far and not too interesting from this angle…

As twilight came to pass, all my attention was garnered by Dunagiri as the pastels on the horizon behind it stood out in stark contrast in the crisp winter air… from the burning amber of early evening to the matured purple of twilight to one last burst of white and blue before the infinity of dusk takes over… the geometry is actually quite befitting for a rock supposed to carry the elixir…

One can never tell if this daily transformation is slow or fast, the dynamics of time seem captive to the expanse at times, only to be washed away in gales  whistled by dismissive summits… when does a moment become a linger?… I could’ve tried to think of a premise, but then one has to take care of the numb fingers…

A riot of colours at Dunagiri Peak, Uttarakhand…