Everyone loves the view from the top but very few
adventurous individuals undertake the journey to get there. An all Goa
expedition team comprising 14 members formed ‘Team Goa’, to scale Mt Bali at
4,940 metres above mean sea level. Led by Prasad Joshi, the expedition leader
and founder of Prajosh Adventures, the team consisted of Tapen Khadka, Kishor
Dogra, Tukaram Machiv, Babush Gangaram Sawant, Dr Ajit Nagarsenkar, Dr Ryan
Barretto, Dr Vishal Vinod, Abhishek Singh, Rajesh Khedekar, Yashwant Gawas,
Sanjay Pariyar, Dildar Madgaonkar and Brijesh Manerkar. Coming from different
professional fields, these likeminded adventurers got together to venture on
the mountaineering trip.
The team left for Delhi from Goa on June 13, 2015, making a
pit-stop to visit Defense Minister, Manorhar Parrikar in New Delhi. Prasad
Joshi is an experienced mountaineer with training in search and rescue and an
instructor’s course from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, having led 34
expeditions. Over the years, some of the members of his group have become his
great friends and they plan their adventurers together. “In this team, we had
three doctors including Dr Ryan Barretto, Dr Vishal Vinod, a gynecology
consultant at GMC, Bambolim and Dr Ajit Nagarsenkar, a senior resident doctor
at GMC, Bambolim, entrepreneurs like Rajesh Khedekar and Yashwant Gawas,
Tukaram Machiv is the legal head for Taj Hotels in Goa and Babush Gangaram
Sawant is the IT Head at TATA Consultancy in Goa.,” he says.
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The expedition team underwent a strenuous training one and a
half month regime before eventually setting off for the expedition. “They had
to walk 5-6 kilometers everyday in Goa to be able to walk the 7-8 hour climb
for the expedition. We would start climbing at 4 in the morning and get to bed
at 8pm to get reenergised for the next day’s climb. The rule of mountaineering
is ‘climb higher and sleep lower’. At the summit, we could wait for just a few
minutes as the temperature was -14 degrees and another two teams from Kolkata
and Delhi were also climbing simultaneously,” informs Prasad.
To get to the summit, the team had to stop at seven camps
including Bandarpoonch, Kalanag and Swargarohini peaks. Mt Bali offers a 360
degree panoramic view of the Bandarpoonch, Kalanag and Swargarohini peaks, with
the trail crossing through the rivers Tons and Ruinsara, the Ruinsara Valley
and the meadows of Dev Thach. The tough gradient and the difficult moraine
along the terminal portions of the glacier make this expedition extremely
symbolic as the team endured and completed this expedition in merely 7 days.
The team also trekked up to Har-Ki-Dhoon, the hanging valley of Gods,
considered a treat for trekkers, as the area is home to Snow Leopards,
Himalayan Sloth Bears and Himalayan Blue Sheep.
The expedition team started from the village of Sankri in
Uttarakhand at 6398 ft and gradually made it up to Taluka at 8159 Ft. The team
then trekked up to Dev Thach, a high altitude alpine meadow at 10016 ft and
then to Ruinsara Taal at 11853 ft. At this point, the team separated into two
batches as the most difficult part of the expedition lay ahead. The glacier
traverse is to be attempted only by trained mountaineers and Prasad led the
first team skillfully negotiating the team clear of crevasses and boulders. The
second team, led by Tapen Khadka, who has also been trained at the Nehru
Institute of Mountaineering, Uttarkashi, made it across the glacier to Mt Bali
at 16207 ft.
Tukaram Machiv has been on three expeditions in the last
three years. However, scaling Mount Bali was the toughest for him. “This
particular path was adventurous compared to Leh-Ladakh, my previous expedition,
in terms of terrain and being completely cut off from the land. There was no
mobile connectivity, no water and no electricity. We ran out of water and for
two nights and day, we had to scrape off the upper portion of the ice and boil
it down to a consumable level. We had to use melted snow as water. Food was not
a problem as we had ready-to-eat canned food,” says Tukaram, who loves going
out on family trips across Goa especially on weekends. He was accompanied by
his colleagues for the trip, Tapen Khadka and Abhishek Singh from Taj Hotels.
