Exploring Abbott Mount

It was the second day of our hike. After climbing the Banasura Fort yesterday we were filled with excitement and were ready to explore the mountains and the wilderness of its woods again. This time we were on the trail to Abbott Mount. It is the world's longest, widest and highest mountain range located in Uttarakhand and is a heaven for hikers. It offers beautiful views of the Himalayas and a salubrious and serene environment. The place is absolutely ideal for trekking, bird watching and photography. Travellers who go to Pancheshwar and Mayawati Ashram use it as a base camp for staying. The entire mountain is rich in the forests of oaks and pines trees which offers nests to colourful and animated Himalayan birds. Reaching Abbott is not a tough task. It's located in the Champawat district of Uttarakhand, 8km from Lohaghat, the Valley of Blood. One can easily hire a cab to the top of the mount which takes a fare of Rs 50. But we decided to hit the trail on foot.

We started walking through the road. It was very crowded and noisy at first with people and their vehicles. But after covering nearly 3km all the noises faded away and the path through the woods secluded us from the human world.

Cars could no longer be heard and all the evidence of human existence were starting to fade away. Apart from a few others like us, nobody else was in sight.

On our way towards the Mount, we also passed by a small playground. We could see some guys playing football and a few small kids in their underpants splashing muddy water over each other. When they saw us passing and clicking their snaps, they started laughing and waving their hands. One of them even threw some splashes at us in excitement but we dodged them, laughing.

Later we also saw two women, one of them old, working in their fields. When they set their eyes upon us they started laughing too, but this time at us. They made a comment to each other in Kumaoni about us wearing a jacket. They were used to the cold atmosphere of hills but we lived in the plains and were taking our time getting used to it.

As we gained more height after covering almost 5 km nature started to show itself at its best. We weren't at the top yet but when we looked down, the view had its spell on us and we stood spellbound admiring its beauty. We could see the village we passed by surrounded by green hills and paused to click some pics.

It was hard to break free from the spell that we were under but we continued on our trial to Abbott, tempted by the spectacular views that we would get from the top of the mount.

After walking another 3km we finally stopped by a wooden board which read "Abbott Mount". The wooden board, by the look of it, seemed majestic. Looking at it we felt as if some magical white swan or some Angel would walk from behind it and quench our thirsts.

On top of the mount, we found a big playground which, the people told us, was last used to organise a cricket tournament and on the slope of the mountain was a cluster of 13 European Bungalows.

The best amongst those was the Abbott Cottage. It was a 100 yrs old cottage and had an otherworldly charm. It was surrounded by flowering trees, shrubs and had a beautiful garden just in front of it adding to its charisma.

IMG_20160703_152407

IMG_20160703_152401

IMG_20160703_152449

IMG_20160703_152327

In the cottage, we met Mr Navaratan, a lucky man indeed, who lives there and has the responsibility of looking after the cottage. Though we had no intention of staying he still gave us a warm welcome and a short tour of the cottage. Built during British rule, the cottage has only 4 rooms. There is a big living room, a tiny library and a medium-sized dining hall where either you can order the chef for food or even cook yourself if you want.

Later Mr Navaratan briefed us on the history of Abbott Mount. It was formed by Mr John Harold Abbott in 1914. Mr Abbott was a property dealer who bought the Raikot Tea Estate of the Raikot village to establish an exclusive European settlement. Later he settled there with his family in his bungalow which is called Abbey. Then in 1920's, he donated his bungalow to a charity for building a hospital. Being one of the few hospitals in the region at that time, and that too charitable, it was always full of patients. And it was then that Mr Navaratan's narrating tone changed. He told us that after Abbey was converted into a hospital, later, a doctor named Morrison joined the place. It was said that he had a special power to look into the future. But he could not tell any good to the people apart from the fact that when they will die. No sooner he set his gaze on any patient he would tell whether he would live or die. If he saw the patient's death in the future he would transfer him to another building called Mukti Kothri(The Freedom Ward). But the local inhabitants of the village always doubted Dr Morrison and believed that he was a fake and performed experiments on the patients in the Kothri and later killed them to prove his words right. After some time the local people reported seeing mysterious activities. They now believed that the place was cursed and the souls of those killed by the doctor roamed in the place. Later the hospital was shut down by the government and after some time a school was opened in the same building but it had to be shut down too because of the same reasons. Navratan Ji then ended the story by telling us that a few years back a team from the tv show Fear Files came there and made an episode on the entire story by the name "Bhoot Ki Daang".

For three teenagers, seeking adventure on their hike, the spooky story of the Mount was just the thing they needed. After bidding bye to Navratan Ji we walked towards the direction of Abbey. From the cottage, it took us 20 min to reach the century-old bungalow. The entire place had a very grim charm to it. It was as if the temperature had dropped 2 degrees low than other sites. The way main gate to the bungalow was locked it was obvious that entry was forbidden. It was rusted, beaten up by weather and the cold of the mount and was wearing a blanket of barbed wires which made it impossible to jump over it. The entire bungalow was fenced with barbed wires from all sides. We found another entry gate but that was in a similar condition. There was no way we could go inside. We were left with no choice but to continue the trail.

After walking for a few more kilometres we came across an old church.

The Church

11

It was also fenced like the bungalow. But the fence was loose from one side and we sneaked through it.

The church was made up of bricks, of British styles, long and thick and had a wooden roof.

As we walked closer and took a closer look we saw a wooden cross on the top of the entrance.

It was tilting to one side as if it would fall any time.

The church had those old-style, big windows, but instead of colourful panes, it had wire mesh. Through the mesh, we could see a raised platform, where the priest of the church might have done his preaching, and many wooden benches facing it.

As we walked behind the church we found a graveyard, where rests the dead in peace. There were 10 graves embraced by the earth, like a little sea of dead.

Some of them, in the back, were cracked and crumbled because of the forest's cold while some were smooth marble with new black writing but not laid with any floral tributes.

And there was also one unnamed, right in the

middle, unkempt with no marbles and a rotting wooden cross on one side. The soil of the grave was fresh as if it's owner used to come out of it, covered in worms and maggots, for taking an evening stroll. There were, of course, no flower on any grave as all their loved ones lied under different soils at some different place.

As the sun was hiding behind the mountains painting the sky orange, we knew it was time to for us to get back.

On our way back some of the locals told us about an alternate way that would save us an hour so we hit the trail back through that way.

It brought us straight into the heart of the wood and we were walking through the path that, by the very look of it, seemed rarely traveled by anyone. It was surrounded by trees from both sides that shaded the yellow of the sun. While walking we could hear nothing apart from leaves and twigs breaking beneath our feet but the beauty of the mount kept showing itself at its best.

While walking down I was afraid of an encounter with some beast of the jungle. I don't know if it was our mind playing tricks with us but as we walked we could hear someone else behind us as if an extra pair of feet was walking through those leaves. I remembered those stories told by my grandparents who had lived in the mountains about never looking back in a jungle if you hear something behind you. If it turned out to be a beast or some spirit, it would keep following you or cling itself to you forever. As a student of science, I never believed in some nonsense that religion spoke about. But as we three found us in a similar situation that time I had to admit we were scared. We increased our pace and kept talking to each other about the same things over and over again. The voice behind us could still be heard but none of us dared look behind to discover its source.

As we walked further the way narrowed down to a path that was surely man-made because we could notice the use of gravel and pebbles. As we walked down we found ourselves right from where we began, in Lohaghat.

We hired the first cab that was going towards the direction where we were staying and even though we could no longer hear the sound behind us anymore but none of us, even inside the cab, dared to look back. While penning it all down I feel so childish about it but then again it was one hell of a hike.