It was on a Wednesday that I had first proposed the trip to Farhan. It was one of those propositions that you make casually because you don’t think that it’ll be accepted. I had this trip already planned out before with 2 friends and initially both of them were prepared to come. However, both told me later that they finally couldn’t because their girlfriends were too tired and didn’t want to go on a two day hike. Given that it was a trip for the weekend and it was already Wednesday, it was a short delay and I didn’t seriously expect any positive replies. All I did was leave a message on Farhan’s “facebook wall”. The message I wrote was:
“free this weekend? how about a trip to lac dixence the biggest and highest dam in switzerland with an overnight stay at a mountain hut?”
The answer I got from him was:
“i was gona msg u for a trip .. was feeling really jealous seeing ur pics on orkut :P..saturday sunday both free.. full in mood .. i just hope weather remains fine..”
I had seen some of the photos that Farhan took. He took them like a pro. Equipped with one of those fancy SLR cameras and having more than one lens at his disposable I could see why he would say something like that. For him this was probably an opportunity for photography. What I did not understand was what the 2 dots he added just about everywhere in his message were for.
Now that there was a volunteer I sent him links to all the details and planned an early morning train which Farhan would have to take at 7:40 whereas the one I was going to take was going to be at 6:40. It seemed to be a very early train for him but I told him that this would give us more time to take breaks and take pictures. He also asked me if the hike was going to be difficult. I told him that I personally thought that it was a difficult hike.
As planned the first day was to consist of a 5 hour hike without that big of a height difference. There was going to be a steady climb of about 300 meters at the last part. However, the second day was going to be tough. If I remember it right there was going to be a climb of 800 meters followed by a descent of 600 meters. Once again the hiking time was going to be 5 hours.
***
On Saturday we got to Thyon on time and found ourselves in the middle of a mist. We could hardly see anything further than 5 meters. After a few minutes of wandering around in the mist we finally spotted the hiking signposts. On a normal day it probably wouldn’t have taken a second to spot them. As we set off on the indicated direction I told myself to be attentive and to look for arrows and signs to stay on the right path.
There wasn’t much need to be concerned as within 10 minutes we had gained height and were out of the mist. A further 5 minutes up and the view we had was that of a magical kingdom floating in the skies. All we saw were peaks sitting on the clouds. It was as if the peaks belonged to them and would fly away with the clouds carrying with them all the plants, trees and the animals that might inhibit them. If that was true we were part of another magical kingdom because from the other side we were on the mountains that were also floating on the clouds.
It didn’t take long for some of the higher clouds to start clearing up. All of a sudden a blurry image began forming just below us. It was almost as if a mage standing besides us was using some kind of a spell to uncover a hidden entity, something which had been lost for hundreds of years. The image slowly started to solidify and we could distinguish what seemed to be a hidden village surrounded by clouds on all sides except one which was linked to the rising mountain we were on. That village was in fact a town. It was Thyon.
***
Not long after the mysterious appearance of Thyon a group of mostly middle aged citizens crossed us. As is the custom among hikers, greetings were exchanged. I was asked to take their first group photo of the trip. In the discussion that followed we found out that we had the same destination. Both our parties were going to the same hut, Prafleuri. While we continued to take some pictures the group bid us farewell till evening when hopefully we would meet again.
After 30 minutes of our hike Farhan was already happy to have come. He had claimed that it was the best place that he had been to so far in Switzerland. We discussed about our other hikes and Farhan told me about the times he went hiking in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan. I was impressed because that’s the second highest range of mountains after the Himalayas. There’s also the fact that hiking trips over there are not hiking trips, they are treks. Most treks last a week, that’s the amount of effort that is needed to reach significant places such as lakes, glaciers or good view points. Having heard that I was sure he wasn’t going to have any problems with this hike. After all I had already told him that I classed this hike as difficult and he was still ready to come after that.
Farhan being a fan of photography, we would have to stop every 10 to 15 minutes. There were always streams, rivers, small waterfalls, view points coming along and Farhan had to take photos. A few with the normal lens and some with the wide angle lens. I also like to take photos but the difference between us was that when I wanted to take a picture it was done in 15 seconds whereas when Farhan had to take a picture it took minutes.
As he had explained to me:
“Sometimes you have to wait for hours and days so you can take a good photograph.”
At another moment he said:
“The sun should have been on that side and then the pictures would come out better.”
Decidedly he was crazy about photography. I’m sure the sun never went to the side of the sky he was pointing at. If someone was to wait for that they would probably have to wait for hundreds of years.
***
A time came when I handed Farhan the small pocket camera I was carrying and asked him to take a photo of me. For him the pocket camera must have been a toy. He took it, tried to take something and then said it wasn’t coming out right and he would take one with his camera. That said, he put down the camera clumsily on a rock from where it fell, flipped and rolled at least 3 times before it came to a stop. For a small moment he seemed concerned but the moment the camera stopped moving he picked up his camera as if nothing had happened and took a picture. Initially I thought that’s very unthoughtful of him but if the camera is turned off a few rolls would at worse only scratch the body. I walked over to pick up the camera and saw that the lens was out and the camera was on. At that moment I was somewhat angry. I thought to myself:
“What the heck? It’s not a SLR but it’s still a camera and earlier he was fretting about a smudge on his camera’s captor. And here, he doesn’t even give a damn if he let the camera fall in among pebbles, grass and dirt.”
The fall could have damaged the lens tube rendering the camera useless. If fortunately, nothing like that happened the lens had gotten dirty.
***
By and by we came across a patch of land inhabited by what I would class as mountain goats. The goat territory we walked into was the most colorful one I had seen so far for this animal. Not only were there goats of all sizes but also of all styles. It almost looked like they were running a multicultural society.
There were the rock star goats, standing on top of the ruins of a small room which served as their stage. They stood and observed the crowd below with pleasure. These goats had long hair which hid their eyes and covered most of their cheeks.
There were the hippy goats that seemed to be saying no to racism. They were literally split into 2 parts. Half of their body was black and the other half white. They also bore the most relaxed and chilled out expressions of all. Their faces said “Peace man! You do what you like and I’ll do what I like.”
There were the drugged. These goats were sniffing and licking the ruined walls endlessly away as if the walls contained traces of marijuana in them and they just had to have some.
There were the deprived ones, huddled between two lanes of ruined walls, keeping their faces down to the ground looking for food. They occupied the most densely populated area at the back edge of the goat territory.
There were also the gangsters. These goats had an attitude problem. They would butt just about anything including the walls of the ruins. One of them even got angry at Farhan’s continuous photographing and went after his camera. Farhan actually talked to that goat:
“What do you want?”
But the goat didn’t want any negotiations and certainly no talks. The goat probably thought Farhan was a spy sent from the rival gang, sent to observe and study them. The goat let out a grunt and continued attacking Farhan. I didn’t want to get into a fight with a goat so I stayed clear of all the action. Who knows, if I had decided to chip in, the implicit one on one deal would have been over and it would have been an all out gang war. Given we were 2 we would have certainly been at a disadvantage.
After repeated attacks Farhan had to back up and we moved on our journey.
***
7 hours after we had set off from Thyon we were still not at our destination of the day. In fact we had just reached the starting point of the 300 meters ascent. Farhan was already half dead. From this point I could see a glimpse of Prafleuri hut. Indeed it seemed very high up and far away from our reach at this point but it was only an hour’s hike away. I pointed Prafleuri out to Farhan but since he has a week eye sight he couldn’t distinguish it from the boulders it appeared to be standing on. It was later that I learned that Farhan had thought that Prafleuri hut was at half the height it actually was. It was all the better because if he had really seen the actual hut he might have decided to stay put and sleep it out in the open.
Given his state and knowing that my knee problem is more sensitive to downhill hikes I offered my hiking sticks to Farhan hoping that would help him out a little. I also told him to put the camera away in his backpack to which he had replied:
“Right now I feel like throwing this heavy camera away, it’s quite a burden.”
For a photographer to say something like that was surprising. It was then that I realized that he must be at his limits. Initially I had thought he was just slow and stopped too often to take photos. I thought the situation over. It was 5 pm. The last bus from the bottom of the dam would leave at 6:15 pm. According to the sign posts the hike was an hour long from our position. Given our current speed where it took us 7 hours to do a 4 hour hike there was no way we would make it in time for the bus. Another option would have been to take the funicular going down towards the bus stop from the dam but the dam was also an hour’s hike away. The only option that we had left was to continue on to Prafleuri and come back down the next day. It was obvious to me that tomorrow’s hike would have to be cancelled. That hike was the difficult one and the one we were doing today was pretty standard material.
“I think we should forget about tomorrow’s hike and tomorrow we’ll just come back down towards the dam and take the funicular down.” I told Farhan.
“That’s a good idea.” It didn’t take Farhan a second to agree.
As Farhan later wrote on his facebook album of the trip:
“Trip that nearly got me killed...... note to self never go on a hike other than easy level”
And on orkut:
“trip that nearly got me killed.. note to self never attempt mid or difficult level hike :P”
***
Slow and steady, actually more slow than steady we marched towards Prafleuri. The track to Prafleuri was a narrow track along a steep slope. Further down, the track became red signs on boulders and we hopped from one boulder to the next. All the markings were fresh bright and I was getting the idea that the original track had either been swept away by a landslide or had been considered too dangerous and wiped out. Later we would find that the track indicated on last year’s brochure was on the mountain opposite us across the river.
2 hours later we found ourselves in front of a small but marvelous waterfall coming out of a crag. Within 15 minutes I had toured the fall as much as I could from both sides of the fall and from lower and higher up. Then started the wait for Farhan to finish his photo shoot. 15 more minutes were to pass when I observed Farhan taking his own photos with the timer. I got up and backtracked so I could help him with that. In total it probably took us an hour to move on from there.
It was 8 pm when we finally reached the bottom of the hill Prafleuri stood on. The signpost over there said Prafleuri was 5 minutes away. Looking up at Prafleuri I believed it. Farhan also looked up and laughed.
“That’s not 5 minutes that’s half an hour.” He said.
Given that our hour 5 hour hike had turned out to be a 10 hour one and it still wasn’t finished I believed him too.
While we were there 2 girls came down, said hello and asked us right out if we were all right. At that moment I thought that they were part of the hut staff and were probably worried about us being so late. Maybe it was a scouting party. I had heard that in mountain huts if expected guests don’t come then people are sent out to look for you, including helicopters if there’s a real reason for concern. They also indicated us the direction to Prafleuri and told us that they would see us there. Later I would find out that they were visitors like us and either they were really nice or maybe they just thought that Farhan was cute. We didn’t cross them again that evening.
I went up ahead, reached Prafleuri in 5 minutes, presented myself, paid for the beds and signed the required papers. Farhan was right. It took him 30 minutes to come up.
At the hut’s terrace we met one of the women from the middle aged citizen’s group that we had crossed in the morning. It turned out that they had beaten us to the place by a startling 2 hours and 30 minutes. It’s funny because the track they had taken had more ups and downs then the one we took so they must have had to cover a bigger height difference than us.
***
The next day I woke up early with some of the other hikers. I had time to get ready, have breakfast and even watched numerous groups heading out. Finally I went to the room and asked Farhan if he was ready to get up yet. We ended up being the last group to leave the hut that day.
The hike started with a nice climb. On the way Farhan asked me to take something out of his backpack for him. It was then that I realized that he didn’t have my bottle. Once again I thought how thoughtless of him. He didn’t forget his bottle but forgot the one that I had lent him on his insistence. He had wanted to refill it with the tap water yesterday and drink from it before we went to sleep. Now I had no possibility to refill at a water stream. Luckily I had bought a big bottle of juice as preparation for the hike which I had only opened in the morning.
Farhan still had the hiking sticks fot the uphill and I told him that I would need them for the descent because if I didn’t use them then I was sure to get a knee pain that would last at least 2 weeks. I headed up making sure that we were both visible to each other. Once I reached the climax of the climb I still had some time at hand. Just for fun and to kill time I went up one mountain on the right, came back down then seeing that I had more time went up the mountain on the left. All the time making sure we were both in each other’s vision.
While I was exploring around Farhan had finally finished the initial climb. While I made my way down, and it took me time because I had climbed pretty high I saw Farhan continuing on the downhill with the sticks. That sight had annoyed me. I had already explained to him twice that I would need the sticks for the descent and if he wanted to go forward he could have at least left the sticks on the ground so I could pick them up and catch up to him later.
***
The rest of our hiking trip went more or less well. I had caught up to Farhan and had retrieved the hiking sticks. He had told me that when I was out exploring he hadn’t seen me and had thought that I had continued onwards so that’s why he hadn’t stopped before.
We walked down to the dam and Farhan took the cable car down while I walked that part also. Amazingly we got to the bottom at the same time. In front of us was a hotel. In swiss standards it was huge, something which you would only find in the big cities. Yet here it was standing tall in the middle of nowhere. Seeing a hotel at this location was a surprise for me. For one half of the hotel had for a view an ugly dam wall and the other half, let’s just say nothing worth describing. As for the place we were in, it was half a town with public buses coming only in summer. Building a hotel in this location seemed like a huge blunder to me. If it was at dam's level with views to the peaks and the lake it could have made sense but at this place it didn’t make any.
The hotel only added another mystery to my unsolved mysteries list.
***
At the end I had become frustrated a few more times due to Farhan’s comportment and handling of things. However, I realized it wasn’t that Farhan was evil or deliberately acting and doing things to unnerve you. He never even realized what his actions had done. I came to the conclusion that he’s just a careless person. Once I had come to that conclusion I had lost any type of grudge that I might have started to build.
In fact, after this trip we went on another one and since I was already well aware of his personality nothing felt out of place. It was as if I was with just another friend.
Copyright © 2008 Kazim Rehman
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