In focus: A glimpse of the hill state; (below) Vijay M. Crishna

From the time we started walking till the time we returned to Lachen, we didn’t come across a soul. I think that was the best thing about the trek,” recalls Vijay M. Crishna, referring to his venture around the Green Lakes in Sikkim in November last year. But for other reasons, he is happy that he did ? eventually ? bump into some human beings. For instance, the army officials he met in Lachen village. “They are at their best when you need them,” he avers. “My need was for a belt ? I’d forgotten my own ? the major there gave me his personal one. Walking in the hills with your pants falling off is not a good idea at all,” says the 60-year-old trekker who also finds time to be managing director of the multi-tasking Lawkim Limited, Thane.

This is just one small leaf out of Vijay’s book of anecdotes. For more such instances you have to be present at Calcutta’s Academy of Fine Arts tomorrow evening. On an invitation from the city’s Himalayan Club, Vijay will be making a PowerPoint presentation of 270 slides taken on a trek to the Green Lakes, one of the lesser-travelled regions of Sikkim. On display will be photographs taken by his brother Vivek Crishna and friend, Bhrighu Singh.

The Crishna brothers and Singh were accompanied by another friend, Kiran Naidu. “Kiran works with a travel agency and that worked to our advantage. North Sikkim has been opened to trekkers for the last three years only, so going through an agency made the task of getting permits easier,” says Vijay.

But even then there were hiccups. In Gangtok, for instance, the quartet discovered that it had been issued permits for another destination in Sikkim. “The agents had decided on their own that we should be going somewhere else. We had to unscramble their thoughts and persuade them to get our permits overnight to visit the Green Lakes,” recalls Vijay.

The next hiccup ? a milder one ? was shopping for gumboots, “something I’d last worn in school,” adds Vijay. “There had been sudden snowfall followed by rain,” which translated into mud, he explains. Gumboots were aplenty in the local shops but none that would fit right. “As it turned out, none of them had any belts? but it was certainly better than going unprepared,” says Vijay.

With gumboots on, the four were finally ready to take off. And even before they’d packed into a jeep, Vijay’s enthusiasm cost him his camera. He’d left it on a bench to chat with an Australian party which had just returned from the Green Lakes. He heard a thud and looked around to find that his “dear travel agent” had dropped his Nikon F90. “I became camera-less,” he rues, while explaining why he will be displaying Vivek’s and Singh’s works only.

Vijay and the three others finally left for Zema, “the place where you begin the real trek”. The group camped at Talem for the night. The next morning they started walking on a trail that took them through snow-clad hill slopes.

Strangely, the group then entered a stretch that Vijay describes as a “cross between a mangrove swamp and a rainforest”. As the days went by, the foursome travelled across rivers, along stony trails and to the foot of a glacier. And as the four trekkers negotiated steep climbs and ridges, the mighty Kangchendzonga provided a feast for their eyes. At 12,000 feet, Naidu, the only woman in the group, felt the altitude getting to her, but plodded on.

On the final day of the trek, the group reached the Green Lake plain by nine in the morning. Here, Vijay decided to consign the ashes of Kekoo Naoroji, his wife Smita’s uncle, to the elements. Also a lover of mountains, Naoroji had written a book on his treks in the Garhwal hills and Sikkim in the Fifties.

Back to civilisation, Vijay still misses the tranquillity of the Green Lakes. “The pain from four broken toenails has long faded? but the adrenaline keeps flowing,” he says.