We finally reached the first guesthouse but that was not the end to our plight. The home stay was locked. I knocked the door, called up Ram Singh (no. written on the door) but in vain. We had now reached the motorable road and far away we saw the first soul on the entire trail. It was a big relief as I had lost the hope of seeing anyone as March was probably not the right time to be on that trail.
We continued our onward journey and could see a hutch on the left and a forest range guest house on the right. I could see some smoke coming out from Forest Range guest house and so decided to go there. We walked towards the guest house and all hell broke loose again. We were reunited by the rain gods, this time on an open road with no tree shade around and backbreaking winds. Our hands were frozen (temperature dropped to 00C), lips turned blue, clothes and bag drenched in rain and again survival looked grim. We hollered outside the forest range guest house for 10mins but no one came out so we decided to go to the other side instead since we were left with no other option. All we could do was to walk till our last breath and wait for that light at the end of tunnel.
We finally managed to reach the other side at 16:00 and as luck would have it, there was only one operational shack in the entire expanse. Survival looked likely! I asked the cook to burn some woods if possible. Though he denied burning woods but he still managed to give us hot water jar looking at our miserable condition. We dipped our hands in it to find a moment of solace but jar couldn’t help our numb hands much. With shuddering hands, we had tea & maggi and felt a little better. We then went to the temple (ashram), took a room, changed our clothes (most of them were wet) with whatever we were left with. Since jacket was soaked in water, I wore 3 t-shirts and covered myself with a cloak. I had one spare jacket which my sister could use.