Camping in Chikka. Witnessing Northern Taurid Meteor Showers.

Namaste 🙏

Hope you all doing good!!!

Thanks for all the love and support on my previous blogs of reaching Chikka Campsite. I can’t be more grateful to be a part of this amazing community and would like to thank all the people who took time to go through my experiences.

Here are the links to all three parts of the journey of reaching here at Chikka Campsite

https://hive.blog/hive-163772/@parvkhuller/exploring-the-colours-of-fall-above-sethan-village-trek-to-chikka-campsite-part-1

https://hive.blog/hive-163772/@parvkhuller/experiencing-himalayan-autumn-trek-to-chikka-campsite-part-2

https://hive.blog/hive-163772/@parvkhuller/embracing-the-warm-hues-of-himalayan-autumn-trek-to-chikka-campsite-part-3

Luckily we reached at the campsite before sunset and we had ample time to do everything now. The wood that we collected from the jungle in part-1 before was our life saver as we had something to burn and start fire as soon as we reached there. Everyone in spite of being tired started with doing their assigned tasks. I went to get some more firewood with my brother while my cousins and my Airbnb guest took care of pitching the tents and organising the stuff we that bought with us.

Pitching our camps, gathering firewood and starting fire—

I went in search of firewood with my brother and we found of loads of it just near to our camp. We bought as much as we could with us and we had enough to start the fire. Meanwhile, my cousins pitched a tent and were ready to put mattresses inside of it. We had two tents with us and each tent could sleep three people comfortably but one of the tent was a bit bigger with a huge outer space. We decided to make that our kitchen and started putting all our eating stuff and utensils in that tent.

The firewood that me and my brother bought from the jungle

Now my task was to start the fire while everyone else was busy in pitching the other tent. We decided to start the fire just in between both the tents.

Both the tents were now ready and most of the stuff that we bought with us was taken care of according to their type. The utility store was the smaller tent white the kitchen was the bigger one. I made two stacks of rocks so that we could place a utensil to cook food on top of it we call this a chulha in our local language. The first thing that we put on our chulha was a pan full of water because we knew it was going to be freezing cold in the night and we’ll be needing hot water more than anything else.

Making a chulha and using it to warm water

Most of the things were taken care by now and we were feeling super hungry after a long day of walking with heavy bags on our backs. Now, it was time to have dinner here in this heavenly place white enjoying the sunset.

Having food that we bought from home—

One thing that I learnt from my past experiences of camping was that it is really hard to cook food in high altitude areas because of many factors such as cold temperatures, low pressure and high speed winds and unavailability of many important ingredients (because we can’t bring everything with us to camping). Learning from my past experiences, I insisted everyone to bring precooked food with us.

We bought a lot of baturus and two different sabzis we warmed baturus in the fire to make them crispy. We kept them of a big log of wood and kept turning them. They tasted like the base of a good wood fired pizza and had a great Smokey Flavour to it. Everything thanked me for my suggestion of bringing precooked food as now they could imagine how hard it would be for us to cook food here.

Having baturus with channa dal and aalu sbzi

It was a great moment for us cousins to chitchat. We talked about a lot of things from each other’s lives over dinner and had a great time. I also told them about the Taurid Meteor Showers that occurs during this time. I told them that we could witness it tonight . Everyone was super exited to see the night sky now!!!

Enjoying the evening views and waiting for the stars—

The sun was down, it was getting darker. We spotted Venus the evening star slowly rising. We were all alone in this mesmerising place away from all the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, without network coverage and without any luxuries of modern life. We were enjoying ourselves and we were feeling alive after a long time.

Spotting venus ‘the evening star’

Out of nowhere, a horse came to our camp probably after getting the smell of food that we just had. We had a some leftover food that we gave to him and I captured this amazing silhouette of the horse with the perfect evening sky in the background.

It was not even 7:00 PM and we started seeing starts already. I knew it was going to be a super bright starry night as we were there on a moon less night.

We waited near the fire for another 45-50 minutes until we saw the milky way rising from the mountains. I told everyone to stand up to go a little away from the fire. We packed ourselves in the jackets we had completely. We wore some extra layers too. Everyone knew it was going to be fun and probably the most rememberable thing of the whole trip. We were going to see Northern Taurid Meteor Showers!!!

Witnessing Northern Taurid Meteor Showers—

It was the perfect time to witness Taurid Meteor showers as we were quite near to the perfect window for watching it. As it was a moonless night too, it doubled our odds to witness this amazing phenomenon.

We all went a little away from our tents and found a safe place where we can lay down away from all the light pollution. Once we were on the ground facing the sky, I asked everyone to close their eyes for a few seconds. When we opened our eyes after about 30 seconds, what we saw cannot be expressed in words. The Milky Way core was right in front of us and we also saw many meteors. I spotted more than 10-12 meteors and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was not able to capture a lot of photos but I have some pictures which can show you what we saw!!!

Three meteors captured in single photo over a period of 30 seconds

This is a kind of experiment that’s really hard to show via photographs. You need to be physically present there to witness it. This is an experience that you can’t miss at any cost. It makes you realise how vast our universe is and how little our worries are as compared to it. It makes us feel grateful for the lives that we’ve living here on earth. We were there for more than an hour, without feeling cold and without speaking much to each other. It was a meditative experience infact and so I didn’t took many photos. This is the kind of experience we will all remember all our lives.

Experimenting with long exposure photography —

Around 9:45 PM we came back from our stargazing spot to our fireplace just to keep the fire going all night. We were all stunned to see the views that we saw a few moments back. I had some tears in my eyes as I was a little emotional while looking at the vast sky in front of my eyes.

We stood in a semicircle around fire and discussed each other’s experiences. Everyone was stoked and in a meditative kind of state. We were really feeling super lucky to be there at the perfect time. Milky Way was now slowly setting behind the mountains and we thought it was over now just until I saw the most spectacular meteor of my life.

I was standing there and suddenly my eye caught a fireball like object falling from the sky towards the mountain. This time I was not looking up, it was straight in front of me. I didn’t even get time to react. I shouted out to everyone and everyone got a glimpse of it. It split into two parts before banishing in the nothingness. I wish I could have captured it. It was magnificent with greenish hue to it. It was indeed a wishing star.

We couldn’t believe our eyes!!! We kept on talking about it for a long time until I got this idea of keeping my camera in front of us to capture some long exposures around the fire.

They came out to be magnificent!!!

We tried to draw some shapes with a smoke and it looked really amazing. The stars in the background with huge mountains and five of us standing in front of the fire. It was truly a dream like situation.

You could probably get a glimpse of what we felt by looking at the photographs and reading my blog but let me clarify it’s not even 5 percent of the experience. You need to be physically present there to fully experience it to the spiritual level. It was indeed the best camping trip of our lives. It was around 11:30 PM we decided to hop in our tents and get some sleep.

We had another adventure waiting for us the next day. We didn’t decide what we were gonna do tomorrow and left that decision for tomorrow only. In my tent, I saw the photos I took and I was stunned. I couldn’t wait to show it to everyone the next day.

That’s all for today!!!

Peace ☮️