That boulder ahead?
Not just a rock — it’s my bed.
Legs say “we’re done,”
So I sit, soak up the sun.
Thanks, Himalayas — well said.
Our YHAI base camp, Seobagh is spick and span. The irregular pyramidal roof covers our dining area, where hot water, tea, welcome drinks and all the meals are hosted. The kitchen staff and the cooks supply endless hot drinks and food at specific timings.
I am sure like me, you all will prefer a seat to sip the hot tea. But here, there was not a single chair. As trekkers we would have preferred the riverside boulders in the campsite that could become our sofas and recliners. Even a log of wood becomes a comfortable bench. There was the boundary wall which had barbed wire over it and was non functional for our use. There were only 2 round rocks at the entrance of just one tent out of almost 30 dozen-man tents. And these 2 rare seats were always occupied, almost like a game of musical chairs. I was always searching for a seat when I had a plate or a cup in my hand. I know that flat ground is safe and less prone to accidents when so many trekkers are occupying the campsite at any given time. Any way, time passed and we left for the higher camps.
The first campsite, KokiNala had plenty of rocks, with sharp edges and flat surfaces. A welcome relief if you take care while resting.
The second campsite, Lamadough was higher. The campsite had a large flat round and smooth rock bang in the centre, around which all the tents were pitched.
Lamadough had rocks all around. In fact giant boulders or rocks jutting out into the scene, which became our viewing gallery to watch the sunset and the valley.
After sunset and our dinner, the weather became cloudy and cold. The clouds descended upon us and we retired to our tents. It was not windy yet. Now the campsite becomes familiar when you repeatedly use a single path to visit different points of utility. For example, the water filling station, the washrooms, the dining area and of course our own tents.
At night, I must have felt a little warmer and there was a need for fresh air. Groggy with sleep over my eyes, I stepped out by unzipping my tent's flap door. My headlight was my torch. It was cloudy all around. The visibility was reduced, that I could see only my feet and nothing else in front. From my daytime memory, I walked straight knowing that I will reach a point where there is grass and no rocks. I wanted to avoid the rocks in the pitch darkness of the foggy night. Soon, I crossed a flat rock which had a white band like a thick ribbon that wraps a birthday gift. I was surprised that I had not seen this rock patch during the daytime. Was I on the right track? How can I get lost so soon? I looked back. Nothing but just white clouds in the darkness, near and around me.
I thought I have walked in a straight line and I have to retrace my steps to reach the tent. But before that I had to reach the safe zone that is grassy and devoid of rocks. I continued the trail blindly. I was even more surprised. There was a huge triangular rock standing in front of me and blocking my path. It also had a white band traversing it, only broader than the earlier one. I had definitely not seen this rock in the day time. I was nowhere the near the grassy patch devoid of rocks. Where was I?
I turned around and I could not see my tents. I had not taken any uphill or downhill or had fallen to reach some place at night, where I had not been during the daytime. My headlamp was working but it was feeble for the thick blanket of clouds in the black night. I retraced my steps and reached a tent. I was about to heave a sigh of relief when I noticed that the flap doors of our zipper tent were closed by placing heavy rocks. There was a line of rocks placed neatly and my tent was tightly closed. I wondered why did my tent mates close the tent like this. In fact, you will know that rocks are used to close the tents in this way, when there is no chain or zip to it. The rocks and the ropes secure the tent from wind and wild animals.
Why was my tent closed in a matter of less than 5 minutes, especially when I had stepped for a breath of fresh air? I was confused and sleepy. Thankfully the clouds parted at the right time and my torch beam reached my actual tent. It was at a higher level. The half closed tent flap door was as I had left it. I heaved a sigh a relief.
I don't know how I had crossed levels and reached at the lower tents of our campsite, in the dark and cold night. I had a good laugh the next morning.
The morning sun welcomed me back to clarity and warmth.
One day, you were searching for rocks to sit, another day there were too many of them and on the third day, they took their revenge. I realised I am content by walking & not sitting.
Train, bus & helicopter between home & base camp for Uttarakhand trek
11.04.2024, Thursday.
Three friends met at the station. One of us had actually joined impromptu (on-the-spot) and had managed to get all confirmed reservations (not even RACs)!
The final packing of the bag concluded a few hours before the journey started.
My bag weighed 13 kg.
We alighted at Delhi.
Another train journey took us to the foothills of Uttarakhand - Kathgodam. We met our fellow trekkers in this train for the first time - Paresh Bhai from Ahmedabad and Govind Bhai from Panvel, MH.
12.04.2024, Friday.
22:30 The train reached Kathgodam. Our KMVN's hotel TRH Kumaon Dwar just 5 minutes from Kathgodam railway station and we fell off to sleep in the clean rooms.
13.04.2024, Saturday - day 1 - reporting for the trek.
Our batch of 25 gathered on time and the long journey to Munsiyari starts. It is our base camp.
On the way, we passed by the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram, Kainchi Dham. It is approximately 3 hours from Kathgodam and 8 hours from Munsiyari. We saw it from the top and the road swirls next to it in the valley. I wish we could have stopped for darshan of this powerful place. Neem Karoli Baba was the avataar of Lord Hanuman. Jay Shri Ram.
Pandey Lodge at Munsiyari is our base camp.
The long spacious room accommodated 5 trek mates and it had 2 attached washrooms. The stay was comfortable in the clean room.
14.04.2024, Sunday - acclimatization day.
YHAI Delhi, the organiser of this trek had arranged a hike to the nearby Nanda Devi Mandir.
15.04.2024, Monday - flag off.
Our trek starts by a flag off ceremony and we walk into the jungle.
Our trek route will face the Panch Chouli peaks (5 snow clad peaks). And a detailed description of the trek will be given in the blog posts to follow.
19.04.2024, Friday - group breaks & election day.
Now the plan to RETURN actually started the moment we were seated in the bus from Kathgodam to Munsiyari.
It was election day. And public transport was not easily available. Some of our group members panicked and requested that the acclimatization can be forfeited (dangerous when the trek is an high-altitude one) and thankfully nothing of that sort happened. Members had their flights and trains booked and were apprehensive that they might miss them.
We had booked our return by helicopter and the ride was my life's first. Many of us had traveled in aeroplanes, but helicopter travel is rare. There is weight limit. Anyone above 85 kg and anyone's luggage above 5 kg would be overweight and will pay INR 100/- per kg. My luggage was was 8 kg above the permissible limit and I had to pay Rs. 800/- more. After taxation and luggage, my total fare for the helicopter ride was INR 4475/-.
The same friend who had booked impromptu tickets, got confirmed helicopter tickets for us.
The experience was good. It's choppy. No wonder, it is called a chopper 🚁.
The best part of this aerial journey is bypassing the 12 hour road trip, which dehydrated me completely while coming here.
7 antiperistaltic movements and eyes closed tight. Too much.
The 🚁 ride cuts the travel time to just 45 minutes. The pilot doesn't allow any recording even with a mobile. Flight mode is compulsory. He was shouting some instructions inside the cabin with the rotors on and we couldn't hear anything. We just nodded and actually didn't utter a word in the entire flight and gestured to our neighbours about the land formations seen from the top.
Yet frankly I did feel nauseous, but thankfully not as bad as the road trip.
From the top, Uttarakhand has only mountains, valleys, towns, and rivers. The mountains are lush green. The rivers are running dry.
Nainital is easily identifiable from the top, with the lake after which it is named and also the other lakes of Nainital.
From the chopper 🚁, when all the mountain ranges ended, our ride ended, with landing in the plains at Haldwani. It was hot and jolted us.
We had changed our train's boarding point to Haldwani and INR 20/- per head rickshaw (x 3 passengers = 60/-), dropped us to Haldwani railway station, which was just 15 minutes away.
Friends parted.
We took the Kathgodam - Delhi Junction train.
The train reached Delhi Junction at 3:30 am.
We rested till 6 am in the waiting room.
Delhi has lots of travel options, but we selected to walk the last mile after metro journey to a delicious breakfast at Janpath.
Now the heat awaits us, but my Delhi friend's plan saved us. Check out what Delhi has in store for us and it will be a pleasant surprise. A ride in my friend's Mercedes Benz!
Check out my trek experience with YHAI at Munsiyari Khaliya Top in Uttarakhand.
Planning for Himalayas? or Have an idea? Here are some tips and our story.
Ever I wonder myself sometimes how I reached 12,500ft, Kedarkantha Himalayan peak in Uttarakhand, experiencing snowfall in my life for the first time, without any extra efforts needed to trek the big risky mountain with my friends. Travelling from south India without knowing Hindi, we went all along, reached, trekked, survived and successfully came back and used to tell these stories to everyone whoever ask about this wonderful trip.
Bit long journey
After 2015 Chennai flood, it was like a Winter break for us to recover from the monstrous flood. We (Aravind, Manoj, and Myself) went by train considering our budget and all these travel ticket bookings and membership and slot booking in YHAI (Youth Hostel Association of India) where everything was preplanned and perfect for our excursion. It almost took 48 hours for TamilNadu express to reach the National capital, meanwhile met two army persons in the train where one is the savior and another one is the driver, amused us by sharing their experiences who are returning back to works after their leave and we reached Delhi early morning. Freezing with 6-degree Celsius, took Delhi Metro, the cheapest travel to roam around and reach places quickly, reached Sector 10 Rohini. We had a quick breakfast in McDonald's and went inside Decathlon (largest sporting goods retailer) nearby to complete our checklist, Christmas celebrations were going on in the meantime.
Again taking Metro, we reached Delhi railway station and headed to Dehradun. We reached the same day night. It’s freezing more here even though we had the same temperature but it was a night. We met two more friends (Karthik & Akhlad), who already reached Dehradun directly from Pune and had our rooms ready earlier. Couldn’t recall the place we stayed but it was nearby the main bus stand. After our heavy dinner (Rotti with Grill chicken) beside the hotel, went for a night walk and had a cup of tea around 1am, made us comfortable with campfire built adjacent to that shop. While returning back to home, we were stopped by the local police and they used us to entertain them during their work hours, it was entertaining for us too.
To base camp
Next day morning, we came to contact with another set who were heading to the same place, Sankri (our base camp). Unfortunately, we couldn’t cope up with their timings and they left us. After some selfies we checked out, reaching local bus stand to enquire how to reach Sankri. It was a bit costly to take a Jeep so we went through Govt. bus.
With long 8hrs of travel including our lunch, singing loudly Tamil, Hindi & English songs sitting at last seat in Bus, clicking some pics wherever bus stops for a break and two more people joined us in the midway who were our batch for the same trek. It was quite a long bus journey and reached a place where the jeep is the only option to reach base camp.
Jeep ride is like the most adventurous I think every time because, those track inside the forest, the single 10feet way for both sides of vehicles to commute and those bends which put me to hold my breath till we reach. My crazy friends took a step further and toured at the top of the jeep and we reached base camp around 6pm, which was dark by that time, crossed 8000 feet already. Here is the place is shown below.
We failed to bring admit cards, alleging flood as the reason, we showed soft copies and completed our initial process and asked to finished our dinner with rotti’s and sabji before 7pm. Lost all our mobile networks at this point completely.
Why this Kolaveri?
It’s time to collect our things, get into tents and make ourself comfortable. We were called to the place after some time where every one of our batches gathered, for an introductory session. They asked people to perform something they would be good at, not to awe, some people started showing their talents and our chance came in between. We prepared for a little drama within minutes with help of other two guys and the context is, How well we managed to learn some basic Hindi words and we defined in fun manner, people liked it. Ending the drama with a song, Why this Kolaveri di? and our batchmates sang along with us well. Who doesn’t know that popular song by the way?
Warm Up
Next day, after a warmup call, we went to a place following our guide. Honestly, that moment made me down, lose consciousness for a short time and couldn’t even complete my warm-ups. I’m afraid of my health at that time, gave me a thought,
How am gonna make it to12500ft? This question will be answered below.
Back to normal after some rest, we had our breakfast after returning back to base camp. It's time for shopping now and we got some gloves and scarf, the day went with some plays with my batch mates. We all asked to get a full big body cover of Rs.20, which blows your mind when you come to know it’s purpose.
Day 1 Trekking
Leaving all the unnecessary things in the base camp, we started to trek only with the things needed to make ourself comfortable. We headed into the forest and took some good photographs. We had a lunch which was provided at the base camp in the middle and finally, everyone from our group managed to reach the camp called, Juda Talav. The thing that we find interesting during this trek where two big personable dogs, one at the front and other at the back, taking us safely to each camp. When we asked for the reason, they are used to protect you from Wolves, the coach replied. And further said, you can see sometimes these dogs run and bark at random places where they spot endangered animals. To remember our protectors, we took selfies with them and they looked gorgeous.
The following pic shows how the camp looks.
Adding to our fun part, we team of 5-6 members challenged ourselves for a bare body challenge. And we made it happened before reaching the Juda Talav camp. I could still get that moment, shouting all around and dressing back expeditiously.
Snow Fall
The best thing we are gifted in Juda Talav camp is the snow fall. Not everyone could see the snowfall over there, which occurs periodically. Some of the moments are captured perfectly in slow motion videos in my iPhone 6 and one video is added below.
After a hot soup and a dinner around 6pm, the day ended with a single candle light inside our tent, playing bluffs in cards and parodying our friends. Another best thing were no mobile networks and current will disturb you, such a peaceful surrounding one should definitely experience in their life.
Day 2 Trekking
We headed to another camp, after our normal breakfast of Chapathi and Sabji but this time, its bit more adventurous than previous one. Places were filled with ice, snow and were very slippery. Joining hands and helping each other, we could easily manage to trek this camp.
Frozen lake
We could spot a frozen lake in our way which gives us time to spend and again this is the first time for us, playing in the lake for a very long time.
Cell phone signal
After few yards, at some point, our guide instructed us to use your phone to update the status of us to our family members. We were amazed, how we could make calls and there were even no signals earlier. Later he said, only BSNL network works here. Only two of our batch mates have BSNL networked phone, and all the 40 above members made use of it.
We reached the camp Luhasu after some time. This place is astonishing and the below pic speaks the remaining.
Who don’t work on making a snow man, when you are fully surrounded with full of snow. Aren’t we exception to it? We built a snowman and took some pics with him.
Our camp leader here is Chandra Sharma who is graduated, is working here at free of cost only because of his passion. He inspired us with his challenging stories and made us proud of him. Such a passionate person, made us think deeply and delivered us, the true definition of it. He also showed us the point we going to reach tomorrow, inflated our excitement to the core.
After sharing few of our experiences with our friends, we went for a sleep and we were asked to get ready around 4am, to trek final phase, Kedarkantha Peak.
Day 3 Trekking - Kedarkantha Peak
We woke up around 3am and getting things done in hurry. It was like, are we going to make this? We started at 4am with this thought with a small torch in hand. We were moving slowly since the place looks very dark and we don’t want any abnormal things to happen.
That was the peak we are heading, said our coach. To our excitement, we conversed ourselves that it's near and we can reach soon, but soon we thought it’s not easier in that - 15-degree Celsius.
Walking ...
Walking ...
Walking ...
The peak is getting closer but still, we didn’t reach. It was hard to take selfies either. Neither couldn’t touch camera icon or press volume buttons to take photos with our gloves. Instead, we removed but couldn’t hold longer. Hands are freezing. The peak and the beautiful view is the only thing, made us move. Now, the path is a bit dangerous than previous one. If one is slipped, it affects everyone and we don’t know where it takes.
One more interesting thing to note here is, We had a couple in our batch and they both were loveable. They both were caring & helping each other, such an adorable peoples to meet. Only group of guys can enjoy a trip? No. Make yourself surrounded by positive peoples and one, you can sync with you. That would definitely be a memorable trip.
Finally, around 12 pm, after tough 8 hours of journey, we reached the peak. Wow, such an amazing view it was. There was a temple in the top. Clicked hundreds of pics in excitement. One of the pics goes below.
It was breathtaking.
Mountains were beautiful. The peak was beautiful. No words to explain the dazzling mountains. Beautiful, that's it. Once again we took the bare body challenge.
The group picture ...
After some hours of refreshments, we started to trek down. Again, the special and adventurous moment for us. You remember about the body cover which I explained earlier, time to use it now.
Snow Skirting
Couldn’t get a better word to describe it. We covered ourself with the cover and our guide asked us to roll over in the snow. We started skirting and it was fun. We had challenges with our friends like, who goes first, who can do better by dashing through the snow. We didn’t stop even after the cover was torn.
Finally, we reached one of our camp, which was not the one we stayed back earlier. It was slippery, yet we managed to reach with our friend's support.
Day 4 Trekking - Returning to Base Camp
Next day, after a long walk again, we reached our base camp. We were in a hurry mood to wind up so that we could spend some time in Delhi or Rishikesh. Certificate of completion will be issued only on day 5 (last day) but we explained our situation and get our certificates done by that time and winded up.
Q: How am gonna make it to12500ft?
A: Yes, this is how I made it.
Some days in National Capital
We reached Dehradun after a long travel from base camp, almost 12 hours. We got a bus immediately after our dinner and headed to Delhi. We got a cheap room and dropped our luggage. The first place we visited was,
Jama Masjid, Delhi.
The religious place to visit. After some religious sentiments, we had briyani and went shopping. We visited India Gate, walked along those roads and concluded our day.
Next day, TN Express again put us (Aravind & Myself) in homes after long 2 days journey where other 3 of our friends took flight and returned to their natives.
Tips & Helpful links before you go ...
YHAI - Site to book your slots
http://www.yhaindia.org/
To dress up well for the trek?
https://www.decathlon.in/
Takeaways
Thermals (the type of clothes) which holds heat, generated from your body, keeping you warm throughout the trek.
Get a quality jacket.
A rucksack is the best one to trek along with your things.
Don’t get plastic water bottles as it would freeze water at minus temperatures.
Take gloves and good quality trekking shoes.
Most importantly, get a fitness certificate with the doctor before you proceed.
