Red & White Chandrashila & Deoriatal Lake

Red & White

It had been almost 4 years that I had my last and only trek to Sandakphu, I was getting some strong urge to do the next. I checked with few of my friends if they could join me, unfortunately nothing worked out, but I was convinced that the Himalayas are calling me 🙂 . So started planning for my first ever solo trip 🙂 . The name which came to my mind is “IndiaHikes” and I went to their website and after doing some analysis, finalized “Deoriatal – Chandrashila Peak”. Now about the dates, I chose 13th Apr- 19th Apr week as that was a week with a Full Moon night. I booked my flight tickets from Kolkata to Delhi round trip and also booked the return train tickets from Haridwar to Delhi. I planned the onward journey to Haridwar in bus depending on the flight arrival at Delhi.
Indiahikes is a very professional organization which gives you the real flavours of mountain trekking ; they start a month ahead of your trekking date when you get the first mail from Indiahikes co-ordinator and from then every subsequent day a mail with full of important information will be delivered to your inbox. Those mails were working on me like adrenaline rush.
Now coming to the preparation, I started running and gyming in the morning to achieve Indiahike fitness goal (5 KM in 35 minutes). A Decathlon visit is a must for trekking stuffs so, I went to the shop with my trekking expert friend Anirban and purchased some must-have stuffs. I was just loving those preparatory days as countdown had already begun in my mind.

13th April, I woke up at 5AM in the morning as I had to catch the 7:40 AM flight to Delhi. I reached Delhi airport at 10AM and then booked myself in the 1:15PM bus from Delhi ISBT bus stand. I had a plan to visit the Har-ki-Pauri ghat to see the evening “Aarti” but I missed it as I reached Haridwar at 7PM. I checked into a hotel which near the railway station as next day pick up point was the railway station. After taking some rest, I headed towards Har-ki-pauri which is the most famous Ganga ghat of Haridwar.

Har-Ki-Pauri Ganga Ghat

After spending some time, I had dinner from a very popular eatery “Mohan Ji Puri Wale” about which I had read in the internet. I strolled around the market area for sometime before heading back to hotel.

14th April, To Sari
I joined my fellow trekkers in front of the Haridwar railway station where we had our first groupfie! We met with our trek lead Mr Singla. We were a group of 21 and started our onward journey in three vehicles at 7AM.

Haridwar Railway Station

We had a fun group in our car so had a great journey. We stopped for breakfast in a place which was just on the bank of the Ganges. I had heard a lot about “DevPrayag” and when we stopped and got to see the sangam, it was like “WoW”.

Sangam at DevPrayag

The route to Sari was extremely scenic. We drove through Rishikesh, Devaprayag, Rudraprayag, Srinagar (not the J&K one 😉) and Ukhimath, the beautiful emerald green Alaknanda river gave us company throughout the journey. It was my first visit to these areas so I was just soaking up everything through my eyes and feeding them to my camera lens through the windows.

Alakananda River

We stopped at Rudraprayag to have our lunch and then wheels started rolling again. I gave a small squeal of delight when I had the first glimpse of the snow capped Chandrashila peak!

First view of Chandrashila Peak

Haridwar to Sari was 10-11 hours long journey, ideally should have taken 6-7 hrs, but hugely delayed due to the road widening project.

Road Widening Activity

We reached Sari at around 6PM. It is a beautiful village at an altitude of 6554 feet and acts as a base camp for Deoriatal lake.

Beautiful Sari Village

We were allocated our rooms and after some rest, we all gathered at the dining area at 7:30PM. It was a gala dinner especially when you consider such a remote place but we got a good glimpse of the amazing quality of foods IH cooks were going to serve us in the coming days 🙂
Mr Singla completed the rest of the documentations and allocated one health card to each one of us, Mr Singla started putting the oxygen level and pulse rate of each individual throughout the trekking days. After dinner, our trek lead arranged an orientation session for all of us and briefed us about the trek and also the rules and regulations of Himalayan trek. We got to know each other better and saw the excitement brimming in all of us. We also met “Chacha” our guide and Vipin (Sweeper Guide). We could see all the stars and the starlit distant mountains in the night sky, so started some experiments with our DSLRs 🙂 . We went to bed with all the excitement as next day was our “Real Journey Day”.

15th April, Trekking Day-1 : The Mystical Lake
We woke up early and wandered around the village and saw the sunrise. After having sumptuous breakfast, we joined our trek lead to start the day-1 journey. Indiahike runs a “Green Trail” project where they provide a small bag to individuals and ask them to collect the waste from the trekking trails and put them in the dedicated waste bin present in next camp. We had an interesting anthem (Written and Composed by our trek lead)  just before we start the trek.

Trek towards Deoriatal Lake

On looking up at the hills, we could tell that the trek would be steep and sure enough it was. As soon as we started gaining altitude, all the big mountains started getting visible and our expression was just “WoW”.

Himalayan Range

I was always looking back at the valley and also kept an eye on Chandrashila Peak (which I would scale a few days later) visible on our way up.
We walked through the dense cover of Rhododendron trees, almost all of us tasted the rhododendron flower and believe me it was soooo Yummy 🙂

Colors Of Rhododendrons

On reaching our destination, we were absolutely mesmerized by the sight of the majestic lake flanked by the very green trees in the backdrop of the mighty Himalayas.

THE Deoriatal

After spending some time at the lake, we headed to our campsite which is 5-10 minutes’ walk uphill as Uttarakhand forest department has withdrawn permission to camp at Deoriatal lake.

On the way to Our Campsite

IH Tents at Deoriatal

It was only 3KM from Sari but due to the steep climb, it took almost 3 hours to reach Deoriatal which is at an elevation of 7800 feet not that we were in any hurry to reach the destination as we all were enjoying the journey through the red Rhododendrons and white capped mountains.
After having our lunch, we all spend some quality time in the dining tent. We went to the lake side in the afternoon where we had the 1st story session from our guide Chacha 🙂 .

Story Time

We had a nice pleasant dinner and went back to our tent to get ready with our camera and lenses. As the moon appeared bright and promising, the Himalayas presented an unforgettable sight. The aura looked heavenly in the moon light; I gave a pat on my back for having chosen the full moon week for the trek. I had seen a clip of Kanchenjunga in full moon in a Bengali movie and from then on I had this dream of viewing this phenomenon someday with my own eyes! Now when the mighty Choukhamba was standing in front of my eyes shining blissfully in bright moonlight, my heart was filled with unparalleled joy 😊. We tried some snaps with our camera and captured some good shots but they were nothing in comparison to what we had in front of our eyes.

Choukhamba at Moonlight

Although, we intended to spend the whole night beholding the Choukhamba, yet we had to call it a day as next day’s trek was the longest.

16th April – Trekking Day-2 –  To Syalmi:
We couldn’t stop ourselves from going to the lake again in the morning. After spending sometime we started the onward journey around 8AM. We got packed lunch today as it was going to be a long trek. The path was faintly visible and involved a lot of ups and downs, most of the terrain was rocky with maple forest in the surroundings. After an hour we could see the highest point (Jahndi Top) of the day and after hiking for some time, we were on the top. We spent some time with the spectacular views.

Towards Jhandi Top

After the trek of 4-5 hours full of ups and down, we finally reached a place which is fully covered by the Red and Pink Rhododendron forest is nothing but Rohini Bugyal.

Red Bugyal

We decided to sit in the bugyal to take a break and have lunch. We found a comfortable spot on the grass and laid back for a while waiting for everyone to catch up.

Lunch Time

The food was delicious though someone amongst us said that “Can we have a microwave please” as food was too cold by then. Soon after lunch, we started again and now it was real downhill movement and our knees were having a tough time 😦 . On the way to Syalmi, we spotted a herd of “Malabar Giant Squirrel”, they were so cute and this is the first time I saw them. We were around half an hour from Syalmi camp when the most hated rain hit us and hit us very hard. We reached our Syalmi camp at around 2:30 PM.

IH camp at Syalmi

It was still raining very heavily so we entered into the tent immediately. We were waiting for the rain to stop but no luck really for next couple of hours. We got a call from our leader to come to the dining tent where hot pasta and tea was waiting for us. We came out from the dining tent as rain stopped finally and we got a wonderful view of this small hamlet Syalmi.

Beautiful Syalmi

We got to see a beautiful rain-drenched sun set in the nearest mountain.We could hear the sound of the ravishing waters from a distance and couldn’t wait to reach there and found out a beautiful waterfall from the opposite mountain.

Sunset at Syalmi

It was freezing cold and we had to go inside our tents after dinner as rain had started again after the brief break that we got.

17th April – Trekking Day-3 – To Baniya Kund:
Ohh No !!! Morning started with heavy rain and the cloud cover was also not indicating any possibility of outdoor activity. We all gathered in the dining tent and had our breakfast. As per plan we were supposed to start our trek by 8AM but Mr Singla said that we will start at 10AM due to the bad weather. Positive point was that the day’s trek was only 5KM so we could start late. We started playing “Dumb Charades” and started enjoying our time in the dining tent. After some time, leader came and informed that we will start the journey at 12PM after lunch. It was still raining but we started our journey underneath Poncho.

Trekking under Rain

The path was slippery so we took each and every step very carefully, however after sometime we started enjoying the trek under the rain as well. Trekking in the rain is also a kind of experience as you feel so close to nature and its moods. Most of the path was through the jungle, we reached the destination Baniya Kund at around 4PM.
We got accommodation in a lodge and after an hour, we all gathered in our big room where hot tea and pakora was served. We all were enjoying the evening after an exhausting day. Mr Singla came to our room and we had a meeting where he briefed us about the next day’s plan and preparations which was summit day. After an early dinner we packed our bags and went to bed anxious about tomorrow’s weather.

18th April – Day-4 – The Summit Day:
This was the D day for us as we were to go to the top of that white capped mountain which we had seen for the first time from Sari. We started our journey at 5AM after a light breakfast in a cab towards Chopta. It was 30 minutes’ drive and we started our 1st leg of the trek till Tungnath around 5:30AM.
We started climbing the well laid trail up till Tungnath and now we realized the positive side of having almost continuous rains for the last 24 hours, it was completely white with fresh snow in the mountains.

White Chopta

Many of us were seeing snow for first time and I could sense their excitement in their faces. After hiking for some distance, we put crampons in our shoes as we started getting some heavy snow on the trekking path. We spotted most beautiful mountain-bird Monal on the way which you can expect only on this route.

We started to climb again and saw Tungnath from a distance, it was a steep climb and our first achievement was reaching the temple.

First view of Tungnath

Some of the trekking path was difficult due to heavy snow, it was like 10-12 inch snow in some of the patches. Tungnath is the highest Shiva temple in India at an altitude of 12073 feet and is also part of the panch kedar temple. It is 3KM from Chopta starting point and we took more than 2.5 hours to reach there.

THE Tungnath

Tungnath Temple

After spending some time in the temple, our guide called us and briefed us about the difficulty level of the last stretch of the journey and some real-good instructions to manage that. When our guide Chacha showed us the path, our face was like “He must be kidding”! It was almost 75 degree uphill climb.

Tough Task

Our guide started creating the trail on the fresh snow and we just followed the path but it was really scary and difficult. We felt WoW after reaching the top but then we found out that another steep leg to the peak was waiting for us. We could see the temple at the Chandrashila peak far from our reach.

First view of the TOP

We were on a steep incline with fresh white snow under our feet. The terrain challenged our bodies but we defied all odds and made it to the peak after total 3.5hours of climbing. Chandrashila at an altitude of 13000 feet is 1KM from Tungnath temple and we took almost an hour to reach.

Small Temple on top of Chandrashila

We were really tired but the beauty around us took away all the fatigue. I just stood there in awe. Surprisingly we had enough internet coverage that I did video chat with my family and share my moments and feelings with them 🙂
The team had a groupie time and I could see happiness and excitement in everyone’s face and why not !

THE TEAM

After spending around 45 minutes, now the time to go-back and we were just not feeling to do that but when we came to know that the descent was not the one that we normally do, instead we will need to slip down through the white snow, it was like “icing on the cake”. We did this in three laps and covered almost 1500ft heights to reach the Tungnath temple.

Sliding Down

We had some snow fight too. While coming back to Chopta, on the way we got more snow fall and I was just thinking that probably no one can expect so much on a single trek. The whole scenery was just a picturesque with pink rhododendron and white snow in the background.

Beauty of Rhododendron

Finally we reached Chopta at around 2PM and had tea and Maggie at a restaurant before continuing towards the lodge. We had our hot lunch at the lodge and then an evening “ADDA” in our rooms where we shared all our experiences with each other. We got our completion certificate and T-Shirt from IndiaHike. We had our time till 11:30PM to celebrate our achievement before we finally had to call it a day.

19th April – To Haridwar:
What a morning it was. Clear sunny day and we got to know why people say that “Chopta is mini Swiss”.

Chopta

I was sitting on a rock and looking at my beloved Himalayas the only thought on my mind was is this the end or will I be ever be back.
We started at 7AM in the morning and reached Haridwar at 6PM. Some of us halted at Rishikesh as they had a plan for one day stop over. Some of us took train or bus towards Delhi. We hired a cab for Delhi airport drop as we couldn’t manage to get the booking on the train. We took flight as per individual schedules next day morning and said “Bye” to each other.
Though we all were going back to our home, we all felt a sense of sadness of leaving the place and the wonderful group of friends.

Tagged: Alaknanda, Baniya Kund, Bhagirathi, Chandrashila, Chopta, Choukhamba, Deoriatal lake, Devaprayag, DevPrayag, Green Trail, Har-ki-Pauri, Haridwar, Himalayas, IH Tents, Indiahike, Jahndi Top, Malabar Giant Squirrel, mini Swiss, Mohan Ji Puri Wale, Monal, panch kedar, rhododendron, Rishikesh, Rohini Bugyal, Rudraprayag, Sari, Syalmi, Tungnath, Ukhimath, Uttarakhand