Go to mountains..!
Why..!
Because in the end, you won't remember the time you have spent working and worrying in the office..!
But you won't forget the story related to each climb for a lifetime..!
This time the blog post is about the Himalayas, The most glamorous part of earth I guess. After lots of failed plans, we finally decided for Kedarkantha trek as we wanted the only snowy mountains in the hell like of heat in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
This trip was actually a treat to me because interviews had taken place of trips while switching job. I felt like I was out of my travelling world and we were not able to decide the time and the place due to other prior reasons. At that time I was having a really messy life, like job-related decisions, issues with my smartphone and travel plans for at least 1 week. So finally I cleared all the messes and decided to go to the most famous winter trek called Kedarkantha.
I started from Mumbai and my friend started from Ahmadabad towards Delhi, Delhi to Dehradun and Dehradun to Sankri - the base village of Kedarkantha trek. One can easily find the transportation for Dehradun from Delhi at any time from the Kashmiri gate bus stop but it's very difficult in case of Sankri village. There are only two direct buses which are in the early morning from Dehradun to Sankri. As we didn't have much idea about the exact arrival time of ours in Dehradun, we took a bit costlier option of taxi and enjoyed our road trip to the Himalayas. We enjoyed the amazing views, with some music and food of our choice as the driver was really cool named Bunty Bhaiya.
After reaching Sankri, we enjoyed snacks and the Himalayan sunset which you can see in the pictures. This time things are different than previous treks because we already booked our trek with a trek organizing company called TrekVeda(https://trekveda.com/). We were accompanied by another 7 members in the group. We got instructed about trek by our trek leader John Bhaiya after having dinner and introduction. We got a wake-up call by John Bhaiya at 6:30 AM in the next day morning because we had to leave for the first stop by 8:00 AM.
The next day, according to plan, we started towards 1st stop called Juda Ka Talab and took around 4-5 hours (it could vary according to the pace). In between we clicked lots of photos, we experienced little snow trekking too. It felt very slippery because we didn't wear proper gear on the 1st day. As we visited in the month of March, we experienced less snow on the 1st day. The base village Sankri almost got covered by snow in the months before March.
After reaching Juda ka Talab, we took lunch and visited the frozen Lake and of course clicked lots of photos. As there was lots of snow on the next base camp, we didn't stop there the next day and we decided to complete the trek on the next day itself. We were instructed to wake up by 1 AM and leave by 2 at max. So that we can reach on the top and get back by the evening at least.
As per the plan, we started by 2 after having breakfast (yess breakfast at 2 am!). We were given crampons and getters for the snow trek. The sky was damn beautiful along with freezing cold wind. You cannot expect these views in the city hustle. Despite of being worried, we were far more excited too for our 1st snow trek.
We started with headlights and with the guidance of leader as we were having many steep climbs and every footstep was sinking 1.5-2 feet deep. After dealing with continuous altitude gain and heavy cold, we reached at some kind of place from where we can see the reposeful sunrise. After experiencing the Himalayan sunrise, we started towards the peak. After trekking for more 6-7 hours we made it to the top at around 10 AM. In between, we motivated each other, clicked pictures, also talked with leaders about our tiredness and explained ourselves that "Bas ab thoda sa aur".
First of all, we laid down on the snow under the warm sunlight and felt quite stress-free. After almost half an hour, we got up with energy and ate a bit. Clicked too many photos by having each mountain in the background. Also clicked photos with our leaders and group. I am sharing a few of them here. We lived it to the fullest.
You may think that we reached at top and now it's over, but the original game was going to start while descending only. We slid on a few paths to cover maximum distance and to save the energy. It was only possible because of our two leaders John Bhaiya and Kalam Bhaiya. Specially Kalam Bhaiya helped me a lot to gain confidence while sliding down. We also got instructions to wear sunglasses as there was a huge problem of snow blindness due to snow and sunlight. As it was already 12 the snow started melting and we realized that the surface was much slippery so we took care of that even. We started losing crampons too due to that kind of surface. Finally, after continuous descending of 5 hours, we made it to our camp at Juda ka Talab. We took rest, had dinner, played games, also shared our words to other fellow travellers from Mumbai who were going to top very next day.
We returned to Sankri on the next day and then started towards Dehradun and then Delhi to Rajkot. In between, we discussed our next trek plans with our favourite trek leaders too.
This is how the trip which has been a great treat to my self ended.
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