Story of my first trekking experience (valley of flowers and Hemkund lake trek)

I started off my journey on Friday (12/07/19) evening from Chennai. Took a evening flight to Delhi and reached there by night where all of my friends from different places planned to meet. Just after we met in Delhi, we came to realise that there were landslides going on in Uttharakhand. We went to Connaught place to have dinner and ate some tasty burgers in "Burger Singh". We were eating and thinking of to make plans in our trip due to weather in Uttharakhand at that time, but we did a good thing by sticking to original plan (planned just before one day before leaving to Delhi ????) with guys. So we took a bus to Haridwar from Delhi bus stand around mid night (Take government buses, don't trust private travels people around that bus stand).

Day 1 ( 13/07/2019) : Delhi to Haridwar

We took a bus (I prefer to call it Ganja bus) from Delhi around 12:30 AM and reached Haridwar by 7AM. It was raining and we took a hotel to keep our luggage. From there went to kusha ghat to in Ganga river. We went to Ganga mandir from there and returned to hotel.

We know that we have to reach Govind ghat(last motorable point to valley of flowers and hemkund sahib trek) by 2PM next day (because authorities close gates and won't allow trekking to Gangharia after 2PM). As there are no Government buses till next day morning for Govind ghat, we hired a cab around 2PM on Day 1( 13/07/2019) and started our journey to Govind ghat. We found beautiful mountains and as well as some not so terrible land slides on our way.

Around 10PM, we reached Rudraprayag and stayed in a hotel there for over night.

We started from Rudraprayag at 6AM in the early morning so that we can reach Govind ghat by 11AM.

Here are few pic on the way from Rudraprayag to Govind ghat

After reaching Govind ghat, we purchased few plastic cover raincoats as we didn't know (we knew it but ignored it.. life la seriousness illa macha) that it was raining over there. We started trekking around 12PM from Govind ghat towards Gangharia (base point for both Valley of flowers and Hemkund sahib treks). First 1km trekking was very tough with steep gradient. After that we got used to it ????. It rained for some time in between, though we didn't stop (Determination matters and also We also had Maggie on the way ????????). Somehow we managed to reach Gangharia around 5PM finishing 13Kms trek in 5 hours (we relaxed at some points in between around 1hour time).

Here are few pics took on trek from Govind ghat to Gangharia

Tip: If you're going for Hemkund sahib trek, then you can drop your luggage at Govind ghat and collect it at Gurudwara in Gangharia (It'll ease your luggage burden on trek and save your time too).

We had dinner at Gurudwara and my friend somehow managed to a vip room in Gurudwara and they didn't charge for it, instead they asked us to donate for Gurudwara whatever amount we can give. We stayed there over night.

Gangharia to Valley of flowers

We started early morning 7AM with the packed food from a hotel (we've to tell hotel people the day before so that they can prepare it and give you early morning before trek). We have to take a left turn at around 300 metres from Gangharia(there is a clear board showing "way to valley flowers"). We missed it somehow because we took a short cut to save around 50 metres just to realise later that we already trekked 1km towards Hemkund sahib trek ????. With the energy drained faces, we turned around and everyone is surprised that we completed and returning from Hemkund sahib so early ????. Finally we reached a point where we have to give our names before going to Valley of flowers trek and started from there. With in 1km we saw a beautiful stream of water from melted glaciers.

After that we continued to trek an lushful steep slope of around 2kms to get to valley. On the way we witnessed beautiful mountains, flowers and snow.

The trekking way was paved with rocks, so it's not so tough to trek.

We reached valley and it is moderately covered with so many types of flowers (Can't remember those scientific names). We continued to trek in that valley for 7kms till pushpavati river (Ending point of valley of flowers trek). That green valley is very delightful to see. We crossed small bridges placed across water streams coming from melting glaciers and did some stone stacking stuff. We also saw legge's grave (have to trek 1km downslope to reach that) and there lies a beautiful view to click some instagrammable pics. We reached pushpavati river around 2PM, felt very relaxing after reaching that point and the view of that pushpavati river coming through mountains is so beautiful to see.

After spending around 1hour at pushpavati river, it started drizzling. We returned from there through the valley to reach Gangharia. While returning from there, trekking was really easy because we were descending the mountain. We returned Gangharia around 6PM and took some relaxing leg massage. We ended the trek with full satisfaction because we witnessed flowers, mountains, valley and snow. We slept early because we've to trek for Hemkund sahib next day.

We started from Gangharia around 6AM toward Hemkund sahib. The way is full of steep slope and I felt it very tough as a beginner. In between we thought of taking a horse to reach Hemkund but we didn't do that. We took small in between to finish 6kms trek in 5 hours. In Gangharia Gurudwara they said it's 6kms trek but I doubt that. I guess it's atleast 8kms trek because I asked at some local Maggie point and that guy said it's just 3kms from here. After that we trekked around 1 hour and reached another Maggie point and when we asked that shopkeeper, he said the same thing that it's just 3kms from here ????????. We struggled a lot to reach Hemkund sahib and reached there around 11PM. After reaching there and seeing that gurudwar and lake with snowy background mountain, we felt that all our struggle is worth. We spent there around 2 hours and returned back to Gangharia after having lunch there.

We started to return around 1PM in Hemkund lake and reached Gangharia around 3PM. We decided to descend to Govind ghat on the same day and reached Govind ghat by 6PM. We went to Badrinath from from there and stayed there over night.

We visited Badrinath temple in the early morning around 5AM and returned to Rishikesh. On the way to Rishikesh we saw Devparayag. We saw Ganga jarti in Rishikesh but missed river rafting and bungee jumping due to bad weather. We ate Cafe de Goa(small cafe with goan ambience and nice view of laxman jhula). we were off to Mussorie from there.