The Summit story of KHEERGANGA

Day 1

So this one is from the kheerganga peak. We wanted to end the mayhem 2020 in an memorable way,so we packed our bags and came to kasol.

The roads were flooded with traffic due to long weekend and festive season.We walked till Manikaran for 4kms and then took a cab to Barshaini which is the base camp for kheerganga, the trek was supposed to start next day so we decided to take a night stay at kalga which is a 1.5km trek uphill.

The locals told us about the snowfall forecast but we were adamant to go and no one was in a mood to step back.

Next morning we came down back to Barshaini and kept our bags at a cafe(I don't remember the name but there was a cute little girl,she offered me free choclates for the trek😝).

Then the JOURNEY STARTED, for moments in the trek we felt like giving up and ending our trek at RUDRANAAG.
When we reached Rudranaag the real difficulty awaited us the whole trek ahead was on black ice. So keeping the advice of locals in mind we got ourselves a guide from there.

Our guide told us that generally kheerganga is a moderate trek but at this time of year when the trails are covered with ice it gets really difficult. We reached Kheerganga top at around 6 p.m. in the evening then our guide took us to the camping site where we sat near fireplace.

I had never seen a place and people so much social as there. We sat for hours listening tales of Wild bears and trek experiences. Then we went to our tents at around 11 pm.

I had just fallen asleep when I heard some noise outside my tent.I stepped up without making any noise and opened my tents zip and peeped out to check if it was a wild bear.But as soon as I saw I screamed so loud it was snowing.

I had never seen snowfall like this before. I took a chair and sat outside my tent,wrapped in a blanket,watching snowfall nothing could have got me more mesmerized than that.

Day 2

Kheerganga Trek

As the morning light came,everyone else also woke up and I got more company. We played in snow for a while then I had one last thing to do, take a bath in kheerganga hot water pool (the best pool you can ever get to bathe in)

My company had taken this delight in the night already so I along with some guys I met at kheerganga went for the bath.

I can't really express how it feels stepping into hot water amidst a frozen land. It was godly. All the tiredness, all the lazyness seemed to be vanished in the hot water of the pool.
But the catch was stepping out of it. As soon as you step out within seconds the water in your hairs turns into ice.So we put on our clothes as fast as we could and started sliding down in snow to reach the fire place.

We sat near fire for some minutes and we were back to normal again. The guide came back and told us that we should start trekking downhill as the more people will go before us the more snow will be converted into ice and it will get really difficult and risky. So we said our goodbyes to all the friends we got there and started trekking back to Base camp.

In the way we had to slide our ways in snow, to reach points where our guide would stop us from sliding directly into the 12kms deep paravati river.

The guide really proved helpful,at places he had to make steps in black ice,help us cross narrow places. I would never suggest anyone to do kheerganga trek in last week of December without a guide.

Trek to the base camp was magical,walking through narrow snow trails in a frozen valley, all the trees showering snowflakes on those who dared to trek uphill amidst the snow forecast, took us around 6 hours to reach the base camp.

Finally we went back to the Little girl's cafe.I sat with her and had a little chit chat,some warmth from the fireplace to relieve my frost bitten legs and learned 2-3 tricks from the girl there.

Finally our guide called us a taxi at the cafe. We took our bags and said goodbye to everyone and were on our way to Manikaran Sahib.