Rudranath Mahadev, Chamoli, Uttarakhand - The toughest to reach of all the Shiva's abodes.

My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.

-- Hermann Hesse

This was my last trip back then in 2019 before all these lockdowns started and changed our lives forever.

Like as always, not knowing what's in the stores ahead. I started off from Hyderabad on a cousin's call and we happened to trek one of the most beautiful and untouched places on the earth, Rudranath Mahadev @ 3600 meters, one of the panch kedars and also known to be the toughest of them to reach and hence not many visit this place, so is left undisturbed by unnecessary urbanisation. This trek is around 22-24 Kms up hill and 26 Kms on the way back on a different route. Nothing on this earth can describe what it feels like personally being up there at Rudranath. If you're not an ardent reader the least you can do is to browse through these images to feel it.

Moving ahead for 5 Kms we reached another Bugyal named Litti Bugyal. Here again you have a dhaba in a small hut, but having had breakfast just a while ago we skipped this stop and moved ahead. When I mention these as Dhabas don't even remotely assume something like a dhaba, all these are just makeshift structures to get some food like Parantha, Rajma Chawal, biscuits etc. nothing fancy. About 3-4 kms further you reach the last one Pannar Bugyal. Usually people pitch in their tents at Pannar and halt for the day because it's already 12-14 Kms of trek and this is the last place you find plan fields and carpet of grass to camp out.

But we decided to trek 7 Kms further to Pitradhar. This route is one hell of an experience. The path to walk is a narrow one with mountains to a side and deep valleys on the other. You walk within the foggy clouds with just around 50 meters visibility ahead and gusty winds blowing. Any distraction of your sight and you go deep down that valley 👇😨 All you have to do is 'enjoy your trek and just keep walking'.

We finally reached pitradhar but alas ! to our surprise we find that the lone available hut is full-house and cannot accommodate any more people !! Look at the yellow hut in my pics below, it is nothing more than a medival styled hut and to make things more difficult the snow line has already started and here we were at an altitude of 3800 meters, the highest point of the whole trek.

We were informed that there is another hut few Kms further and we decided to walk. And that was a decision not to regret because the location we headed to was completely out of a dream and why is that? I'll tell you on my next day. We were welcomed by a little pahadi dog that came to meet us much before we could walk upto the hut. Again the first thing we did reaching the hut was "Bhaiyya Maggi dedo". There was this nice architectural seating arrangement made out rocks where we had that Maggi and man !! it was one of the best feelings ever. It was around 6 PM and having trekked about 20 Kms for the day and tired, we had dinner and called it a day. Finally we were eating some actual food like rice, roti etc. after so much of Maggi 😂

Now comes the special mention of "The restroom with a view" here 😛 Never in life you get that scenic view right from your restroom.

After the breakfast, we started off to Rudranath which was around 4 Kms further from there but mostly a downhill. The route passes through Rhodendron forests. The coming of these forests symbolises that you are in the altitudes of the Himalayas. You are surrounded by snow capped mountains and the water starts touching the freezing point here. At each turn you feel like you are going to get a view of the temple but the almighty wants you to wait a bit more every time. And finally when you reach a place marked with a placard 'Dev Darshini', you see the first glimpse of the temple which is still a mountain away.

Just that glimpse of Rudranath gives you a sense of excitement and additional rush of energy to getaway from all the tiresomeness and the next mountain feels just like the next door. One last uphill and a descent, you finally you arrive at his door.

We first paid a visit to the temple with our bags on and wanted to sort out other things like the stay, food later.

The main temple is a naturally formed cave inside and deity of Lord Shiva is in the form of a face here. They say no where else in the world you get to see his face as a diety in a temple. The legend says that Lord Shiva's face remained in this panch kedar while escaping from the Pandavas who came to seek repentance from him after killing their kaurava brothers, and he had to escape because he didn't want to meet them for their grave sin. Hence you see those small rock temples of the pandavas as well here.

This temple only remains open for 6 months in the whole year from Akshay Tritiya to the next day of Diwali. The priest comes here down from Gopeshwar during the start of the season and stays here till the end, away from his family for all the 6 months ! in his selfless service to the god 🙏 He has a small room just beside the temple where he stays all the 6 months and attends to God.

Having done paying our reverences to the Lord, we came to this place some 200 meters before the temple which is kind of a temporary lodging facility run coincidentally by Mr. Rudra, a local. It has 2-3 rooms built out of rocks, a hut as a kitchen and most importantly washrooms. You get to share the rooms to stay with 6-7 others for obvious space crunch reasons. If you want to stay at Rudranath, there is no other option than this or you can pitch in your own tents (if you have one). So we decided to stay here for the night. We kept our hefty bags here and ran to explore the place a bit more, of course after eating Maggi 😁 Don't think that we were living on just Maggi 🤪 we had already got nuts, dry fruits and other whole lot of snacks along with us for our survival.

We wanted to explore the mountain behind the temple that was about at a height of 200 meters more and had a snow cap. There was no formal path though so we had to resort to climbing by holding the plants and bushes around. Till date cannot forget the sight from up there. Huge white mountains to a side, deep valley on the other and the clouds pass right through you. We could even spot an auto capture camera setup by the forest officials to study the Himalayan wild life like snow leopards. There was a small pond named 'Saraswati Kund' near by that as well has some mythological significance.

After all that exploration was complete, we attended the evening 6:30 PM Aarti and had a sumptuous dinner and slept like a log under those thick blankets to beat the single digit temperatures.

Now comes the biggest twist in the plot. Out of no where we decided to take a different and a more treacherous route downwards following bunch of other travellers. And the twist here was we were staring at a do-or-die situation as we had to trek down 26kms in a single day because this particular route was passing through some densest forests with high possibility of wild life in them.

We had to reach Anasuya Devi temple shown below and where we were after already trekking up and down for hours.

Believe me ! getting down is more difficult than trekking up ! Your knees take-up all your body weight and in our case we had a very hefty backpack. Go 26kms continuously downhill and eventually your knees go crazy to an extent that they refuse to provide that lock necessary to support your joint. Finally to our respite by late afternoon we reached the first human settlement since morning, a cattle herder. Ours legs got some rest and we got some food. Continuing further and crossing more forests we finally reached Anasuya Devi Temple.

Looking back where we came from by crossing multiple mountains was just awestrucking. See below, we climbed that last mountain from the other side and crossed many other ones midway and finally we were there at the Anasuya Devi temple.

It was not all over yet, from Anasuya temple we had to further walk to this small village called Mandal in the same Chamoli District, from where Gopeshwar was around 13 Kms. From Mandal we took a taxi to reach Gopeshwar. Jumped into a hotel straight and finally our legs were at peace after all that strenuous day long 26kms odd marathon trek 😌 At last we were at the end of the Rudranath trek ☹️

Wondered why all this difficulty rather than living in peace at home in the lap of comfort?

The answer is here -

" A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for "

DO NOT LITTER IN THE MOUNTAINS.

SAVE ENVIRONMENT.

SAVE EARTH.