From doing double shift at work and to almost canceling the trip we somehow managed to keep the plan on. In the first week of October 2019 my three friends from work & i made the plan to go to chopta and chandrashila. We left for our first destination from delhi to "Sari Village" in uttrakhand. We started our journey at night so that we can reach our destination by morning. Well after taking a hell lot of breaks for maggie, chai, photo sessions and to see a glimpse of ram and lakshman jhula in rishikesh we reached sari village at around 1:00 P.M. I must mention that the mountains of Uttrakhand are so huge & daunting when compared with himachal mountains. There came a time when the clock was hitting 3:00 A.M. and it was all fog outside and we all felt and thought that we should never travel to the mountains of Uttrakhand at night. Going further, when we reached sari village we had to start our trek to "Deoria Tal Lake" which is of just 2-3kms and we thought it'd be easy to cover those kms in just an hour but to our surprise the trail was quiet steep and with all the trekking bags hanging our shoulders it made it more difficult to climb the hill. But all that was worth as the trail was surrounded by so beautiful mountains and greenery and it made that trek so serene that we just kept going. After 2hours of trekking we reached Deorial Tal Lake and i should really mention this with the same expression i gave when i saw that lake for the first time. "WOW, THIS CANNOT BE REAL". This was really my first expression and comment after seeing that beautiful lake surrounded by greenery and so beautiful and huge mountains, some of them covered with snow. From there you can clearly see the peak of mountain which is just behind the kedarnath temple. After sitting there for a while we went on climbing from there for around 10mins to our camp site. We already booked our stay in advance. I'm mentioning the name and number of camp site for fellow travelers.
Ragi Camp Deoria Tal - 9634321744
Here you can get tents of all sizes for your stay at really budget-friendly prices. After reaching there we just sat there looking at mountains peacefully, enjoyed born fire at night and then slept to get up to experience our next day.
The next day we decided to get up early morning so that we can go down to lake and see the sunrise. We got to the lake at 6:00 A.M. and it was magical to see the first ray of light getting on the tip of mountains, seeing those mountains turning gold was just magical. Later that day we had to come down back to sari village where our cab was parked and we had to go to chopta which was our next destination. All four of us were really confused the previous night, as there are two options to go to chopta:-
1. Either you trek all the way to chopta from deoria tal which is about 17kms and it might take you 7-8 hours more or less depending on your fitness level.
2. You can come down to sari village and from there you can take some vehicle all the way to chopta which will take around an hour to reach.
And we decided to go with the latter one. Fortunately, we already had our stay booked in chopta as well. I must say chopta campsite was also very beautiful. After that we played games out there, had rest. As an added incentive it started raining in the afternoon there and the views and environment got more beautiful. Next day we had to get up at 5:00 in the morning so that we can get to the starting point of Tungnath trek.
Here comes the most exciting and most tiring day of the trip. Even though we had to get up very early we still slept quite late last night but less sleep didn't affect our excitement for this new and exciting day and the last day of this trip. We started our day at 5:00 in the morning, after getting ready we reached the starting point of Tungnath temple around 7 by our cab which was just 20minutes drive from our chopta campsite. We knew that it's a 5-6kms trek and it'll take us around 3-4hours to reach Tungnath temple and then from Tungnath to Chandrashila it's just 1km but it's very steep that it might take you around 2hours to cover that 1km. At around 10-11 we reached Tungnath Temple. We got free in an hour from there, as the weather wasn't that good and we were expecting rain so now we had to decide whether to go to Chandrashila or not. But after coming this far we had to go there. It was just a 1km trek to Chandrashila but trust me when i say this that it was quite difficult because of no particular trail and it became more difficult because of weather too. Our shoes were slipping there and came a point where we could see the peak where we had to go but the weather became so bad that the peak was consistently becoming invisible because of the clouds all over the peak. The weather was so bad that there was another group and they had guide with them and their guide suggested not to go all the way up, so that group went back from there and four of us stopped there and kept thinking whether to go or not but then one of my friends stated "Wo junoon hi kya jo hadoon ke par na le jaye" so we had this motivation to reach there and we kept going. After maybe an hour or so we reached chandrashila and that feeling is still unbelievable and unexplainable. It was sheer magical. We stayed there for a while and then we decided we have to reach back to chopta ASAP because we had to leave for delhi the same night and we still had that daunting experience of traveling to the mountains of Uttrakhand at night in our mind. So we wanted to cover some part of it before the sun sets. By around 3:30 we came back to ch0pta and around 5 we left for delhi from there in our cab. The experience of coming back was a scary one. The big mountains with no lights anywhere made it very scary, but an exciting one though. I suggest that no one should travel at night to those big scary mountains and especially the route covering Lansdowne. The more it is beautiful in the sunlight, the more scary it becomes at night. Nevertheless we reached back to delhi at 5 in the morning and that was the end of the most amazing and a very tiring trip. 💫🗻
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