Lord of the Peaks and the placid Deoria Tal

An Ideal travel to get away from the noise of vehicles,the office chatter where one could feel the tranquillity of nature all around.

Tungnath has got its place in the Hindu mythology as the place where the bahu (hands) were seen when Lord Shiva rematerialized post hiding from the Pandawas.

Tungnath has the highest altitude among the Panch Kedars of Garhwal (consisting of Kedarnath, Rudranath, Madhyamaheshwar, Kalpeshwar and Tungnath).

As for myself we chose the monsoon to explore Nature’s beauty to the fullest. We 4 friends started our journey in a hired car and reached Chopta after a drive of around 14 hours, which  is the entry point to the trek.Once we reached Chopta we took some rest post a long drive and planned to head for the trek the next morning.

We enjoyed the hot parathas on a beautiful morning and started the trek. The first few yards were nice and steep and as we progressed the real beauty of these mountains became clearer and soon we reached the point where we had a well played out track in the midst of rhododendron trees in full bloom. After a couple of hours, we reached a small shack selling tea, bottled water and maggi which we assume was the midpoint of the trek.We finally reached Tungnath after a couple more hours of trekking.

When we reached the Temple there was another guy sitting at a tea shack and passed on to us his massive trekking experience as he was visiting the place 12th time.

He told us about the deoria talk trek from a place called Sari.We then visited the temple and a Sadhu baba with whom we were able to get a good camaraderie going spending little time the we went on to scale the Chandrashila peak where there is a bhairon dev temple which we visited and started feeling accomplished to scale the height of 4,000 m above the sea level and the feeling was amazing.

Then we started descending and reached back to our base at Chopta in around 2 hours.

As was advised by the avid trekker we thought about covering the deoria tal trek and headed for a small town called Sari,by the time we had reached Sari it was quite late and we decided to start the deoria tal trek in the morning.

We woke up to decent rains the next morning which in a way dampened our spirits as we were told that you can see the reflection on the mountains when you reach the tal in the morning.Nevertheless the rain settled down and we were ready to go.

We started our trek at around 8 in the morning and it is a short trek of around 3 kms from Sari.

Slight rain on the way made the trek even more interesting and enjoyable. Wefinally reached the Deoria tal in around 2 hours and the view was captivating.When you reach Deoria Tal there is an entry that you need to make as Visitors and need to shell out 150 per person as entry.But since there were only the 4 of us on the tal we negotiated well with the person collecting the amount and convinced him for making just one person’s entry and he agreed :).

At the tal you could feel the sunlight shining through the trees and reflecting with a twinkle in your eyes leaving you mesmerized and the view was as picturesque as one could get.

At the Tal there is a path that encircles the Tal that one can walk on in order to get more close to the Nature.The path is partially covered by forest area and partially open.With the Rain in the morning the trees were still holding some water and when you start walking on the path gave you a serene feeling of walking in the rain forest all lush green with water dripping from the top which was one enthralling experience.

For those who want to travel cheap here is the advise:

you can reach Rishikesh from Delhi and then take a bus to Rudraprayag. Break the journey at Rudraprayag and take another bus or shared car to Ukimath. From there you can either go directly to Chopta or move the Sari Village for the side trek of Deoria Tal.