Valley of Flowers, Hemkund Sahib, Badrinath & Rishikesh

This is June/July 2017. I am packing my bags and heading to Delhi. My first proper trek. I had no clue what I was signing up for at this point. As a beginner, I listed down all the things that one might need for a trek and packed them up (keep this tiny detail in mind) in a rucksack that I got as part of my NCC Camp days. Packed my bags, put them into a bigger suitcase, and headed to Delhi by air. Once I landed, I headed straight to my aunt’s place in Dwarka via the metro. Spend a day or so in Delhi going about and doing some last-minute shopping for the trek.

Day 0: Delhi to Dehradoon (overnight bus)

Debby(My NCC Batchmate from 2014) and I were off to Kashmiri Gate to board our bus to Dehradoon. I was super excited about what was in store for the next day. Honestly, I don’t think I had any idea how this would turn out. Somewhere in the night, as ‘planned’, the bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Maybe this was a warning? Well, we waited it out for a couple of mins (or an hour) before another bus going to Doon came along and we were all ‘loaded’ into the bus. Did not get a seat here. Went the rest of the way standing, falling asleep, and uncomfortable.

Day 1: Dehradoon to Ghangharia via Joshimath, Govind Ghat (bus, trek)

Once we did get to doon, however, it was a beautiful and rainy morning. Debby figured out which bus we had to board to go toward Joshimath. We waited at the Doon bus station for a couple of hours before leaving for Joshimath. It took a few hours for us to reach there. The journey might have been eventful. I don’t remember this too well today as I’m writing this, almost 6 years later.

After a long, almost whole day’s travel, we reached Joshimath. Our actual drop point was a short distance away from Joshimath at a place called Govind Ghat. I vaguely remember this being right on the main road with not much happening. We then had to walk down a path to get to the starting point of the easy -14km long Govind Ghat to Ghangharia walk(?) No, hike(?) No, trek! At least it was for me. Details will follow. You still remember how I packed, right? Keep that in mind. As we started walking towards the starting point of this ‘Trek’, there were a lot of shops for food, Maggi, tea, and also some gear on rent. There were also a bunch of locals with mules. These mules were used to carry supplies, luggage, or even people from Joshimath to Ghagharia. As we walked through this mini market, quite a few locals walked up and asked if we wanted to hire a mule to go up. We declined. They then started asking us to hire one mule or get our bags carried with some other tourists’ luggage. We declined again. At this point, one of the locals looked at me and said, “You won’t find any mules once you start off. You better offload at least your bags here.” Declined again. “All right, go on. You’ll realize what I’m talking about on your way up.” The cocky, young, noob that I was, I didn’t care about any of this, and Debby and I started off on the trail.

The trail itself was quite easy. A well-made path, mostly, and a lot of shacks for food, water, and juice all along the way. We were stopping along the way for some photographs or food, chatting, and making our way up. At about the halfway point, I realized that my bag was actually quite heavy. When you pack for a trek, you make a list of things you absolutely need, and carry only those items. You ensure you get all of these in durable materials and that they are lightweight. This is how I should have packed it, right? Well, I did make a list. All of these were made of durable materials, yes. I also had a spare for each one of them and all of them were heavy. 🙂 I realized that my bag weighed about 23 kilos when ideally, it should’ve been close to 12 kilos for a hike/trek. Well, hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it? Anyway, I now started to struggle. Debby on the other hand was quite fit at this point. She had to break her pace every time because I wanted to stop and take a break. Sometimes, I needed a break for every 15-20 steps itself! We met a lot of tourists/trekkers going back down and stopped to have a chat with some of them as well, each time asking them how far we were from the end. This was also a question as we passed each shack. “Abhi aur 3-4km hi hai!” If you’ve ever been to the mountains, you know how big a scam this is. If you haven’t, people here, even trek leaders in organized treks say this just to keep the crowd motivated to climb. This is a well-intentioned lie, I guess. Didn’t feel like it at that point though. More breaks, more water. I was super exhausted. I gave myself a nickname somewhere now. I started calling myself a donkey, carrying all that weight.

Towards the end, it got quite bad. A group of sardars that were crossing us and heading towards Ghangharia noticed the donkey(me) and handed me a big stick/pole for support. This did help a little. But I still needed those breaks every few steps. At one point, In the last quarter of the journey, I started blacking out if I took a few steps with my bag. I did not tell Debby this. I honestly didn’t even know what was happening. I knew I had to stop. Once I did, I would feel fine, and my vision came back to normal only until I took another step or two. My vision blacked out again. Note that I did not faint here, but I think I would have if I’d continued on. This is when Debby was nice enough to exchange bags (Poor thing. She had to carry that elephant bag of mine) while I felt super relieved. It was much easier to walk now and no more blacking out or anything. I was still getting tired though and needed a couple of stops.

We finally made it past a few helipads before getting to the top. Finally! The one good thing through this was that we had enough daylight for the delay my unfit self caused! I can only imagine what would’ve happened if we started off any later. Anyhoo, we got to the top and checked out a few properties for rooms and got one, and settled for the night. There is no phone network here. Just BSNL Landline or mobile for very few folks. Hot water cost us Rs.50/bucket. I think we got one bucket that we shared between us. We headed out for dinner and to look around the place. We planned to wake up at 6am, I think? It was super cold up here. I don’t think I had experienced that kind of temperature ever. We cozied up under our blankets and fell asleep.

Day 2: Ghangharia to Valley of Flowers to Ghangharia (trek)

We started at about 6am. I remember us having some parathas at our property, packing some for the day, and carrying our backpacks with essentials and water. The route to Valley of Flowers opens just before dawn breaks and is shut before sunset. No mules were allowed here. Trekkers aren’t usually allowed to stay there overnight. This was the day when I learn how mountains and valleys work. Ghangharia is a valley. The valley of flowers is a ‘valley’. Duh! To go from one valley to another, you usually need to either go around a mountain or climb up and go over. We had to do the latter. The initial climb to the entrance of the valley itself was quite hard for me. I was less of a donkey today, without the load however, I was still very unfit for this. I took a couple of hours to climb up to the entrance of the valley.

Debby stuck along with me but she could’ve done this much faster. Maybe she would’ve been able to see more of the valley if not for me. One thing I haven’t been talking about is how scenic the entire journey was. Both on Day 1 and so far today. I think that’s the only thing that kept me going (apart from my ego maybe). We did stop at a couple of spots to click some pictures. Once we got to the entrance, we could go around anywhere we wanted to. There were multiple paths leading to different places in the valley. The valley is home to some hundred or thousands of species of flora. It doesn’t necessarily look like the Tulip gardens. It was mostly lush and green with different kinds of flowers blooming all over the place. As we started walking into the valley, another trekker from Kerala complimented Debby for her stamina while he was sympathetic looking at my condition. (:

We walked further down the valley and I started feeling super exhausted, again. I willed myself to go a little bit more but after a point. I did give up. I told Debby that I was going to stop and stay there while she goes ahead, checks the place out, and can pick me up on her way back down. Debby tried convincing me a couple of times but I was simply done. By this point, there were 1 or 2 other trekkers who were in the same spot as us and a local said we could walk up to a glacier if we wanted to. Debby and the rest of them started in that direction while I stayed back and rested for a bit. A good 15-20 mins later, FOMO kicks in. (or I think it was FOMO, not sure). I started walking in the direction that they had taken, alone. There was only a single path for a while and there the path forked. I had no idea which way I needed to go. I don’t quite remember what happened here, but I somehow made a decision or got some help and started walking down one of those paths. A couple of mins later, I met Debby and the rest of them. She was pleasantly surprised that I made it. I was elated! I even teared up a little here! :’)

The local was telling us that there were some coffee/cacao(?) plants here. I tried smelling one of them to celebrate my pushing myself to get to this point. This was no end point of the trek by any means, there was a lot to do if one wanted to. However, for me, on this day, it was. Debby and the guy from Kerala went further down towards the glacier through the bushes and even made their own way. I think at this point the local headed back and asked us to follow the same path to get back. Debby + 1 came back in about 20 mins and we walked back a bit before stopping for some food and water. The three of us, Debby, me, and the guy from Kerala halted for a food break. Just as we were done, it started drizzling forcing us to pack up and leave.

Ever since we got to the room the previous evening, I heard a couple of guys (read bhaiyas) roaming around all the properties yelling, “Maaalisssssh!” I didn’t know what it meant and I think asked Debby who then told me it was massage. So after getting back from the Valley of Flowers, I realized why this was a thing and called one of them in for a massage. I thought this would be an upper body massage because, for me, this was hurting more somehow. But no, the guy walks in and asks me to sit at the edge of the bed or maybe on the chair. He sits himself down and starts with the leg massage. Calves, ankles, feet, and toes only. It did feel good though. I think it cost Rs.150 back then.

We headed out to get some dinner and roam around. We also went to make some phone calls from there. Debby walked around the stores and made friends with one of the local store owners. I don’t remember his name but he was very kind (like everyone out there) and had a lot of stories to tell us. We then settled for the day. The plan for the next day was to wake up by 6am again to get to Hemkund Sahib – the world’s highest Gurudwara.

Day 3: Ghagharia to Hemkund Sahib to Ghangharia (trek)

Today as well, we started quite early. Had breakfast and we were off towards the Gurudwara. The initial 15-20mins path was the same as the previous day after which this forks in the opposite direction. As usual, I had no clue what I had signed up for. This was a 6-7km trek up to the Gurudwara. The journey had shacks every .5km or so. An interesting thing to note was that the higher you get, the price of the same items got costlier. Something that I saw for the first time in my life. Anyway, the journey that people usually complete in 1-2 hours took me almost 4-5 hours to climb. It was only 6 km but it was a steep climb. It was drizzling on and off throughout and it was quite chilly as we were getting higher. The Gurudwara is a pilgrimage point for Sikhs. There were quite a lot of them climbing up at a good pace all the while shouting slogans, “Jo bole so nihal, Sat sri akaal” and some other things where one chants it out and the others say, “Waheguru”. We joined along too, as we now knew when to say some of these.

We eventually got to the top between 1230-1pm. Once we got there, the first thing I noticed was the magnificent views from there. The clouds were both above and below us here. That’s when I realized that we walked through the clouds to get there! In the morning, the clouds were above us and now, it’s below us! I also noticed a lake there (the ‘kund’ in Hemkund Sahib). I did not know this. I saw people taking dips in there too. Debby and I were contemplating if we should too, but neither of us had a change of clothes. At this point, a Sardar uncle walks up to me and persuades me into taking a dip. He said, “When else are you going to come all the way here? Now that you have, you might as well take a dip.” “But I don’t have a towel to dry myself after.” “Is that your only problem? Ok. I will give you a towel. You go take your dip.” After this, Debby and I discussed this briefly and I willed myself to go take a dip in the freezing cold kund. Debby however was not going to. She was now the photo/videographer for me. I walked back up to the Sardar and asked him for the towel he promised and he handed one to me. I stripped and stepped down to my underwear (thankfully was wearing one) and walked into the kund. I took two steps in when I realized exactly HOW cold it was. I couldn’t take another step as my legs simply froze. I then dragged it along the ground for another 2 steps and this was enough for me to take 3 dubkis (dips). I did this and tried to get out as fast as I could. I quickly dried myself up and changed back into my clothes(now commando) and we headed into the Gurudwara. The good thing here was that I wasn’t feeling as cold anymore. I then thanked the Sardar and we clicked a bunch of photos before entering the Gurudwara. Note: The order of events might be off here, not sure what happened first and next.

We headed in, spent some time inside the warm Gurudwara with some blankets, and headed straight to the langar where we got some hot khichdi and chai. In that chill weather, this felt like bliss. We spent some time here, clicking some more photos before heading back down. Me back with my knee problem. So we took it slow on the way back down as well. This wasn’t as bad as the first two days, however. We reached back down and to our room. We switched rooms on this day as Debby’s shop owner friend said we were paying too much (Rs.800/night). He got us a room for Rs.300/night. It was not as good as the first, but we managed. We were only there for a night. Once we freshened up, we went and said bye to our shop owner friend, had dinner, and crashed. We were heading back down the next day.

Day 4: Ghangharia to Badrinath via Govind Ghat – but how? (trek, hitch-hike)

We got breakfast and started our way back down. Having learned from my mistakes, I decided to send my luggage down with a mule and I forced Debby to send her bag too (I didn’t want to be the only one). She reluctantly agreed. 😛 We started walking down without the heavy bags and this was much easier (of course!). We stopped in a bunch of places to click pictures, eat/drink something or just sit and chill for a bit.

We reached Govind Ghat, collected our bags, and headed up to the main road. We wanted to try and go to Badrinath, but we didn’t know how. We waited at the bus stop for either a bus or a shared taxi to come our way but nothing did. After waiting for a while, we saw a bunch of trekkers who got back from Ghangaria and were set to head out to Badrinath. They had a bus and were all part of YHAI (Youth Hostels Association of India). Sidenote: YHAI is an amazing govt. run organization. The membership is definitely worth it and their locations are also very pretty. Debby spoke to the team lead and requested them if we could join them to Badrinath and they happily agreed (we later get to know that this isn’t allowed! Oops.) Once we get to the top, we get to YHAI’s Badrinath hostel campus.

The warden/in-charge there said we weren’t allowed as we were not registered YHAI members but agreed to let us stay the evening. However, he was particular that we leave as early as possible on the next day. We agreed and got into the dorm rooms. There was tea arranged indoors in a common room. We all gathered there and played some games. We then headed out to the temple and took a dip in the hot water spring, clicked a few photos, and headed out for dinner. As we weren’t planned guests at YHAI, we were asked to eat out while the rest of the folks on the bus had dinner arranged at the hostel itself. We got back after dinner, figured out how to wake each other up as there was no network, and went to bed.

Day 5: Badrinath to Rishikesh, but wait! (bus)

We started as early as 4am today. We cleared out our bed but we had to pay for our room rent! We couldn’t wake anyone up that early so we decided to leave the cash inside a cupboard and cover it up. We planned to go back down and send them a message via phone/sms somehow. We headed out to the bus stop and checked for the first bus headed out. Boarded it and waited for the conductor to give us a ticket. The departure time came and went but neither did we get a ticket, nor did the bus leave! On inquiring, we learned that there was a landslide on the way down and it was being cleared. We then waited for another few hours on the bus itself. Debby and I caught up on sleep while we waited for the bus to leave.

After a good few hours, Debby went out for a while and came back saying she found us another ride. It was an earlier batch of YHAI folks who were headed down. They agreed to help us out and we joined them. However, this still didn’t mean the road was cleared out. There was still a traffic jam and we were dancing and singing along while waiting for the roads to clear.

The roads eventually cleared out and we started the descent. Somewhere around the halfway point, we were stuck in another traffic jam. Another landslide. This time, we saw some small falling rocks where we were! This was a tad bit scary and exciting! After waiting around for another couple of hours, the driver said we couldn’t go ahead now, we had to head back and find a place to stay for the night. This was right after Karnaprayag. The YHAI team lead found a hotel with dorm rooms of sorts opposite a Gurudwara. We were lucky to get a place for all of us in a single property. There were a couple of eateries nearby as well. From Badrinath, we spent a lot of time with the YHAI group and bonded well. Some of us decided to try and find some local alcohol to try out and to have a mini party if you will. Good idea? We’ll see. A couple of them went out to find some liquor. Some others went out to buy other supplies and some snacks (read chakna). They got ‘Gobi Manchurian’ from a nearby place. All those scouting for things returned and we sat down for the ‘party’. The liquor we got – 8 PM. I am not a pro when it comes to drinking. Debby chose not to drink. She was way too busy on the phone the entire night, anyway. 😛 I chose to have 2 rounds. This was some terrible liquor. From now till the end of the night, I have faint flashes of what really happened there. I remember going to eat outside but not wanting to eat anything.

Debby and I then stood outside near a tree where I saw a firefly. I was fascinated! Fireflies always fascinate me. However, Debby and I have very different versions of what happened that night. I’m sure she doesn’t remember it too. It’s her word against mine. I then went back to my room and crashed for the night. I may have woken up to use the loo or throw up maybe, we’ll never know.

Day 6: Rudraprayag to Delhi via Rishikesh

We started early the next day and reached the YHAI Base in Rishikesh. Some of us decided to head out to a few cafes in Rishikesh before taking a taxi to Delhi, the Tat Cafe being one of them. It had a beautiful Ganga view with some decent food.

We stopped over at Har Ki Pauri, Haridwar to witness the Ganga Aarti. However, we were quite late for this. I decided to take some Ganga Jal home and take a dip to wash away all my sins. (: I’ve taken dips in loads of lakes and rivers before. I thought I had things under control. I stripped down to my underwear and this time, chose to keep my glasses on because what’s the worst that could happen? Well, it happened. I had no idea that the river was this fierce with fast currents. The second I went into the water, my glasses went away with the current. They were quite expensive (Rs.15/20k). I really liked them too. I got out of the water, redressed and thought about how I’m going to tell my parents about my stupidity. Luckily, my mother wasn’t too angry. She said, “Usually when you go take a dip in Ganga you need to part with something. You parted with your glasses. It’s ok.” Music to my ears. I continue on with some nice rabdi and food around there. We then headed to Delhi and checked into an OYO for the night.

Post Trek:

I then spent some time in Delhi with my family and some friends. Before leaving for Bangalore, Debby and I went to a resto-pub in Hauz Khas. Weirdly, she was carrying an umbrella. This was super normal for Uttarakhand but not so much for Delhi. I was wondering why. While at the restaurant, she casually picked this ‘umbrella’ out of her bag and handed it to me. Only then I realized that it was a trekking pole! The Donkey’s reward for all of that effort. I’ve used that on almost all my treks since then. Luckily, not a donkey in any of those!

This was the beginning of my travelling journey. Debby has also been one of the people telling me to document this somewhere, somehow. As a start, dedicating this first piece to her. Thank you for the first of many adventures! ❤