What time is it? Now
What are you? This moment."
Above is a quote from a famous inspirational book "Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives". Also available as movie named "Peaceful warrior".
Now, is it really a quote or just funny answers to silly questions? The author explains that focusing on current moment without thinking about past / future or location or surroundings is the way to attain self-realization and inner peace. With this you can achieve any goals in life.
While we were walking through the
snow-covered meadows of dayara-bugyal-trek, I asked my trek leader Swarada when
did it last snow here? She questioned back to me - what is the day today? I
told its today (just for fun). She agreed and told that while we are here, we
will not know the days. It made me think, yes, we do not know the day/ date.
Later while descending also she told we are carefully stepping down to avoid
slippage without thinking anything else. We do not think about past or future
but just the next step we are about to take. I think this is one sort of
mediation.
I chose IndiaHikes to be my trekking organization and then chose the dates and then I was ok to take any available snow treks. So, I got Dayara Bugyal. When I registered for the trek, my only expectation was to walk through vast meadows filled with snow. But after trek I believe I have learnt a lot. The talk by our trek leader Swarada about history of IndiaHikes and why IndiaHikes wants people to trek itself gave me answers for why I do treks.
As per the plan, we reached Raithal
village around 4pm in a cab from Dehradun. Altitude - 7096 ft. Our
trek leader Swarada from IndiaHikes has already sent a video welcome message
during our travel. Also, our experience coordinator Prathima had given lot of
information on the trek from the day we registered so that we can be prepared
for the trek. At Raithal we stayed in the new place setup by IndiaHikes for
different treks starting from Raithal. The view from this place itself was
great with Gangotri range seen on one side and the evening view was mesmerizing
with alpine glow over the peaks. We got to see the glowing peaks during all the
five days of our trek. Dayara Bugyal is one of the treks with most amazing view
of peaks during almost all the time of trek.
During our walk, we passed by a coin
tree which had lot of coins placed through the bark of the tree. It is a belief
that the wish we make with coin inserted will be granted. I too used the coin
tree :-)
Evening was fun in the camp site, and we did an expedition trek followed by stunning view of alpine glow. Our trek leader organized some fun game before dinner and trekkers health check was done before we ended our day in the tents.
The next day trek was a short one but
filled with amazing views. We spent a lot of time in GUI lake on the way which
was fully frozen. We were able to do ice skating with trekking shoes on and it
was such a fun to have ice skating race over there.We also went past a small frozen
water falls which was an amazing view. We reached Chilapada camp site for
lunch. Altitude - 10400 ft.
It is said that “Antartica has the highest average IQ of any continent”. It’s because only scientists and researchers travel there 😊. Similarly, I believe for any Himalayan trek, we can expect high IQ people on board (including me haha). We can feel it by interacting with the trekking group. We got an amazing trekking group from different parts of the country. Some of them were with lot of experience on trekking. It was great to have interacted with them and learn a lot from them. Also, we got a kid in our group who did an amazing trek.
Next day was the summit day for
which we started around 6am after breakfast. It was a tiresome walk for some
time but as we reached the open meadows filled with snow the view was amazing
with sun light joining to treat us. In no time we were surrounded by long long
views of snow on all sides.
The final summit climb was steep but
the view from top was so mesmerizing. Altitude - 11830 ft. The
author of peaceful warrior says that "The journey is what brings us happiness,
not the destination." But here both journey and destination were great.
While returning from the peak, we did slide on the snow at some places. It was very fun. After some time, we entered a thick forest area to descend instead of using the stone trails. It was so steep, and we had to focus on each step to avoid slipping. We had a night stay in Nayata campsite (Altitude - 9066 ft.) and continued the decent the following day. Reached Raithal around 2pm - Altitude - 7096 ft. The place was not as cold as we felt during the start of trek but that's only our feeling :-)
The IndiaHikes team have arranged
couple of activities during trek like meditation, a minute of silence in the
forest, hugging a tree, writing a letter of thanks to anyone etc. which all
gave us a happy feeling.
