Is it cold? - the trek leader asked Harshika. She said yes, obvious yes was her reaction. This happened on the morning of the summit day. She had answered 'no' for the same question the previous day. I registered for the chopta chandrashila deoriatal trek with my daughter Harshika (11yrs) and it was a successful one. Here I will try to capture my memories with my daughter from the trek...
Though we were well prepared for the trek, I was bit hesitant to face the coldness in mighty Himalayas with my daughter. We were an awesome group of 26 people from different parts of the country for the trek starting 24th dec, 2022. Everyone was enthusiastic and enjoyed the trek on their own pace.
Trek The Himalayas (TTH) organization has done the best of their part. Starting from the day of registration, they have given lot of information along with meetings to clear all our doubts. The trek leader was well qualified and the guides were observing and helping everyone with care.
TTH team picked us from Rishikesh in two tempo traveller vehicles and it was a long drive to reach Sari Village - height 6550 ft. Sari is a beautiful village with few shops around. We went for a walk and soon gathered for tea + snacks. The TTH team introduced themself and briefed us about the trek. The night stay was in a cottage with manageable temperature.
Next morning, we started the trek at 9am as it was a short trek of 3km. The trek was through well laid stones with steeper path at times. We reached deoriatal camp site (height 7850 ft) by 12 noon with lot of breaks in between. The deoriatal lake had the reflection of mighty Himalayas and it was very nice to walk around the lake. The expedition trek by TTH was planned by 3pm. But me and Harshika didn't wait and started moving around the lake and into the forest starting 2pm. We walked more during expedition trek than that day's trek :-) Highly recommended to explore the area as we have lot of free time for this day.
Next day trek was through forest area with steep ascending and descending paths. As it was a long trek to chopta, we have taken packed lunch and started at around 7am. The streams on the way were frozen and we could take some ice swords for playing. It was a long walk for this day.
One more question from Harshika was how and who forms the path for the trek in mountains? Trek leaders answer was "the paths were created by shepards with help from government before the roads were laid". Further question comes now - how does shepards know to create paths. Then, I remembered the famous tamil novel "Velpari" where it is explained. I also told the story of the novel to best of my knowledge to few trek mates.
Reference for Velpari book : https://velparibook.com/
We had our packed lunch in a scenic meadow on the way. After a long trek and a short vehicle ride we reached baniyagund - height 8550 ft. This was the coldest spot of our trek. Though it was not very high in altitude, this place was very chill. All the water sources by the side of roads were frozen.
The summit day trek was through tungnath temple, India's highest Shiva temple (height - 11380 ft). It is said that panch Kedar temples were built by Pandavas to worship Lord Shiva after Mahabharata war and tungnath is the highest among them.
The path to tungnath temple from chopta is well laid with hand railings useful for the pilgrimage trips. The temple is usually closed during winter expecting heavy snowfall. This year 2022 we were unlucky to not see any snow even though the trek was at the very last week of Dec. But still the temple was closed.
On our way we spotted Himalayan Monal, uttrakhand's state bird and Nepal's national bird. It was very beautiful. Also we were constantly seeing different varieties of sparrows in different size and colour throughout the trek. Even at the peak (12000+ feet), we could see tiny sparrows :-)
Chandrashila peak is visible from tungnath temple, but has steep path to climb. After a hard push we reached chandrashila peak - height 12100 ft. As we walked the steep route to chandrashila peak we could see mountains 180 degrees to us, but the view at the peak was amazing with 360 degree view of the mountains.
It is said that chandrashila is the place where Lord Shiva was meditated by moon for escaping a curse given by King "Dhaksha Prajapati". King Dhaksha has cursed moon for loving his daughter Rohini. Moon's meditation for Lord Shiva was successful and moon partially got rid of its curse. This peak got it's name as chandrashila owing to this story (Chandra means moon).
We spent quite a bit of time over the peak and had the packed lunch over there - Highest lunch we ever had :-). The wind at times made us feel like freezing cold, but the temperature was manageable as it was shiny too.
The return journey to chopta was on the same path as onward journey. This time me and Harshika took a straight path through mountains instead of following the well laid stone path for most of the time. We all were awarded with certificates from TTH team and then dropped at Rishikesh to finish our trek.
Ooh wow what a dad-daughter activity to do. Any Himalayan trek for that matter. It creates a lot of bonding and it is definitely recommended. Overall this is a nice trek with lot of good view of Himalayan peaks around. But this trek can be done as a do-it-yourself trek aswell since lot of times the path way is well defined.
Read also : my experience with kedarkantha and TTH
- B. Vijayakumar
Chopta Chandrashila Deoriatal Trek with TTH - dec 24th to dec 28th, 2022.
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