I am proud that I was born in a country of diversity like India. While there is sea and humidity in the south of India, there is coolness of Himalayas and fresh snowfall in the north. People of 9 religions here officially speak and write 22 languages, while with 19500 dialects, India becomes a symbol of unity. I belong to Hindu religion and my religion is clearly visible in my upbringing. Being a Hindu, Himalayas are my favourite and it is my duty to visit the temples situated on the holy land of Himalayas and have darshan of God and I myself want to stand with nature by visiting these temples.
Winters arrive in India only after the rains and by October, the first snowfall of the season occurs. Since we are talking about winter, let me tell you that in the #winterchallenge organized by @worldmappin, some new names have started appearing in the top 10 which were not in the top 10 a week ago. Where I was in the fourth place, now I have slipped to the sixth place. With today's post, I hope that I will be able to take a place in #traveldigest and improve my ranking.
Who doesn't like #snowfall in #winters, that too in #himalayas, I like it very much. Traveling in winters is my favorite thing to do and I am out since the beginning of this month. This time I reached Tungnath temple which is a religious center of Hindus. This temple is dedicated to Hindu God Shiva and every year about 7 lakh devotees reach here to have darshan of the Lord. Talking about winters, about 1500 devotees visit here every day in winters and we are also two of these 1500 devotees in winters.
This temple comes under Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, this religious trek starts from a village named Chopta whose height is 2709 meters. I have come on this trek twice before. Chopta and Tungnath are also called Mini Switzerland. This temple is a part of Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary and is one of the Panch Kedar. Other Kedars are Kedarnath, Rudranath, Kalpeshwar and Madmaheshwar. Tungnath temple is situated at an altitude of 3680 meters, which is 6 km away from Chopta on foot.
Talking about this mountain, there is a temple of Chandrashila Devi on its top, which is 1.5 km above the Tungnath temple. I have never visited this temple in summer, so I do not know how beautiful this place looks after the snow melts. There is nothing but snow on the trail from Chopta. We are also walking on the snowy path and wondering how long it will take to complete this 6 km long path?
While I am thinking whether my shoes are going to slip or not, a girl falls in front of me by slipping on the snow because she is wearing running shoes. I advise her to walk on the side ways and move ahead. My friend Sara is walking slowly but is doing fine because she has put micro spikes on her hiking shoes. There are boards of Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary on the way with a message written on them that do not litter in the reserve area.
Along with us, a school group is also walking in which there are 10 boys and 7 girls. Since all the children are from the local school, all have experience of walking on snow. Among these boys, 2 boys talk to me whose names are Shubham and Sumit, Sumit says that our 2 male teachers and 2 female teachers have also come with us. Shubham says that he does not like the math teacher because he keeps scolding us all without any reason.
Listening to Sumit and Shubham, a girl named Rekha says that "I will tell the math teacher that you are speaking ill of him". Sumit gets a little scared while Shuman says tell me, I don't care. I tell Sumit not to be afraid, you are in the lap of Himalayas, so enjoy the views here and make this hike memorable. I click a group photo of all the school children which I cannot show here due to consent.
We reach Bhujgali Bugyal, Bugyal is a word from Garhwali dialect which means grassland. Today not even a blade of grass is visible, as far as the eye can see nothing but snow. There is a tea shop here which is closed due to winter. Those devotees who brought water with them from below are benefited while those who did not bring water are feeling thirsty while climbing and they are asking for water from the people with them.
The good thing is that we also took 2 liters of water with us and we gave water to the school group. Walking together is what makes religious journeys precious. We are happy with the children and the children are laughing out loud at my leech. There comes a resting point where like everyone else we also stop and control our heavy breathing. The forest department has put up information boards all along the way on which it is written “The grassland has been prepared for all the devotees so do not spoil it by taking shortcuts”.
Some children move ahead by taking shortcuts whom I shout and stop and tell them to come back, here you can slip on the shortcut and fall into the ditch and there are deep pits under the snow in which if you fall, who knows what kind of accident can happen. The good thing here is that there are no dark clouds today and everything is visible clearly while walking, the bad thing is that we started late so the sky is covered with white clouds otherwise we would not have been able to see the high Himalayan mountains.
That's all for today. Now in the next post we will visit Tungnath temple. And I will tell you whether we are able to reach Chandrashila summit or not. Till then take care of yourself and keep smiling. Today we trekked from Chopta to Bhujgali Bugyal in which we walked 3.5 km in which there was an elevation gain of 550 meters.
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to translate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from sony a7iii and edited in lightroom, post thumbnail created in adobe photoshop.