Ramblings from Dwarka

Day 5: Marapada to Bevra After a rested and relaxed day 4, we started out early on day 5, leaving the camp at 7:30. The initial walk took us through dense forest and poor trail. It was completely downhill. We could hear Monal pheasants, but couldn’t see any. But we did stumble upon a group of macaques (hanuman langurs), these are very shy unlike monkeys in the plains and are not shutter friendly. With just a 24-105 zoom, I couldn’t get good enough shots. Swinging over the trail! Ranga negotiating the trail cautiously We came across the first of the major impacts of this year’s monsoon cloud burst, a bridge over one of the rivers washed out. We had to negotiate a landslide and cross a temporary bridge formed by a tree that had fallen across the stream. Temporary bridge Post the crossing, we had a very comfortable trail, a cheh footiya or 6 foot path through the forest for a good 3 kms. After a quick tea and refill of mineral water, we set out for an...

Wonderful to get back to the Himalaya's! Uttarakhand may be called Dev Bhoomi by the religious minded. For me its heaven on earth. This was my 4th trek and second starting from Uttarkashi. We were supposed to be more than 10 and scheduled to start from Lata on the Gangotri route and trek to Kedarnath via Belakh, Guttu and Panwali. Unfortunately, the group size dropped to 2 and we had to change the schedule to make it viable. We chose Barasu - Dayara Bhughyal - Dodital - Yamunotri trek; a trek of 9 days with a days scheduled rest at Dodital. Preparations I had sent out fairly detailed instructions to all who wanted to do the trek. The essential kit included the following (Ranga bought all his stuff when visiting his daughter in US) 1. Proper trekking shoes (Quechua Forclaz for me and Timberland for Ranga) 2. A 50L back pack for stuff and a smaller day pack. Both of us chose well designed day packs to carry 3. Light weight pants for the trek. I had 3 quechua trek pants and ...