Roopkund Trek Diary – Make It Happen

Roopkund is a weeklong trek in the Garwhal regions of the himalayas. Is one of the most famous ones. Roopkund Lake is at 15750 feet which is the heighest point of trek.

Nagul Ram describes his Roopkund Trek experience.

With around 5 to 6 local treks in Chennai in span of 2 months, I had assumed I am a big time trekker. I decided to try my luck in Himalayas. I had previously been for week-long low altitude short trek when I was in class 9 in Himachal Pradesh. So I went ahead and registered for the Roopkund Trek in Uttarkhand with one of the trek operators.

Reaching road head town:

Lohajung is the base village for start of trek. We took a train to Kathgodam by train. We then travelled by jeep for a whole day, nearly around 13 hours. Met all the other trek members at Kathgodam. With usual introduction we started the jeep. The jeep went on and on through many similar towns and villages. I already realized the return trip would be more boring than this. 😜

The Trek:

We reached the base camp finally and then next day we started our trek. Day 1 was a easy trek through the plains and forests to a place called Didina. We stayed here for the night in a home stay. Wherever we camped, we had a group of locals. They cooked for us.

Any food at these places is happiness and imagine if it was delicious food!

The next day we trekked across Bedni Bugyal. This is one of the biggest meadows in the Himalayas. It was all green until the end that we see.

Walking across the meadows are still fresh in my mind. After a long day trek we camped for the day at around 4 pm. We played cricket in that high altitude. Still remains as my best place to play cricket.

The night temperature drop so much that by around 7.30 we all settle up inside the sleeping bag in the tent.

And the next morning we woke up and just lazed around the meadows before we started for the day.

Towards Kallu Vinayak:

The next day I was kind of tired. I put my trek bag on the mule and had an easy walk. We started our walk towards Kallu Vinayak, it is a small pass from where the snowline starts. The climb until Kallu Vinayak was one of the toughest one in Roopkund Trek until now. At one point I got separated from the group stuck up in the middle of nowhere. There was a group in front and there were other people following bit back.

For some time, it rained heavy. I walked with poncho covered on me. At one point I decided to enjoy the rain for sometime. I sat on a stone in the trail as the rain poured upon me. As the rains subsided I started my trek, meeting one of the other trek guide and listening to his stories we reached the Kallu Vinayak. Until then we could not see snow anywhere.

Towards Bhagwa Bassa:

As soon as we crossed the pass, it was white all over and we had to walk on hard snow. There were places where we had to walk on them while below there were streams of water running helter-skelter. Nothing can match those experiences. Finally we reached Bhagwabasa for the evening and camped in one of the most beautiful places. There was Roopkund pass in front of us while to the back it was open valley where you could see water melting from the glaciers down into streams. We got kissed by the clouds as we were having our evening snacks

The next day was the final ascent to Roopkund Lake, we started by early morning 5.00 am. It was steep ascent from Bhagwabasa to Roopkund. We had to return to the same place so we carried just the water bottles & the camera. After around 3 hours of trek through full snow we finally reached our destination.

Roopkund is also called as the skeleton lake. It was such a great feeling to have completed the trek successfully with the weather helping us.

Descent back:

We started our descent. Since the snow started getting hard we were made to slide through the snow which was one of the best experiences I had. We sat on the snow and just slid through like how we would do in amusement parks but then it was in real here and adenaline just rushes through.

We saw a man walking up towards us through the snow so I was asking my trek guide who was he. He calmly smiled and told me just wait and see. To my surprise, that man got us the breakfast which was hot parathas with pickle. To have food at that place in middle of nowhere made me believe he was the Saami sorrupotuchu..(God fed us)

We reached the base and started our way back and in next 1 day we were back to the Lohajung. We then started our journey back home with lifelong memories.