Summer was approaching and I started looking for options to trek as the new year began. I had decided to go with the guide and person with whom I had done my first trek. I started off by doing a little research about the possible treks that me and my kids could do. Then spoke to Mr.Dinesh Uniyal, who is the main person behind trekking in Uttarakhand. He suggested a few options, and after a bit of back and forth, finalized on Kuari Pass trek, which is roughly at 12500 feet altitude, covering 20+ km. We were finally 4 families who travelled together from Bangalore - 9 of us - 5 adults and 4 kids 
- and we were a lovely bunch 
After making sure our guide Sanjay was free during the time we wanted to trek, we finalized on the dates - 9 days - from April 5th to April 13th. Booked the flight tickets, hotel rooms, cabs from the airport, rough planning of the trek route as we had kept it flexible, buying a few things we needed for the trek and finally packed, successfully fitting in everything needed inside the trek bags!
Day 1
Left home in the morning, drove to the airport, checked in the bags, had lunch and flew to Dehradun. It is a 3 hour flight from Bangalore to Dehradun. We reached Dehradun at 6 pm. We took the pre-booked cab from the airport to Rishikesh, where we had booked a hotel for the night - Shiv Vilas hotel. We kept the luggage in the rooms and stepped out to have dinner. Each one of us had a different dish. We got back to the hotel, chatted for a while and slept.
Day 2
We got ready and left the hotel around 5.45 am, after having coffee in my hotel room. We had booked a tempo traveler from Rishikesh to Joshimath which was a 7-8 hours drive on the road. We stopped for breakfast and had aloo parathas. We continued the drive and crossed the road-repair section that was supposed to be open only between 1 to 2pm. After crossing this section we stopped for lunch and had rice dhal roti. We played a lot of Hindi and English songs and played antakshari singing a lot of Hindi songs.
We reached the Joshimath hotel around 4.30 pm. We stayed at the GMVN hotel in Joshimath for the night. We met Mr. Dinesh and he gave us different route options to trek. We discussed the plan for the next few days while having lemon tea. We stepped out and went for a walk to explore Joshimath a bit. We saw the 2500 year old Mulberry tree. There was a beautiful Shiva temple below the tree with the Jyothirlinga inside. We went to the Shankaracharya ashrama and had a good view of a few mountains and the sunset. The roads were steep and narrow and one long downhill road led us to the famous Narasinga temple. The legend says that Narasingaswamy's hand is becoming thinner and thinner by the year and eventually will disappear. Once the hand disappears, Badrinath swamy from the Badrinath temple will also disappear and Bhavishya Badri temple will take the place of Badrinathswamy temple. We saw the evening Arathi and headed back. We stopped at one of the local places and had Garhwal thali for dinner. We went back to the hotel and slept.
Day 3
After re-packing between bags to get ready for the next few days of trek, we had coffee and were ready. We had breakfast at the hotel - aloo paratha, maggi, masala chai. We met our guide, Sanjay and left the place around 9.30 am towards our base camp.
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| Hanuman mountain |
We started our trek from Thugasi and reached the next camp site around 1 pm.
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| Our water source at the camp |
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| Rhododendron |
It was an evening of celebration of the gorgeous Rhododendron flowers! The forest was filled with pink Rhododendron flowers wherever we could see! It was a sight we can never forget - pink colour on one side and white mountains on the other side. We didn't want to leave the forest but had to as the sun started setting slowly.
We were able to sit and watch the sunset at the campsite, colours changing on the mountains after having hot tomato soup and french fries, especially the Dronagiri mountain changing to a light red colour with Nandadevi white peak visible. We had dinner around 7.30 pm - roti, rice, dhal, bhindi sabji and shavige kheer. I know, it felt like a 5 star food choice on the mountains.
We retired to the tent as it had gotten very cold, after shuffling around stuff between bags, helping kids with the fleece layer and sleeping bags, I tried to sleep.
Day 4
I woke up at 5 am, freshened up and sat in silence listening to the millions of birds and watching the sky and mountains change colour. It was very cold, so the hot lemon tea we had at 6 am was very refreshing. The sunrise was happening right in front of our tent. Watched the sun rise beautifully. Later we quickly packed and got ready. We had sandwiches, macroni, omelette, papaya, black coffee for breakfast.
We reached the next campsite, Tali at 12.30 pm. We reached almost the same time as the staff members and the mule. So we got to help out with pitching our tents. It had gotten very windy and cold by then. We were super hungry by the time we had lunch, which was hot rice and dhal.
After lunch we left the camp to trek to Tali lake at 3 pm after having hot lemon tea.
It was an unique experience trekking fully on snow from the campsite to Tali lake. It was a lot of fun. The snow was almost knee deep, but we managed to trek slowly. Kids did a little bit of rock climbing here and were thrilled about it. We had to head back to the camp site as the sun was about to set. We had hot and super yummy momos and soup once we got back at 6 pm. It was super cold, we all huddled up inside the dining tent till dinner time. Had rotis, masoor dhal and paneer curry for the night and slept early.
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| Tali lake |
Day 5
I woke up around 4.45 am and finished all the morning chores. We could hear a lot more birds here. There were so many new bird calls.
After packing the bags, we had breakfast at 7 am - maggi, poha, papaya, dahlia porridge and coffee. We had to wear gaiters and spikes for our shoes as it was supposed to be a full day of trek on snow mountains. We left the campsite around 7.30 am and were super excited about the snow trek wearing all the gear! We started off well, we were walking slowly as the snow was very slippery and it was a climb. Few paths were very steep. The kids did amazingly well. The views all along were breathtaking as we could see mostly snow clad mountains everywhere.
While cutting across one of the snow covered mountains, my little one slid down the slope and the guides caught her. A few seconds later I followed her and slid down, but luckily both of us were fine. It was a tough crossing as snow was melting and it was a huge slope covered with knee deep snow. All of us managed to move to a safe place with the help of our guides and took a breather.
After this stretch, the path got steeper and the snow was slippery. The weather started becoming foggy as well. We stopped at Chitrakantha meadow, which had a 360degree view of white! We reached the jhanda point/flag point where we had a beautiful 360degree view of snow mountains. We continued climbing and reached around 0.5 km away from the summit when the weather became very cloudy, windy, and started raining. So we could not continue to the summit and had to immediately start heading down.
We did not stop anywhere and finally reached the campsite Khulara at 3 pm. It started pouring again as we got inside the tent and it was very very cold.
We were supposed to eat our packed lunch at the summit which did not happen. We hadn't eaten or drank water ever since we started descent, so we were exhausted. We ate inside the tent and rested as it was raining heavily outside and the temperature had dipped down. After an hour or so of resting, we went out to eat hot pakodas and had coffee. It stopped raining a bit, and we were able to enjoy the gorgeous mountains all around us. After an hour it again started to rain. We settled inside our tents with covers open watching the mountains. We were served hot soup at our tents (as it was raining and super cold) and drank. Dinner was at 7 pm - rotis, rajma, dhal, mixed veg curry and yummy jamoons. We sat at the dining tent listening to our guide, Sanjay's stories of fairies, Vanadevathe and other stories. Later we all sat talking and laughing about the day's experiences. We finally hit the sleeping bags at 9.30 pm. It was too cold that night. I hardly slept most of the night due to the cold. Evening night temperature was around 2 degrees.
Day 6
I woke up at 5 am to the sound of many birds chirping, including Monals. We actually heard a Monal almost every morning. I freshened up and walked around. The sky was very clear that morning. I stood facing the mountains waiting for the sunrise while having lemon tea. It was a joy to see the sky and mountains change colour with the sunrise. We walked around, watching various birds and mountains. We could see the top of the 'Neelkant' mountain clearly. We had a leisure breakfast - upma, egg burji, papaya, apple and pasta with veggies. Kids enjoyed the pancakes made in the mountains. I had my coffee and started packing. We left Khulara around 9.30 am after thanking the amazing staff and taking a group picture with them. There were 6 of them altogether including our guides Vipin and Sanjay.
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| Neelakant |
We got packed-lunch for the day and started from Khulara downhill to Tugasi. We reached Tugasi around 2.30 pm after stopping for lunch around 1 pm. The day's trek was in the forest area, full of greenary, Rhododendron flowers, huge golden Oak trees, Pine fir trees and a lot of Maple leaves fallen on the ground. We crossed a lot of streams and drank water from the streams. We saw a lot of birds, white headed red tail birds, laughing thrustle birds (green and grey) to name a few.
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| Streaked Laughing Thrush |
The tempo traveler was waiting for us at Thugasi. We went straight to Bhavishya Badrinath temple from Thugasi. The temple is located on a mountain, drove uphill on narrow windy roads and reached the beautiful temple around 3.50 pm. The purohit of the temple narrated the story of how Gowmatha (cow) was entering the temple and doing abhisheka with her milk and used to run back to the owner. The owner used to wonder why she never gave milk to him. Each time it was a different cow, one day he followed all the cows but he fell asleep near the road end. The chosen cow went to the temple and did abhisheka to the shrine and came back to his owner. The cow owner woke up and wondered, he went to the temple and saw the abhisheka done by the cow was overflowing. The udhbhava moorthy is changing every year - the features are becoming more prominent as the years go by.
We got back into the tempo traveller and started towards Auli. After roughly an hour and half, we reached a remote place in Auli where Dinesh had booked a heritage hotel for us called the Shail Shikhar Heritage Inn. The rooms were cosy and amazing and had a gorgeous view of snow mountains right next to us. Our room was on the first floor and was super big with 2 levels and wide windows opening to the snow mountains.
We saw the most beautiful and bright rainbow ever seen from a very very close distance. It was a rainbow I will never forget! We saw a second rainbow also within a short span.
As we were very hungry, we ate maggi and french fries and drank lemon tea as soon as we reached the hotel.
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| View from our room |
After eating, we took a nice hot, happy long bath washing away all the trek-sweat from many days . Oh the joy of a hot bath after an amazing trek is something most trekkers cherish (I think) 
. Oh the joy of a hot bath after an amazing trek is something most trekkers cherish (I think) We had a good dinner - roti, dhal, sabji and jamoon. We were super tired and just went to bed. Goodnight!
Day 7
I woke up at 5.20 am to one of the best views in the world and a million bird sounds. I freshened up and opened the small cute little window that opened to huge snowclad mountain ranges. I just settled here, standing and absorbing the beauty. It felt like a movie scene or as if I was in a small town in Switzerland. One of the best mornings! I had an apple and coffee 2 times. I stood here till 8 am. By then kids also woke up and enjoyed the view.
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| 100s of birds flying around |
We had breakfast at 8.45 am - aloo paratha and lemon tea. We left the inn around 9 am, walking /hiking uphill to the place where cable chair cars started. We took cable chair cars and went up a bit. We started the trek to Gorson meadow - it was a beautiful trek - inside a beautiful forest area and saw the Vanadevi temple. We reached the 360degree viewpoint, the highest maggi point around 12.30 pm.
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| Nanda devi peak at the back |
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| 😍 |
It was a beautiful day. We reached down and then it started pouring. It was an awesome experience with a hail storm and we could see the snowfall on the far away mountains. We had chai and cream-rolls while waiting for the rain to reduce. We waited for the cable car and came down.
We walked down to the hotel and reached around 4 pm. We ate hot pakoras and masala tea. We sat in the restaurant talking to Sanjay and Dinesh till 7 pm. We freshened up and had dinner around 8 pm - rotis, dhal, paneer curry. Got back to the room and tried packing, but couldn't as I was so sleepy. Slept on the huge bunk bed with kids
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| Full moon night |
Day 8
I woke up at 3.30 am, freshened up and started packing. I had a few cups of coffee and fruit. It was raining outside and dark. We were supposed to leave early so we could reach the stretch where repair was going on, before it closed for traffic. Our tempo traveller came at 4.45 am. I woke up others. Kids got up around 4.30 - 4.45 am. Power went off at 5 am and we grappled with our headtorches. We went down at 5.15 am, had lemon tea and bread toast.
We left Auli around 5.45 am and were able to cross the road where repair was taking place before 8 am as it was supposed to close at 8 and open only at 11. We stopped for breakfast around 8.30 am and had parathas/maggi. We continued the drive, stopped for masala lemon juice and chai. Later we stopped for lunch around 2.30 pm. We listened to a lot of Hindi songs and sang along. Finally reached our hotel in Rishikesh at 4.30 pm.
We had a quick bath and headed out to see Ganga arathi around 5 pm. It was a long walk to Sai Ghat near Laxman jhula where the Ganga Arathi was happening. We reached on time and sat very close to the Ganga river on the steps. We sang Hanuman chalisa. It was Hanuman Jayanthi that day. We sang and saw Ganga arathi. We also got to do the arathi. We got prasada and went upstairs. I was thrilled to see Satya Sai Baba temple with padukas and photos.
We went down to touch Ganga river, feet inside Ganga and poured water on our heads. We collected a few pebbles from here.
A group of guys were singing beautifully near Sai Ghat. I wanted to sit and listen, but others wanted to leave. We headed uphill, had goli soda on the way, went to the shopping galli and shopped. Stopped for dinner at the Beatles restaurant overlooking the river. We walked back to the hotel and slept around 11 pm.
Day 9
Oh, the last day of our adventure. I woke up around 4 am and freshened up. Kids woke up at 5.30 am to get ready for the walk alongside the Ganga river. We left the hotel at 6.30 am and started walking towards the Ganga river. It was a lovely long walk. We crossed Ram jhula and went to the other side. We had masala chai, spent some time near the river and continued walking along the river towards Laxman jhula. We stopped at the German bakery we had visited last year for a few cakes. We went to Cafe Royale that was overlooking Ganga for breakfast and coffee.
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| Ram Jhula |
We took a boat to cross the river to the other side. We walked back to the hotel and arrived at 11.15 am.
Took a quick bath, packed and checked out at 12. We had lassi and bread while waiting for the cab. Had to take 2 cabs due to the traffic jam but managed to reach the airport on time.
We had lunch at the airport, walked around and boarded our flight at 6 pm. I slept on the flight till we reached Bangalore at 9.30 pm. We took a cab at 10.20 pm and reached home at midnight.
Well, it was an amazing trek! Great company, best guides! Thanks everyone for making this possible!
