EXPERINCES IN MY LIFE-KEDARNATH TRIP

After coming back to Rudraprayag from Badrinath, we stayed there in the night. Next day morning at around 10 AM we started for Kedarnath. For this we had to go on road up to Gaurikund (Altitude 1980 meters)  and from there had to trek 16 Km to reach Kedarnath (Altitude 3550 Meters). That means we had to climb about 1600 meters in the 16 Km trek, which means 100 meters climb for every KM.   Gaurikund was just 75 Km from Rudraprayag and we reached it in a couple of hours’ time by 1 PM. We then had our lunch there. From there we had the option to trek to Kedarnath, but my daughter Vineela was too small and it would have been very difficult. So we opted for a pony to take us up.

Ponies were freely available at Gaurikund but they are expensive at Rs 400 per pony in 1992 when as a Scale II officer, my salary would have hardly been Rs 4000 a month at that time. We hired 2 ponies, 1 for myself and daughter and 1 for my wife. But that journey took us a solid 3 hours with a break in between for refreshment. The path was lined with stones and is pretty steep. On a couple of occasions my pony’s hoof slipped on the stones, on the 2^nd occasion substantially. There was a big drop right by our side and that too unfenced and unguarded. A slip there would have been fatal.

I was alarmed and that too my daughter was sitting in front of me and called the pony owner. He was walking beside me and told me “Sir there is no problem at all. The horse is as scared as you and I are about the fall and would protect itself sab, so just relax and enjoy the trip.”

The view by the side of the path into the valley was very beautiful with lovely greenery dotted with flowers. After the valley rose another mountain range. Every now and then we saw waterfalls coming down the range. There was a tall Mountain towering above us and visible in the distance. We had to raise our heads up in order to view its peak, and we were already well over 2000 meters when we started at Gaurikund. We were told that it is Chaukamba, the 4^th tallest mountain in India. Chaukamba is double Kedarnath’s altitude of  3500 meters.

The upward pathway was too beautiful even to describe. On one side of the path on occasions there was an upward sloping mountain while on the other side is the valley described in the previous paragraph. The mountain on which we were passing too had lovely flowers and small waterfalls all along the way. We came across a little bigger waterfall and the pony owner stopped the ponies for drinking water from the fall.

We got down and felt the water it was chilling cold coming down from melting ice. We too had a taste of the invigorating water and started again. There were many tourists trekking up the slope as we passed and every one of them was really enjoying it. We reached Kedarnath by 4 PM and went round the place taking photographs. Kedarnath looked magnificent with Chaukamba at its back. The mountain appeared so very near, as though it was right at the back of the temple. One feels that one can just go out of the temple at the back and can walk down a few hundred meters to get there. But the mountain is a solid 21 Km away and one wonders at the optical illusion.

I heard Bengali being spoken by many people, so assumed that Bengali’s travel a lot. At Badrinath too many people were speaking Bengali. Also, that was the time of the Durga Pooja holidays, and I supposed many of them like to travel during that occasion. We stayed there overnight in a Dharmasala.

The night at Kedarnath was truly chilling, even more chilling than at Badrinath, and one has to even dread going to the bathroom. Exposing the skin to the chill there made ones teeth chatter.

We visited the Kedarnath temple the next morning. Of the 3 dhams we visited in the trip, this is the only temple where I went inside for the Darshan. Of course my wife and daughter had Darshan in all the three. We then visited the Samadhi of Sankaracharya right by the side of the temple. We then had lunch and caught hold of the pony guys who were waiting for us. The downward trek took about 2 hrs and we reached Gaurikund by about 3 PM. We started from there and reached Rudraprayag by 5.30 PM.

We then left our luggage at the hotel and visited the confluence of Alaknanda and Mandakini which takes place at Rudraprayag. The confluence was magnetic as the 2 rivers meeting merged with their waters cutting each other as they combined and formed into one. We sat there for some time taking pictures. The area had great serenity and was sublimely beautiful.