#neem karoli route

[jeevanjali]

Kainchi Dham Kaise Jaye: कैसे पहुंचें कैंची धाम? जाने से पहले जरूर जान लें ये जरूरी बातें!Kainchi Dham Kaise Jaye: धार्मिक तीर्थ स्थलों में से एक कैंची धाम आश्रम श्रद्धालुओं के बीच काफी लोकप्रिय है।

[shut-up-rabert]

Things that happened in UK:

->It was Uttarakhand, not United Kingdom. +1 for that

-> The weather was too cold, and the altitude too high for my flatland ass. My ears hurt baaaadd.

-> Did I mention that I get sick in the mountains? Cold + the bends on the roads, I’m dead already.

-> I’m a summer person and I was in mountains in not summer. (Literally no offense to pahadis here. Not your fault my stupid unadaptable ass couldn’t T-T)

-> The boys were hot. I think I had my @sanskari-kanya moment with one guy in Nainitaal when I was looking at his damn gorgeous face for a split second and looked away just as I saw his eyes rising upto me (He was hiking up the slope with his pals while I was heading down, I couldn’t stare longer because bhencho mujhe sharam aati hai)

-> There was garbage and gunk on roads, had they thrown all of it in the Naini lake and made a trash, cold island they could’ve had a United Kingdom of there own. (Seriously, tourists and locals both need an orientation on cleanliness because my village is cleaner than a tourist hotspot :/)

-> The mini adventure sports, maggie points, waterfalls on the route were all *chef’s kiss*

->Neem Karoli!!! I hated the upset stomach and headaches the mountains brought but the temple was so worth it!!! T^T and to be offering water to Shivji on Mahashivratri at a place as beautiful as that! *cries*

-> cold did wonders to me whether I like it or not. My hair wasn’t frizzy, my skin wasn’t tanning away from my natural skin tone, I had a blush kinda effect on my face because of the weather. When I saw myself in the mirror, I kinda realised why the hot guys were looking—

-> The guest house was so worn down and old fashioned I was half convinced I got lice from the pillows. ->Jim Corbett. The resorts there are soo good I’d go there just to relax and no other reason.

-> Why the fuck do you have to wake up at 5 to see a tiger safari? Why are you guys willingly dragging me along to a place you KNOW has tigers?? WHY THE FUCK DOES THAT TOURIST CANTER HAS NO PROTECTING LAYER NOT EVEN GLASS—

-> Tried sleeping in the safari but the trail was so fucking bumpy+ people kept waking me up to show me deers. All in all, I came back sleep deprived, starving, dirty, every joint in my body aching, and oh, did I mention tanned, and covered in dirt? I’ll need a deep cleansing of my hair to get that all out :’)

->Not to mention we saw no tigers, not that I wanted to because its a fucking tiger, but all those six hours of pain for some deers, elephants, crocodiles and monkeys? Seriously, If I wanted to see a lazy animal lying around with its limbs spread I’d look at my brother on a sunday afternoon.

-> a lot of things sucked but hey, atleast it wasn’t the United Kingdom

[travelnew]

Train, bus & helicopter between home & base camp for Uttarakhand trek

11.04.2024, Thursday.

Three friends met at the station. One of us had actually joined impromptu (on-the-spot) and had managed to get all confirmed reservations (not even RACs)!

The final packing of the bag concluded a few hours before the journey started.

My bag weighed 13 kg.

We alighted at Delhi.

Another train journey took us to the foothills of Uttarakhand - Kathgodam. We met our fellow trekkers in this train for the first time - Paresh Bhai from Ahmedabad and Govind Bhai from Panvel, MH.

12.04.2024, Friday.

22:30 The train reached Kathgodam. Our KMVN's hotel TRH Kumaon Dwar just 5 minutes from Kathgodam railway station and we fell off to sleep in the clean rooms.

13.04.2024, Saturday - day 1 - reporting for the trek.

Our batch of 25 gathered on time and the long journey to Munsiyari starts. It is our base camp.

On the way, we passed by the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram, Kainchi Dham. It is approximately 3 hours from Kathgodam and 8 hours from Munsiyari. We saw it from the top and the road swirls next to it in the valley. I wish we could have stopped for darshan of this powerful place. Neem Karoli Baba was the avataar of Lord Hanuman. Jay Shri Ram.

Pandey Lodge at Munsiyari is our base camp.

The long spacious room accommodated 5 trek mates and it had 2 attached washrooms. The stay was comfortable in the clean room.

14.04.2024, Sunday - acclimatization day.

YHAI Delhi, the organiser of this trek had arranged a hike to the nearby Nanda Devi Mandir.

15.04.2024, Monday - flag off.

Our trek starts by a flag off ceremony and we walk into the jungle.

Our trek route will face the Panch Chouli peaks (5 snow clad peaks). And a detailed description of the trek will be given in the blog posts to follow.

19.04.2024, Friday - group breaks & election day.

Now the plan to RETURN actually started the moment we were seated in the bus from Kathgodam to Munsiyari.

It was election day. And public transport was not easily available. Some of our group members panicked and requested that the acclimatization can be forfeited (dangerous when the trek is an high-altitude one) and thankfully nothing of that sort happened. Members had their flights and trains booked and were apprehensive that they might miss them.

We had booked our return by helicopter and the ride was my life's first. Many of us had traveled in aeroplanes, but helicopter travel is rare. There is weight limit. Anyone above 85 kg and anyone's luggage above 5 kg would be overweight and will pay INR 100/- per kg. My luggage was was 8 kg above the permissible limit and I had to pay Rs. 800/- more. After taxation and luggage, my total fare for the helicopter ride was INR 4475/-.

The same friend who had booked impromptu tickets, got confirmed helicopter tickets for us.

The experience was good. It's choppy. No wonder, it is called a chopper 🚁.

The best part of this aerial journey is bypassing the 12 hour road trip, which dehydrated me completely while coming here.

7 antiperistaltic movements and eyes closed tight. Too much.

The 🚁 ride cuts the travel time to just 45 minutes. The pilot doesn't allow any recording even with a mobile. Flight mode is compulsory. He was shouting some instructions inside the cabin with the rotors on and we couldn't hear anything. We just nodded and actually didn't utter a word in the entire flight and gestured to our neighbours about the land formations seen from the top.

Yet frankly I did feel nauseous, but thankfully not as bad as the road trip.

From the top, Uttarakhand has only mountains, valleys, towns, and rivers. The mountains are lush green. The rivers are running dry.

Nainital is easily identifiable from the top, with the lake after which it is named and also the other lakes of Nainital.

From the chopper 🚁, when all the mountain ranges ended, our ride ended, with landing in the plains at Haldwani. It was hot and jolted us.

We had changed our train's boarding point to Haldwani and INR 20/- per head rickshaw (x 3 passengers = 60/-), dropped us to Haldwani railway station, which was just 15 minutes away.

Friends parted.

We took the Kathgodam - Delhi Junction train.

The train reached Delhi Junction at 3:30 am.

We rested till 6 am in the waiting room.

Delhi has lots of travel options, but we selected to walk the last mile after metro journey to a delicious breakfast at Janpath.

Now the heat awaits us, but my Delhi friend's plan saved us. Check out what Delhi has in store for us and it will be a pleasant surprise. A ride in my friend's Mercedes Benz!

Check out my trek experience with YHAI at Munsiyari Khaliya Top in Uttarakhand.