The Ultimate Plan - Toophany ho jaye !!!

As a winter lover, I always had a zest to do a snow trek in Himalayas. This time I decided to do something which was more challenging and a place where apart from nature nothing persists. Being a Bullet rider, I had always developed a habit of exploring weird destinations and preferred being away from the concrete jungle. So selecting a place where most of the tourists visit, was not my preferred choice for this adventure trek. If I recollect right, I got to know about a place called Kedarkantha peak, through my favorite social media Instagram. I soon started collecting more info with the help of Google Uncle and soon collected all details about this place.

Kedarkantha is a mountain peak of the Himalayas situated in Uttarakand  Its elevation is 12500 ft. Kedarkantha is located within Govind Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttarkashi District. The climb to the peak of Kedarkantha starts from a small village called as Sankri. Sankri is 200 kms (by road) away from Dehradun city. 

My next big question was, whom should I accompany with on this trek?? For sure my better half Ashwini was ruled out, as she is not a winter lover and has her reservations when it comes to stretching ourselves when you are on vacation. Her view is one should go for a luxury vacation to relax and rejuvenate rather than do adventures and stretch ourselves to the boundaries, which is also true to an extend. Anyways so I decided to check with my friend Pratik Velhal who was bubbly and energetic and had full trust on me for all the arrangements I will do for this trek. We decided to fix the dates in February 2020 end as we both had our pre-commitments till Feb 3rd week. I also wanted to ensure that I dont miss on the prime snowing season of winter and hence decided not to delay it much in later March. I googled up to find out which are the good agencies who conduct these treks. One thing I had learnt during my last trek to Kheerganga in Himachal was, you need a (local) guide who will be with you till you finish your entire trek. Finally I zeroed down one agency and negotiated an all inclusive package from Dehradun  to Dehradun round trip. Sukhpal Bhatti one of my another friend / brother / well wisher who lives in Delhi, Tilak Nagar who is also a travel freak and adventure lover, guided me a lot to buy right stuff from Decathlon so that I am fully geared up for this trek. I infact hijacked lot of his stuff during this trek 😃.

Me and Pratik

We had to book our train tickets till Delhi as direct trains to Dehradun were not available. We started our journey from Mumbai on 28th Feb at 5.30 pm. Our train reached Delhi on 29th February at 11am and our bus to Dehradun was at 10.30 pm from Kashmiri Gate, Delhi.

Journey begins...

Usually these buses start in the night so that it reaches Dehradun next day early morning, you have no other option if you wish to travel by buses Sukhpal was kind enough to invite us to his house in Delhi for unwinding and relaxing till we board our bus in the night.Trust me this was a great help to us and in nowadays no one bothers to show such a extended courtesy and care. His entire family was waiting eagerly for our arrival and greeted us with lots and lots of love and affection. After having loads of food we parted from Delhi informing Sukhpal that we shall come back to his place while returning from our trek to change and return all his trekking stuff that I had hi-jacked from him 😂

As soon as we boarded the bus, we fall asleep, till we heard an announcement that `this bus will wait for only half an hour for a dinner break'. It was 1.30 am, we were somewhere in Uttar Pradesh with virtually no one on the highway except trucks and these Volvo buses. We immediately decided to go back inside the bus as it was freezing cold outside. We again went back to sleep like babies in that cozy Volvo bus and started snoring...