Our first destination was Kedarnath – one of the four char dham sites and as per Wikipedia, the most remote one as well. The only way to reach Kedarnath is via a 14Km uphill trek from Gaurikund. We hired couple of reliable Amby’s and off we went from Dehradun to Gaurikund – the place where the motorable roads end. We left Dehradun early in the morning by 6AM and reached Gaurikund by 5PM the same evening doing a leisurely journey via Rudraprayag, Guptkashi, Agastyamuni etc stopping enroute for a leisurely lunch by the riverside of Mandakini near Agastyamuni.
All the way starting from Rishikesh to Kedarnath, we would see Sadhus walking bare feet to do the chaar-dhaams, completely dependent on the support and help of the villagers for everything from food to shelter. What faith and what trust!
Gaurikund is a very small, congested town (not sure if I should even call it a town!) consisting of sundry shops, eateries, and rooms for pilgrims to stay. We had booked ourselves in one of the GMVN hotels – a pretty neat and clean place, considering the remoteness of the location. The Mandakini river flows right across the street and one can hear the river once the chatter in the town subsides by evening. The weather had turned cold and almost freezing and one look at the imposing peaks of the Himalayas and hundreds of bright shining stars in the dark sky left us all mersmerized. What an awesome place to be!
We were quite apprehensive of the trek next day, not knowing what to expect and people whom we met on their way back, kept on giving contradictory views on how to do the trek. We decided to start early by 5AM and return half way down to Rambara to rest for the night. We woke up by 3.30AM to the constant jingling of bells of ponies going through the town. We figured out that people had already started their journey.
The local administration has a very neat arrangement for toursits to hire ponies, pittus (people who carry small children in a basket), and palkis. It was really commendable. We were doing the trip in a slightly off season, the summer vacations for schools had not yet started and the toursit inflow was not that high.
Just to give you a quick orientation, the climb uphill goes through a series of interconnected mountains with awesome views all round, the cobbled path way is wide enough for at least 6 to 10 people to walk together comfortably with railings on one side. Rambara is exactly 7 kms from Gaurikund and lies midway to Kedarnath.
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For the journey upward, we hired 4 ponies for the kids and whoever was tired enough and wanted to get onto the ponyies– realized it later that it doesn’t work that way. For those manning the ponies, the business window is only 6 months with monsoon in between and they want to be doing as many trips in a day as possible, so they are least bothered about how you want to structure your journey, they do it their way – Quick, fast and efficiently. Meena, I and the 4 kids did the first half of the uphill journey on the pony, while Nitika and Pawan trekked uphill and for the other half, Nitika along with the kids went on the Pony, while Meena, I and Pawan trekked uphill.
Unlike what you will read on the net, the first 7 kms of the trek are really steep, than the last 7 kms. Though not as steep as the first 7 kms, the second half is more tiring – primarily because towards the last couple of kms, the mountains give way to a plateau, the weather dips drastically, since you are no longer shieled by the peaks of the mountains, the cold air that comes in from the snow peaked caps all around Kedarnath starts hurting you, secondly, the oxygen level drops as you approach Kedarnath, a lot of folks do have difficulty breathing due to the drop in oxygen levels and carry camphor, vicks, oxygen cyclinders etc to ease the journey and the stay at Kedarnath. Those regular with the Sudarshan Kriya will not even feel this dip in the oxygen level as we realized much to our delight.
If you are unfit and do not think you can take the rigour of a trek, just take a pony ride uphill – it will take you 4 hours, we did the trek uphill in about 6.5 hours.
You will find tea, snacks, eatables in small road side shops all the way to Kedarnath. So don’t worry about food and water. We took a halt at GMVN River side hotel at Rambara – an absolutely gem of a place, right next to the gushing Mandakini river, the place where we would halt for the night, dumped all the extra stuff we were carrying – for a lovely breakfast of hot Alu-Paranthas, bread toast butter and jam and some steaming hot cups of tea and coffee!
At Rambara, the kids saw a bunch of people falling down from the ponies and hurting themselves and then Tanvi got scared and started crying and Sreesh followed suit. Getting onto a Pony is a not so good experience, the fact that you are travelling uphill on an uneven cobbled surface, with a deep valley on one end is more than enough to give you the jitters. Then the pony operators have their own rules, however much you offer to pay them so that you get one handler to a pony, you will invariably end up with one guy handling at least two ponies. We lost quite a bit of time preparing the kids to get onto the ponies…finally Tanvi didn’t agree and did the uphill trek with us for about an hour, when we finally managed to convince her to get onto a “Pittu” for the rest of the distance. We asked the Pittu guy to walk with us at our speed and then within 15 minutes we found that the Pittu and Tanvi were not to be seen anywhere within our eyesight! We did not imagine what lay ahead for us at Kedarnath! More on that later.
plans went straight out of the window, we stepped out post 6AM, completed the ceremonies and stepped into the 
temple to have a beautiful darshan of Badri-Vishala and then in the temple complex in a corner, is the statue of Adi Shankaracharya and Swami Brahmanand Saraswati – And then I got the opportunity to sit and meditate. I did the Guru Pooja chanting…..the vibrations of the place were so powerful that I slipped into a deep meditation so effortlessly.
exhilarating, the snow capped peaks in the distance, the waterfalls meandering down the hills and the changing weather patterns at every turn of the mountains. By now the rush of pilgrims had slowed down to a trickle and we did a very slow trek down till Rambara, talking to so many pilgrims on the way.
The next day we met an elderly gentleman from a village near Indore who was supposedly about 90 years old (in the photograph with Yami, Nitika and Pawan) and was traveling with his son and was coming after doing Gangotri and Yamunotri. Apparently he gets up at 4AM everyday, washes his own clothes, cooks his own food and does not depend on anyone else in the family. At Gangotri he had walked way ahead of the others in the group and had completed the yatra before others in the group could make it. It was the same case here, the rest of the group was lagging behind while this gentleman was ahead of others. I am not sure if I was even half as fit as the guy was at 90!
Then suddenly we realized it is past lunch time and would the Pittu guy would have dropped Tanvi to where Nitika and kids were or would he be waiting for us and what about Tanvi – what if she was feeling hungry or thirsty? And how and where would we find the Pittu wala? The very thought gave us the shivers! Very fortunately for us the Pittu guy had very safely delivered Tanvi to where Nitika was waiting.
