My parents must have repeated this at least a million times in one week – “be careful!” Or “don’t do this”, “don’t do that”. While their worry was at an all-time max… Me? I was chilling.
Then the day finally came, bags packed and snacks in my hand. The airport ride to the car was filled with my mom talking about how I needed to call her the second I reached, to be honest it was dreadful. But I don’t think I had fully processed the fact that I was going to spend 2 weeks in the Himalayas without my parents and with a bunch of people I did not know!
Before the mountains we had a night at Rishikesh. Our first stop and my first night away from home. The outside had this kind of cold that seeped in your clothes no matter how many layers you put on, but as soon as you entered the building, the warmth would hug you making you feel cozier than ever. Our floor had many rooms, each of them filled with girls we had just met at dinner. Naturally all of us wanted to talk to each other and then decided to sneak into one large room at night; only to get busted the second we stepped out of the room.
The next day was going to be the most hated day. Travel to the base camp of Dayara Bugyal. We had to sit in a van and drive for around eight hours so we could reach the base camp, Raithal. People say that it is one of the most picturesque base camps ever and I couldn’t agree more! It was basically a 360 view of the scenic Garhwal peaks of Uttarakhand. While the normal trek lasts about 6–7 days the summer camp I went to was around 9 days long. It was mostly because we had a lot of different activities and we even stayed in certain campsites for more than a day.
At the summit
Like in one campsite we got to put up our own tents (which requires much more team coordination than you may think it does). It was actually a very clumsy activity – all of us were split into groups of four and we were twisting, turning and lifting the parts of the tent only to find that we did it wrong and had to restart! After this we also learnt about shelter building which I discovered was nowhere close to a tent. It was just a lot of teetering logs (used as poles for support) and a blue plastic mat covering our bodies while we used rocks as tables and shelves for storing items.
Tent pitching · more teamwork than it looks
Honestly, this trek experience was far from what I had expected it to be. I thought I was just going to be alone walking the trails of the Himalayas in silence but it proved to be quite the opposite; the only thing that could be heard at the campsites was the joyful laughter of my fellow trek buddies and a bunch of murmuring from inside the tents. We even got trek booklets from our trek leaders so that we could capture every moment and every emotion.
The whole gang · Himalayas behind us
After all the laughter and shelter building it finally came summit day. We were all ready to walk the trails of Dayara Bugyal and reach the summit we were all waiting for. I stocked up on my snacks and had my warm breakfast. The talking had actually stopped by now, everyone was too busy trying not to trip over rocks and under our breath you could also hear some of us say “how much further…” And then with almost no warning the treeline ended.
What replaced it was an endless Bugyal (meadow) filled with patches of snow and the cold was unfurling into our feet. But all of us had one feeling in common: a sense of accomplishment. All of us were proud of what we had just achieved. There were a few moments of silence until all of us broke out into groups throwing snow at each other running, slipping, falling and just letting ourselves be free. It was almost liberating. At the end we took our photos and we had to leave.
We were all pretty devastated to turn around and walk back but that’s the thing about treks – you can’t stay at the peak forever, and maybe that’s the actual lesson.