India – The Taj Mahal and winter trekking in Kedarkantha, Utterkarand

WHEN – February 2020

TRANSPORT – Flight 1 –  from Hong Kong to Delhi @ 5.30 pm with Cathay Pacific CX – 1 piece 23kg – 5 hrs

Day 1 – Delhi, India

I arrived in Delhi at 10 pm and got picked up by a driver that I booked from booking.com. He waited over an hour while I was getting my bags so that was really sound! So the Hotel was called Hotel Premium but it didn’t exist and was called Hotel Lotus instead which was really confusing for the driver and the street name was different too! So maybe go to another Hotel haha. It honestly felt like some dodgy drug den where I was staying, in a really grimy room!

The Fort beside The Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal, Agra, India

Day 2 – Delhi, Agra, Taj Mahal – Dehradun

I got picked up at 3 am for a sunrise tour of the Taj Mahal and that company was excellent! Booked through Klook, great driver. He couldn’t find the hotel (as expected) because it was a fake one, but the drive to Agra was about three hours and smooth all the way, I slept the whole way! I met my guide in Agra and the three of us went to the Taj at about 6.30 am. It was just spectacular, with no queues and hardly any people, it was also a Thursday in winter so that helped!!

Found myself a photo stop!
The views from the Taj Mahal
Wandering the gardens

Went for coffee/brekkie and then to Agra Fort, it was so big, and only 20% was actually open to the public! We made our way back to Delhi @12 ish and got back to the ‘hotel’ at 4ish. The girls arrived shortly after and we got the transfer to Dehradun @5pm! Well, that was an experience! The roads were soooooo busy and so crazy, there was beeping every two seconds and then we got a puncture!! We had to wait at the side of the road for 1.5 hrs!! We continued on and eventually arrived at Duggal Homestay in Dehradun at 1.30 am!! Ha ha, what a journey. The guy at the homestay was sooooo lovely and I COULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS PLACE ENOUGH! The family was so nice and we had a home-cooked meal with them the following night!

Day 3

Well, we had the best sleep until 12 with huge blankets as it was really cold out! We got up and walked into the town, took about 30 minutes. We walked down windy side streets to go to the city (google maps and maps.me really needed here :p). There was nothing really to do in Dehradun. It is like a transit town to get to other places. We found a coffee shop called Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), and went to the Buffet Snack Shop beside Ghandi park for their local sandwiches and veggie burgers….you stand outside eating them while looking at the crazy traffic! Then we decided to get some Henna tattoos. We went to the local markets and found a man called Raju to do them. He was amazing and so quick and copied the pictures from the phone with no problem! They were so cheap too like I got three and it was 600 rupees! The girls were only 3euro each! You have to wait about 1.5 hrs for it to dry so we sat and had chats, tea, and selfies with them until 5 pm haha! We looked for a place to go for a nice drink but couldn’t find anywhere so we went back to our homestay and chilled for a while.

Henna time …
The results!

The dinner was at 8 pm and it was just so delicious…. cauliflower and potato curry thing, homemade rotis, salad, rice, and different sauces and dahl!! YUM!!  We all chatted together and then we were brought outside to have sugarcane straight from the stalk! We had to bite the stems open with our teeth and then suck the inside, yum and so sweet!! Bed about 10.30.

The Duggle Homestay family – tasting their fresh sugarcane 🙂
All the layers needed!

Day 4 – Dehradun to Sankri with Trek the Himalayas

We got up at 6.30 and got a taxi (which the homestay paid for) to the bus depo where we got picked up by our guide TREK THE HIMALAYAS! It was time to start! We got in a six-seater and we drove for about 1.5 hours to Mussoorie to pick up the other two that were part of the group…(btw Mussoorie is such a pretty place and has amazing mountain views – a honeymoon stop for Indian people apparently). It was a long journey to Sankri but we stopped in very local places along the way, there were little huts for rotis and Onion Paratha (which is like a pancake with potatoes and onions inside) …so nice! We arrived in Sankri at 5 pm, a really pretty place and the views of the mountains were incredible!!! 😍

Views from our teahouse accommodation in Sankri

We also did a shop there …you can get gaiters, poles, hats, gloves, ponchos and the works, all for really cheap btw…like a really good poncho – 5 euros, poles about 4 euros each!

Any excuse to shop…
Meeting the locals 🙂
A lady and her grandchild in Sankri

There was a little cafe beside us and we went and had coffee there and then had our induction. We were the only foreigners IN ANY GROUP btw …so funny. So one of the guys was translating for us. My initial opinion of the guides was not the best as they were so serious and didn’t smile! But our group was amazing and very friendly, asking lots of questions!! It was really cold where we were staying and no hot water but we layered all our clothes, had the heat packs and bed at 10 pm.

Blue skies and nice and warm on day 1 – rocking the gaiters!

Day 5 – Sankri to Camp 1

We were up at 7 am and went downstairs for brekkie. There was cornflakes and hot sweet milk, yum! It reminded me of my childhood ha! There were also curries and bread! We started walking with our backpacks, some people got mules to carry their backpacks as they were cheap enough. We carried ours and they were heavy but you don’t need to carry them for the summit attempt so should be ok. (Maybe do a few hikes with heavy bags before it lol). It was warm at the start, we went slow and had many breaks.

Our lovely group!
Our first camp
Dinner time – tasted better than it looked 🙂

We did 5 km today and our camps were in a beautiful forested area by a lake that was frozen over. It was so cold that we played a game called ‘Fire on the Mountain’, great fun and kept us warm! Run around in a circle and get into groups of whatever number that is called out. Then we had tea…I can’t express how cold it was that night! Like our tents were not warm enough and the ground surface was so lumpy that we could not sleep. The matrace was just like a thin layer of foam on snow so you seriously need heat packs and layers and thermals!!!

We stayed inside those tents – look at that sky. It was truly spectacular!
The hot masala sweet tea…addicted!!

Day 6 – Camp 1 to Basecamp

Up at 7, brekkie outside in the cold, but really hot tea. We left at 9.30 am and no joke we arrived at base camp @ 11.30!!! What to do for the day! But in fairness, the basecamp views were INCREDIBLE, like blue skies and the views of the Himalayas were out of this world!  We passed the time by writing in diaries, reading our books, playing cards, and trying to keep warm. It was not a popular area so we were a bit secluded. We had lunch outside and later on in the day we did an acclimatization walk for about an hour, great fun and we were singing all the way!

Taking in the views
Passing time at base camp 🙂
Out little mate at basecamp 🙂

Back at 5 pm, we had soup and popcorn outside and we got oxygen levels checked! THEN it started to snow heavily and we all had to pack up our backpacks and all sleep in the main tent, 23 of us in one big tent but it was warm because of all the body heat!! I forgot my earphones so they would’ve been handy that night to block out some of the snorers haha. They packed away our tents! We slept from 9 pm…(our summit time changed from 3 am to 6/7 am because of the weather so we knew we would not see the sunrise at that stage.)

Our acclimatization hike
Being taught new skills!
Our group

Day 7 – Summit attempt!

We were up at 7 am for tea and it was all a lot of organizing trying to get 20 people in one tent ready to go! But we set off at 7.30 in the hope of reaching the summit. It was snowing when we started and we went for about 2hrs to this tiny little hut about 500m from the top (another two hours away from the summit apparently). Like the conditions were crazy and the wind was very strong! So the guides said they would take us a little further, like as much as they could! Some people stayed in the hut, but we decided to keep going. It became a big struggle though, climbing through freshly soft snow about 4/5 ft deep and the path was nonvisible, we managed to make it to 3580m and then we had to turn around. They were right to turn us though because there was ZERO visibility at that stage and it was -17 with a wild blizzard snowstorm!!! Baltic!!

The tiny, little hut on route to the summit!
Visibility was challenging, to say the least!!
The ponchos making a statement! 🙂

So back we went, had to slide down a few times- good fun actually. Got back to base camp about 11. We chilled in the big tent, I had a banging headache, we had lunch there, nice food as always. I wasn’t fit to move but we got organised and headed to our other camp at 12.30. Reached the other place at 2.30 after sliding down many slopes and continuous snowfall, which was so pretty! When we reached the camp there were only two tents and one big one so we were all like no, we can’t stay here and the snow was so heavy.

Back in the snug tent after the summit attempt!
Another friend on the mountain

We all made a group decision to go back to Sankri. We had hot tea and samosa there and made our way down. Another three hours through pine forests covered in snow. It was quite rocky and very mucky towards the end! We made it back to Sankri in one piece at about 6 pm. Woohoooooooo!

The mules of the moutain

We stayed in the same place. There was no hot water but we managed to get changed into clean clothes! Had dinner @ 8 pm, dahl, rice, eggs, and sweet dessert. Bed at 10 pm.  (They were trying to organize transport for tomorrow morning as we weren’t meant to leave until the following day.)

Day 8

Up at 8.30 for brekkie and tea, curry and fried bread…but the tea was needed! So we all met together and had a debrief on the trip. We all got a certificate and we had to say our highs and lows of the trip!!! It was a nice way to end. We all gave a group tip (only 200 rupees each which seemed low but maybe it was all relative). They told us our transfers were delayed till the evening because the roads were blocked because of the snow …so we went to a cafe to play cards and then we were told that we could leave by 11! Great, we would get to Rishikesh today!!!

Our lovely certificates

That hope ended swiftly!! After driving 1.5 hrs, the whole road was blocked because of an overturned truck and the heavy snowfall, so we ended up sitting in our car for FOUR hours and basically, this is where I wrote all this 😂

So after we got moving, we stopped for dinner in the same place on the way to Sankri, and we ordered so much, rice, roti, paratha things, and curry!! Yum. Then straight into the car, no time to digest and we all felt a bit odd, whoops! Another three hours (because the driver was a lunatic and drove so bloody fast on those windy, cliff edge roads)…there was also a landslide on the road!!! We got to Duggle Homestay @ 10.30 pm and got a room, three in the double bed and myself in a cot at the end of it! (a big cot lol). Asleep by 12! What a memorable trip! Thank god I had the best company on this one haha!!

TIPS FOR TREK

– heat packs

– battery pack

– all the snacks

– eye masks

– earplugs

– earphones

– hand sanitizer

– wipes

– toilet paper

– plastic bags

– cards and games

– thermal flask and a normal btl to put hot water in at night

– travel pillow

– sleeping bag fleece liner

– lip balm

– hand cream

– poncho

– head torch

– thick thick socks

– two gloves

– sunglasses

– a small amount of cash

– all the warm clothes and thermals

& make sure your backpacks have rain covers

– bring a small foldable bag for summit day

– Use the app Klook to book transfers and wifi and stuff.

– Do the flight into Jolly Grant Airport to Dehradun as opposed to a 7/8 hr transfer from Delhi.

– Research companies and read reviews ( check the daily itinerary on their websites)