1 Agoda Village

Day-1, 24-May-2015:

Sangam Chatti to Agora Village: 6KMs

Last night the 'jet-lag' (from the US-India flight) really hit me around 6:00PM. I had fallen into drugged-stupor like sleep in my bed at Bhandari Hotel even though SK and Sonu were watching TV and the lights were on. I was unable to get up for dinner, when SK tried waking me up. So I continued sleeping like a log; till I got up at 2:30 AM feeling quite refreshed. I hope today's trek to Agoda in the sun, will help to cut short the jet-lag phase.

We (SK, KS, Guide Sonu and sub-Guide Rajesh Panwar) left the 'old' Bhandari Hotel (opp the petrol pump in main market of Uttarkashi) in a booked Maxx around 8:15AM and picked up some balance provisions from the market and headed for Sangam-Chatti. We left the main Gangotri road at Gangori (where Assi-Ganga merges into Bhagirathi river) and turned into the Sangam Chatti Road. This road was pretty rough and mostly a dirt road all the way. We could see the heavy damage wrecked by the flood from thunderstorm and cloudburst of Aug-2012. The land on both sides of the river, Assi-Ganga, was showing the heavy damage from the rough passage of swollen river waters.

We arrived at Sangam Chatti at 9:15am. Now there are only 2-3 Dhaba's and Tea shops here. Before that cloudburst this was a village of over 50-60 homes and a bustling market place; all washed away in that flood.

We got off the Maxx strapped on our backpacks and opened our trekking poles and set off across the new steel bridge, crossing the Assi Ganga from west to east and started our trek to Agoda. Our baggage & provisions were to follow on a pack-mule.

As soon as we started on the trail within 50 Meters of the bridge we saw hordes of butterflies of all shapes and colors flitting around. We spent nearly 15-20 minutes trying to shoot pictures of them. This was indeed an awesome welcome by the butterflies to the start of our trek.

The trail was pretty nice with a gradual rise and mostly through nice pine forest. But the sun was beating down and the temperature started rising to 31*C. But the trek was enjoyable and most of the way we could look back down the valley towards the drop-off point and the zig-zag road climbing up above Sangam Chatti towards Gajoli and the 2-3 Cell Towers on that road on the the other side of Assi-Ganga.

This was a nice slow walk today. We saw many birds, wildflowers and butterflies. So a walk that might have taken us 2 hours stretched to 3+ hours! On the trail we met a big group of 30 trekkers, old and young all from Surat, who had done this trek the other way around i.e. from Barsu Dayara first and then Dodital and today on their last day's trek down to Sangam Chatti. They were led by a famous Uttarkashi guide, A 74 yr old lady, Chandraprabha Aitwal, a former instructor at NIMS and who had taught Bachendri Pal and was one of famous NIMS '7-Sisters' We exchanged a few words with her, when we finally met her shepherding her group from the rear-end.

I was surprised to find our night-stay place "Bharat Lodge" at Aghora, to be a decent place and well located with a view and nice lawn to sit out and watch the mountains! Our Guide, Rajesh Panwar and his brother run this place. Their contact Cell No is: (0) 99270-99352