2 Dodital Lake

A 7-day Trek from Sangam-Chatti to Dodital, Darwa-Pass and to Dayera-Bugyal via Suru-Thatch and ending at Barsu Village, in Uttarakhand, India.

The Dodital Lake (altitude 3065M) with the Ganesha Temple & Mountains reflected in the waters

Day-2, 25-May-2015:

Agora> Bebra> Dharkot> Manjhi> Dodital

We left Bharat Lodge at 7:30AM after a nice breakfast and started the trek on the trail going East. The trek was mostly through forest and we had nice tree cover most of the time. Steady climbing, well-marked trail with stone staircases and in some narrow paths with side barricades.

Plenty of birds, wildflowers & butterflies along the way. We walked very slowly stopping for pictures every now and then. Sonu (our Guide) was busy taking pictures of wild flowers and birds; with the awesome 30x zoom of my new Panasonic Lumix ZS-40 camera.

After some time we descended a bit and crossed a side river at Bebra Gate. There were several huts and summer homes here. After crossing the log bridge we again steadily climbed until we reached a Rest Point under 'Chattri' marked Dharkot at 10:20AM The signpost there said another 10KM to Dodital, so we must have come 5KMs so far Aghora.

After 10 mins rest, we continued the trek with trail almost at level. About 3KMs before Manjhi, we came to a trail junction with a signpost - where a lower trail diverted downwards to Satgadi (3KM) and beyond to Dayera (15KM).

The signpost 2 KM before Manjhi

We continued straight and reached the Manjhi Village (2900M) were we stopped for 30 mins and opened our lunch-pack and had Roti-Aloo-B.Egg-Frooti.

We left Manjhi at about 1:30PM and within 15 mins a loud thunderstorm started with some rain. We debated if we should return to Manjhi or continue in the rain with raincoats. We decide to continue and after some time the rain turned to hail-storm and small ice-balls falling. I opened up my Umbrella to shelter from the hail.

Umbrella unfurled as cover for 'ice-hail' storm

We continued walking and pretty soon the storm stopped (2:30PM) and soon we reached turn in the ridge where a small temple of "Bhairavnath" had been built (3:15PM). We took some pics here and continued and finally reached Dodital at 3:50PM

At Bhairavnath temple on trail to Dodital

Dodital Lake (alt: 3065M) was in a very serene setting with a Ganesh Temple and some houses and shops nearby; mostly to serve pilgrims who visited here perhaps. Nice green meadow for camping on other side of a stream flowing out of the lake, near the Forest GH structure. Soon we had our 2-man Tent pitched and we settled in for a bit of rest, after the long 15KM walk today from Aghora. Our Kitchen was setup inside a circular Forest RH (kitchen) for a rent.

View of Dodital Lake (3065M) from our tent site

In the evening another camper, Rajesh Gadgil and his wife turned near our tent to say hello. They were from Borivali Mumbai and lived within 2KM from SK's apartment. Rajesh was a Himalayan Club (HC) Secy and we discovered we had many common friends and trekkers from Mumbai. Rajesh & his wife have trekked a lot in the Himalayas and so we spent a lot of time exchanging trek notes and stories.

Towards evening around 5 PM there was a small thunderstorm and some rain and the temp was fell quite a bit (and late at night down to 10*C). By 7:30PM we finished dinner and retired to the sleeping bag in the tent by 8 PM.