Har Ki Dun Trek 2024 May

Were we a team? Definite we were. For teams get created to accomplish a shared mission and makes the mission far more worthy by mutual empathy and bonds.

There were three middle aged to senior people from Bengal (me being one of them), two young guys from north India, and a young couple from south.

[12-May-2024 8:00 AM] We boarded a jeep from Dehradun to Sankri, about 210 km of journey. We stopped for breakfast at around 10 AM at a nicely located place beside Yamuna bridge in Tehri Garhwal to gorge ourselves with tandoor parathas, a local common delicacy.

Around 2 PM we stopped for our lunch at another beautiful eatery at Puraula (this had even wider panoramic view of the lower Himalayas, with a pair of Eagles soaring on the mountain top opposite the restaurant)

As we progressed towards Sankri, the scenic view got just better and better. Slowly the omnipresent light-crowned chir pines started getting replaced by majestic Deodar trees. There were also Oak trees with severely pruned branches (oak leaves are heavily chopped as fodder). Now river Tones started giving us company. Tarak da told us that Tones River is formed by two tributaries, Rupin & Supin, and it the latter tributary that will give us company during our trekking. Below map shows the rivers and our trekking route. Till Sankri we followed Supin but from Sankri onwards, technically it was a tributary of Supin.

On the way to Sankri, roughly an hour before we reached Sankri, we saw a beautiful old bridge over Supin. We got down from jeep but had to restraint ourselves to taking photos from far, as it would have been time-consuming to reach there on foot.

We reach Sankri at around 4 PM and almost immediately it started raining. Sankri must have been a sleepy hamlet a decade back, but now it is teeming with newly built hotels that are thriving on the trekking tourists. The hotel which our trekking operator arranged for us looked quite modern, but the management was chaotic to say the least. After an hour or so the rain abated, and a golden sunlight came out from behind the clouds giving a beautiful golden hue to the freshly rain-washed trees and mountainside. We stayed at Sankri hotel that night. 

[13-May-2024 9:00 AM]

After having breakfast at the hotel, we set off towards Taluka. After crossing Taluka we got down from the jeep handed over the Rucksack to the mule porters and started the trek. Today our destination will be Chilludgad campsite. 

Initial part of today's trek was on a road that was being built, but the scenery was great. In this stretch, the left mountainside from the Har ki Dun river was under coniferous trees. But this change as we progressed (especially during the send day's trek) when the vegetation of left left mountainside changed to alpine grassland.