One fine morning, my roommate and I went for jogging and that was when I ended up telling her my love for skulls and how I am totally fascinated by them. It was then that she told me about a place called Skeleton Lake that consists of skeletons from 9th century BC. There happened to be a natural calamity that led to death of thousands of people. Since this lake is frozen for most part of the year, these skulls never decomposed and over a period of time it became a place of interest for trekkers. The skeletons attract lot of people and mainly trekkers who trek for 7 days of to reach this place. When I heard all this I got very excited and since then I had a strong desire to visit this place.
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First day of trek |
Days passed by, time flew and after almost two years I received a message from my roomie saying "Hey roomie , wanna go to skeleton lake?" I was all excited after seeing the message and the obvious answer was an instant 'YES' ! By then she had already done a lot of research and my task of whatever little work was left started :p. We then quickly decided the dates and started our preparation for 'The
Roopkund lake Trek or the skeleton lake that it
is commonly known as.
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Accomodation on second day |
One can find a lot of trekking websites , with ample information about the trek , itinerary , prerequisites, physical fitness requirements etc etc. However, since this was one of the first trek and lifetime experience for me, I have tried to summarise all the information and the experiences for the same. There are a lot of trek groups facilitating the trek to Roopkund lake, some of them being Trek The Himalayas, India Hikes, Adventure nation etc as well as some individual guides . This being our first trek, we did not have any experience with the groups so
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Razaii!! |
after investing considerable time, we banked on '
Trek The Himalayas' or TTH as it is commonly known as. I would definitely mention that the TTH group was truly amazing and a lot of credit goes to them for our very first successful and memorable trek. We definitely look forward for more treks with them .
This was the first time I was gonna experience such extremes of temperature , 8 days of trekking, night camping and large areas of no network zones. So I had these mixed feelings of nervousness, excitement, anxiety and what not. With all the mixed feelings, we two set for our most awaited adventure!!
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Small waterfall on the way |
To cut time on travel,
we chose to fly from Bangalore to Delhi in the morning and then take an overnight train from old Delhi to Kathgodam. We reached New Delhi airport in the afternoon and headed to the Old Delhi railway station as we had a train at 8pm the same day. We took a metro from airport to the designated railway station , parked our luggage in cloak room and went to Chandni Chowk gali to savour the parathas and hog on the delicious street food. After thoroughly enjoying street food we did our last minute shopping, went back to railway station , collected our luggage from cloak room and boarded train for the exciting week. We reached Kathgodam at 6am in the morning. As soon as we got down the train and came out of the station, we could already see the mountains. I had already started to freeze by then and both of us could feel butterflies in our stomach imagining the various things coming up our way!!
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gradual transition from forest to meadows |
TTH had arranged for a tempo traveller and a van for our pick up from Kathgodam. It is there that we met few more people who were our company for the next 7 days. As we were the first ones to reach, we had to wait some time for others to join us. Prior to our journey an excel sheet was shared by TTH to us which contained the list of people who would be a part of our trek group. So as one by one started arriving , we were trying to guess who was
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reached Meadows!! |
who. As soon as everyone arrived - 13 of us in total , we found ourselves introducing and sharing all the information that we had collected and that's how the ice breaking session began. Amidst all these, none of us realised that we had already started our journey to Loharjung which was out next destination. We enjoyed the beautiful sceneries and our conversations during the journey. Finally we reached Loharjung by around 7pm. We did stop on the way for yummy hot parathas and kachoris for break fast and an evening tea. Our night stay was at Loharjung and the following Morning was our first day of trek. Our trek guides showed us our rooms and after freshening up, we all assembled for dinner and 2nd round of introduction when few more people joined us. Our trek guide briefed us about the trek , gave us few instructions and did share quick safety tips . I was here that we met our trek Guides for the first time -
Amar Singh Ji , Rahul ji and Gopal Ji. After dinner we slowly slipped in to our 'razais' and that's how our first day ended.
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Campfire |
Our schedule was called '6,7,8' i.e wake up call and lemon tea at 6am , breakfast at 7am, and all set to start the trek at 8am. So at 6am came the wake up call, "Chai lelo, Chai " We used to wake up , have lemon tea , get ready, have breakfast, pack our luggage, put aside the luggage to be carried on the mules, fill our water bottles, take the candies and chocolates and start for the trek. Gopal ji would brief us about the day's plan, elevation level, the water points , the distance to be covered in the day
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Our Camping Tents |
and other the night halt. Amar Singh Ji would lead the group. If anyone ever over took, Amar Singh Ji they were punished in a comic way where they would be asked to follow the entire group and would reach destination post all :D. Rahul ji would be in between and a motivating factor in the group and Gopal Ji at the end to ensure the safety of the trekkers. Most of the days, we reached our campsite by noon. By the time we reached our campsites , our tents were set up and within half an hour or so the lunch
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Sunset!! |
used to be ready. The food prepared by the TTH cooks (who were mostly local folks) was very delicious and we were surprised that they were able to cook that good variety , delicious food at that height and weather condition. After lunch , sleeping was not allowed, so we used to either sit and chitchat or roam around for a while. some days trek guides made us do some exercises and conduct push ups competition etc. In the evening there had to be a short
acclimatization walk and we could always collect wood for the evening bonfire. This was when our campsite was in forest. After returning from acclimatization walk we had hot tea and pakodas waiting for us , after a while dinner would be served, our oxygen level will be checked and then we retire for the day.
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One the way to Summit! |
On the summit day we started trek at 3AM and reached summit before sunrise. The chilled breeze and the darkness made the trek a bit difficult and the last 500 metres was an impossible climb due to it's steepness. After finishing the last 500 metres of the steep climb and reaching the summit , my happiness had no bounds!! I couldn't believe
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Roopkund Summit!! |
that I finally made it to this place!! We saw the skulls and bones all scattered on the top and many more in the deep lake that was dried up at that point. Sunrise at the peak and the all around view was absolutely breathtaking!! It was the sense of utmost pride and achievement that over took us once we were at the top. There were few people in the group who went to the highest point of Junargali which was almost 2 hours walk from the Roopkund lake.
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Snow capped mountains |
Once we started back to our campsite , the people who were going to the summit were congratulating us for making it to the summit and that filled me with a great sense of pride. The same day we started the trek back post lunch and some rest and reached Loharjung the following day. The return trek was peaceful, considerably short and went smooth. On the last night ,we all assembled together at the Loharjung guest house, where Gopal ji distributed certificates to us for the successful completion of trek. Also each one of us shared our experiences and take away from the trek. With a sense of mixed feelings again ( happiness that we completed the trek and sadness as it ended so soon) the last day ended.
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Beautiful Sunrise |
The next day morning, TTH tempo traveller dropped us back to kathgodam from where we took a train to Delhi and then flight back to Bangalore
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Sunrays just after rain |
We were lucky in terms of weather condition. Weather conditions completely favoured us to complete this trek on time. We experienced different weather conditions like sunny, windy, chill breeze, rain and snowfall which definitely is like icing on the cake! As we trek and attain elevation we could see the gradual transition from trees to grass meadows to rocks to snow!! At each turn there would be a mesmerising view. It’s a wonderful feeling to get disconnected from our busy day to day schedule, get closer to nature, interact with completely new people, take out time for yourself, get a deeper insight to yourself and return with unforgettable memories that we would cherish for lifetime.
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Cherry Blossom tree |
Our Trekking preparations:
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- We went for this trek at the end of October . So if you are visiting around this time frame , be prepared to experience a temperature that varies from 10 to -5 degrees temperature. You can get the detailed list of items to carry from the trekking website. But here are a list of items we carried:
- We rented Rucksack(60 Litre capacity), walking sticks, head torch, one normal torch, power bank, trekking shoes from XDOG-TREKKING in Bommanahalli , which reduced our expenses by a great extent and the quality of their products was pretty good.
- We purchased two coats , one short and one long (short one when temperature is positive , long one when temperature goes negative) from Eastern stores, commercial street Bangalore , woollen T shirts and goggles from decathlon.
- We purchased a woollen monkey cap (which is mandatory to withstand that temperature), two pairs of gloves, one woollen and another leather (woollen for positive temperature and leather for negative temperature) , woollen muffler, two pairs of woollen socks and two pairs of normal socks from Eastern Stores.
-We also carried a 20L bag , waterproof pants , glucose, medical kit, energy bars and nuts,tiffin dabba and tissue rolls .
Tips
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- There is lot of talk about Acute Mountain sickness when it comes to these treks, and in many websites it’s mentioned to take Diamox tablet before the start of trek to overcome this. This tablet dehydrates us and if you don’t drink enough water it will again result in AMS. Also, once you start taking this you should continue this till the end of the trek. So my suggestion would be to take only if you are instructed by the trek guide, else a big no no for this..
- Drink lot of water , Avoid strong dose medicines and pain killers as they dehydrates and their affecting the oxygen level in your body and that is when AMS strikes, Take more of balms and sprays and avoid medicines as much as possible
- Do 30-40 squats a day (gradually increase your count if you are a beginner)during your fitness preparation for trek, because of this I did not suffer from any leg pain and I was completely okay. Do at least 5-6Kms of jogging and stair climbing these will help you build up your stamina
- Carry good amount of Nuts and energy bars.
- Out of enthusiasm we tend to walk or climb fast , but if you are a beginner follow slow and steady policy , do deep breathing through out , If you are tired of climbing stand and rest instead of sitting and resting as sitting and getting up very frequently will make you even more tired.
-Be well prepared to face the weather conditions and mental preparation is as important as the physical preparation.
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