CHOPTA, TUNGNATH

By: Aditi Petwal

One fine day, before the rising scenario of the pandemic, I was on the call with my school friends. All of us are at different places, pursuing different careers but we try to connect every month over call and end up talking about good old school days. Amidst all the nostalgic conversations and discussions of unsuccessful meet-up plans, we decided to have a get-together. Away from the chaos, we chose our destination surrounded by the lush green mountains of the Chamoli region of Uttarakhand called Chopta. The very nature of this beautiful and easy trek, distance, and connectivity of Chopta make this place an ideal weekend getaway and can even be completed as a 3-day trip. Since most of us were located in the northern part of India, the distances and nature of the trek were a piece of cake for us.

Day 1- We decided to start our journey from Dehradun, it took around 9 hours for us to reach our destination, Chopta. Every one of us was tired from the long journey however, the breathtaking views of the beautiful meadows and serenity were really soothing which made us all the more excited for the trek the next day.

Day2- Early in the morning at 7am, we set our trail off for a day hike to one of the highest Shiva temples in the world. Time taken to trek to Tungnath temple from Chopta is usually 3 hours for an average person and another one hour from Tungnath to Chandrashila. Although it took only 2 hours for us to reach the tungnath temple and we decided to stay there for half an hour or so. The beautiful long-range landscape of the Himalayas and the mountains made all our efforts totally worth it. We paid our respects in the temple which is one of the Panch-Kedar situated in Rudraprayag region of Garhwal. Historically build with stones and deities, the ambiance of the temple is very peaceful. After clicking all the aesthetic pictures, we started hiking again to Chandrashila. Most of the people don't proceed ahead to the summit so the crowd there was much lesser and the views of different peaks were more astonishing. By 1pm we were back at Tungnath and had our lunch in the dhabas. The downhill trek finally took around 1:30 hours to reach the road from where the expedition starts.

The lovely weekend was about to end and everyone was overwhelmed with different emotions. Once again, we started our journey back to our cities from Chopta. Everyone was going back with hundreds of memories with experiences and we decided to hit the road real soon for another amazing trip. UNTIL NEXT TIME!

We Thank you MUSAFIR-The Traveller for organising this beautiful journey for us.