Rendezvous with the mountains of Uttarakhand

We began our trip to the hills of Uttarakhand on a Saturday night. After a lot of brainstorming and planning, the tour took shape. We packed our bags and boarded the bus which took us to our destination.

Day 1 :

I could sleep in the crammed space of the bus despite the celebrations of my fellow classmates, thanks to my experience of sleeping while travelling in bus.

The bus arrived at Rahul Mani’s house in the wee hours of the morning, we left from his house after some of my friend “freshened” themselves. The bus was travelling by the woods of the uttarakhand kmountains which remined me of the 4 years of the journey from my home to Silchar( where I did my Engg ) . The pine and Oak trees on the slopes of the hills looked splendid. We arrived at our 1^st destination Dhanaulti, the place reminded me of the hills of North East. The hotel staff offered us breakfast and i decided to take a look around of the town, Ravi ( my ex roomie of NPTI ) accompanied me, we walked across the entire length and breadth ( ???- I do not think the town had any appreciable breadth) of the town, we had photo session capturing the beauty of the town.

After a heavy lunch we moved towards the kempty falls which is approx 35 kms away from the hotel we had to go via Musoorie. The Drive to the falls was very tiring as we were travelling the whole night and many of us hardly got any time to take rest. But still the enthusiasm among was hardly down and and as soon as we touched the falls site every one jumped from the bus and ran towards the falls. Most of us dipped inside the chilled water of the falls while I refrained from it. The sight of water falling on the rocks of the hills made a lasting impact on us .. the noise of water falling from heights made everyone come out of their clothes and jump into the chilling waters.

I was amazed at the creation of the mother nature.

After all of us had taken a dip in the falls we moved towards our hotel once gain .. had dinner and packed ourselves to get ready for the next morning

Day 2

It was the day when we moved to Tehri dam site. The main destination of our tour, this dam is the one of the most technologically advanced dams in the world. Made with the collaboration of Russian technology and Indian expertise, it stands at an elevation of 800 mts from seal level. We stopped at the guest house, and went to the site after our guide came. First we stopped at the Jaypee site office where we had an overlook at the dam from the closest possible place. The Civil Engineers of the site explained about the details of the site, the site of the dam overwhelmed us. We learned that the entire Old tehri city was under the waters of the reservoir of the dam. It was an exmple of Man’s zeal to tame the power of mother nature. A catchment area of 42 Sq Kms , and depth of 260 m of water just to turn the shafts of the generator!!! We moved toward the underground generator room which was made beneath a hill, various tunnels were created at different heights to make room for the different components of the power plant. The construction of the tunnels is itself an achievement for the mankind. FYI the tehri dam has completed its 1^st phase and is currently generating 1000MW of power and after the competion of its 2^nd phase its total generating capacity would be 2400MW.

We looked around the various components of the power plant and moved toward the guest house once again to have our lunch, after which we moved to Shivpuri ( near Rishikesh) which was 5 hours from there, all of us were tired and the 5 hours of the drive to Shivpuri took a toll on the patience and health of our fellow classmates ( I was not effected – thanks once again to my experience of the Guwahati Silchar journey experience ). It was the winding hourney in the slopes of the hills of uttarakhand. Finally to the relief of our tired classmates we reached the Final destination of our itenary at around 9pm . the place was dark and we came down by a hill slope to reach to the tents by the beach of the river bhagirathi by the river rafts. I was not very happy to travel on the river raft during pitch dark.

Anyhow we stopped at the camp, had a campfore night and we had good dinner , enjoyed till midnight and as we were all tired we went to bed in the tents allotted to us.

Day 3

It was in the morning, I woke up to see the sight of the beach which was not visible the night before. The sound of the river flowing in front of my tent, the beach, the morning breeze and the sunrays coming from the gaps of the hills made me philosophical. I was praising the beauty of mother nature.. and in the mean time after I answered the nature call, we played a game of beach volley-ball. Incidently I was in the winning side. After the game we immediately went to a mini-tracking expedition to a nearby suspension bridge.

After the expedition we went to the river banks to take dip in the furious waters of the river and it was like someone had pressed the “ be happy” button of our bodies … we took bath and dipped and played games and played in the waters. I enjoyed every moment in the river water. The water was cold but that could not stop us from going inside the river.

The breakfast was served, we played games and enjoyed every moment of the stay… then shortly after the lunch we moved towards the last stop .. rishikesh and haridwar.

The entire class enjoyed the day.. no one wanted to came back.. it was a sad moments for all of us but we knew that such moments are not meant to last forever.

The trip to haridwar was finished after we offered our prayers to Maa ganga.

We came back to our college after we had our dinner.

Phewwwww!!!!! our Fun days seemed over as we reached our college the next morning at 4:30 am.

Everyone wanted to go back again ….

Hoping for such fun trip again in the future we went to our rooms in the hostel.