The bhataktiatma : Travelogue of a wandering soul

“What is the weirdest food you have eaten?” The question I didn’t have exciting answer to, until today... Arunachal Pradesh is so big and diverse, it’s impossible to cover it even in a months' time, I only had 7 days. While Tawang was my initial choice, despite of all the efforts I could not get satisfactory information on road conditions, stays and most importantly the transport cost. People I spoke to had split opinion on visiting Tawang during winter month of December. I shifted my attention to Namdapha national park which had been on my list since almost a decade. However soon I found out it wouldn’t be economical for a single person to trek inside Namdapha. Every year before anyone can trek inside Namdapha , the jungle had to be cut to create walking trails, prolonged monsoons have been pushing this activity till January since last few years. This meant trek in Namdapha was not on till January. Fortunately, I received response from Karun Roy of Down Lit adventures, and he

" Intense to very intense rainfall in isolated parts of Uttarakhand " is the IMD warning we started our journey with .  6 of us were hopeful that even though we were travelling to Uttarakhand, we will be nearer to kinnaur / Spiti region which is comparatively dryer and we might just escape nature's fury. We were about to find that out.  If you are an outdoor person , you would know that September is the best month for Himalayan treks. We believed in this too all these years. Dhumdhar Kandi was on our wish list for the past few years but wasn't executed due to the pandemic. We started planning for it in June. In the last few years the weather in Sept has been inconsistent. We had experienced this during Buran Ghati and Sin La treks a few years back but considering the length of the trek and availability of team members , early sept was the only window we had. Post Ganpati Festival , we reached Mussoorie , spent a few days acclimatizing ourselves with small hikes like