The bhataktiatma : Travelogue of a wandering soul

  The summer temperatures were breaking all the records , even at places where its too early to be summer. Its been two years since covid , I haven’t had a chance to trek in the Himalayas , desperately needed to be in mountains before another covid wave hits us. As usual the go to place was the Indiahikes website and in no time I had successfully registered for Ali Bedni Bugyal trek. Rishikesh : The lost city I had very fond memories of Rishikesh from my previous trek visit , hence had planned to land in Rishikesh two days before. A convenient flight to Dehradun and shared cab with fellow trekkers whom I met on pre paid cab counter was the end of luxurious travel , Google map was showing dark red “ This is usual situation on weekends sir , I will drop you as far as I can but then onwards you are on your own” our taxi driver added to our agony. Driver was right , we had to be dropped at the start of the main city itself , long queues of vehicles were ahead of us moving at snails pa...

“18023 ft sin la “, The number had my attention, Ajay kaka has just formed a WhatsApp group with all our trekking regulars calling for sin la trek in September. 18k ft would be the highest i have been while trekking but more than that it would be chance to reunite with the group on a Himalayan trek since our pin-parvati trek in 2015, good enough reason to confirm my participation. The other 20 for sure had the same reason. Himalayan pass at that height was surely not going to be a cake walk, next 4-5 months had to be spent on physical fitness. By August the list had come down from 20 to 12, we had approached Anit Sah to manage this trek for us. First and the most important task was to get the required permits, sin la is along the Kailash - mansarovar route, closer to Tibetan border hence we had to get a go ahead from the local authorities and ITBP. We had sent out filled forms with supporting documents to Anit so that they can be processed in advance. 14thSeptem...