A trek to Roopkund lake

I think, I disappointed many of my friends by not writing the blog immediately after the trek and I feel sorry for it. I made them wait for this blog for the last 3 months. Now I am writing this blog due to repeated requests from my previous blog readers and I would feel embarrassed if I don't do it now .

Before I start penning my feelings and experiences, I want to answer a question many people ask me whenever I go for a trek.....Why do you trek ? I say "Trekking makes you in getting close to mother Nature and also helps to break one's routine life".If people say why don't you tour, I say I want to go off the road which reminds of a quote by Robert Frost "Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference". I like to go to places which are isolated from human intervention and here is a small poem from Ruskin bond which represents my state of mind

Once you've lived with mountains
You will return
You will come back
To touch the trees and grass
And climb once more the windswept mountain pass.

Even though my first Himalayan trek(Kedartal trek) was a nice one I was not fully satisfied with it. Throughout our trek we were gazing at the same set of mountains. Even it was not much greener there. I like treks which has greener landscapes, river streams and waterfalls(that's why I like Sharavati valley trek the most). When Ram mailed us about the Roopkund trek, I immediately voted for it after going through the information and photos related to it on the web.  As one blog says (Ref:  http://indiahikes.blogspot.com/) the trek to Roopkund got everything going for it. Deep virgin forests, gurgling brooks, breath-taking campsites, miles of undulating meadows, snow and ice, and the taste of a great adventure as we climb from 8,000 ft to 17,000 ft in 4 days. 

Roopkund lake is a picturesque and beautiful tourist destination in the Himalayas, located near the base of two Himalayan peaks: Trishul (7120 m) and Nandghunti (6310 m). The lake is also known as a “mystery lake” or "skeleton lake" because of a large number of human skeletons found in the lake in 1942. Roopkund's skeletons were featured in a National Geographic documentary "Riddles Of The Dead: Skeleton Lake"(Ref: Wiki).

We formed a team of 11 consisting of Ram, Karthik, Pavan, Raghu, Vasanth, Hari, Vivek, Aswin, Raju, Murali & me. We made Ram our Captain as we don't need to bother about the trek arrangements as he takes care most of them. Pavan was hesitant to come initially as Ram scared him and told him that it will be very difficult for him but he made it into our group after lot of requests from me. I never thought Raju would come with us but he surprised me. We started to build our stamina through different ways as we got to know that this trek is not going to be a easy one. As I suffered a bit in the last trek, I want to make sure that I will complete this trek without any problems. I used to jog 5kms in the last one month and completed 5k marathon in 28mins which gave me the necessary boost that I am fit for the trek.

One week before the trek, we all met to get to know of each other. Some of us were meeting the rest of the members for the first time. Aswin,Vivek, Raju and Pavan were the new members in our group. We discussed our trek plan and also listed down items(medicines,clothes..) needed for the trek. We shared our experiences from our previous trek in Himalayas with the freshers so they can decide what items to buy for the trek.

Our plan was to start trekking from Loharjung → Kuling → Tolpani → Ali Bugyal → Bedni Bugyal → Bogwabasa → Roopkund. From our previous experiences, We thought to have plan-B but we didn't find feasible or interesting ones so we decided we will go with plan-A only.

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