I started my trip with my friend from valsad and reached dehradun(by bus from delhi)via delhi(by flight from surat) on 3rd jan 2020.
Temperature was around 8°c at dehradun, we both have all the gears that is required for the trek.
And we both were quite ready for the trek,.
We stayed at hotel vishnu inn at dehradun(I suggest not to book this hotel🙏🏼)
In the morning we reached at the meeting point at dehradun rly station.
Our driver has picked us both and we started our journey towards sankri.(sankri was our base camp for trek)
In the traveler there were already 7 people .
Our journey was around 200kms,and we were ready for that.
We were taking many break for snacks,tea and health issues.
Suddenly when we were just short for sankri it started snow fall, it was my first encounter with the snow fall. I was so amazed..
We all got so excited by seeing the snow fall. At around 5 pm we reached at sankri. And what we saw was so spectacular,all sankri was covered with snow..!!!
We rested in our tents for that night.
It was our first day of trekking, after having breakfast we started our trek at around 9am in the morning.
It was bright sunny day.. All were taking photos during trek. I was so happy inside to see this kind of beauty in our India.
We were taking rest at some intervals and again starts our trek, my shoulder has started paining due to my rucksack,
(my advice to you all guys is to give your rucksack to uploading horse so you can enjoy the view without getting tired )
At 1st tea point we had some snacks and again started trek, after two more tea ponts we reached our today's destination The juda ka taalab camp site, which was entirely covered with snow, different colored tents were making it more beautiful,at there we had some snacks and tea, after that they provide us hot soup which was amazing.
Till the dinner has been completed we were at bonfire and gossiping with each other.. At around 7pm they provide us the mouth watering dinner and we went to our respective tents, in the night I had to go for toilet, I chose to go outside in the wild, and it was the newest experience for me(all dry toilet facilities were available at camp site but they all were so stinky so try outside it will definitely give you some best memories and experience as well)
After that we all went to sleep,..
Today we woke up early in the morning at around 6am just because you cannot sleep deep inside tents, all my night in the tents was a half sleep, but still there was no cold inside tents.
We were worried just because we weren't able to see the sun, and that was not a good sign for our trek, still we all got ready for the trek to base camp,.
We started our trek at around 9.30am after some walk we reached at juda ka talaab which was entirely frozen, but what a sight it was!!!
View was so satisfying that you don't want go see anything else.
After taking some photos we headed further, and what we saw, it started snowing, Oh my god!!!
I saw it for the first time in my life..
It was so pleasant to see with your own eyes..
At the same time we all were so worried about our trek.
At around 2pm we reached our base camp , it was totally bad weather and snow was hitting so hard that visibility was so less.
In the night our guide has told us to not to go at summit because it may to risky to do that. And we all agreed with his thought and situation too.
They removed all our small tents and made two groups. Each one has 7 members because that was the only way to survive in that situation.
Snowfall was there for the whole night.
We all were so scared of that situation and were praying for the morning.And again I went outside in the wild for the toilet during snowfall.
Finally, after a long night(just because we didn't sleep) we got outside our tent. Almost all small tents were covered with snow, we started descending towards the sankri, after 4 hours we reached at sankri and got our bus to dehradun.
MY SUGGESTIONS FOR THE KEDARKANTHA WINTER TREK:
1. Don't go without practicing at your place with same weight of rucksack at least 5 to 6 times.
2. Don't go with your children, it's not the trek for children.
3. It's not the trek for beginners, it's all lie that it is easy to moderate trek.(it is the tough trek, if you don't have that much guts to climb and bear the low temperature then this trek is not for you)
4. The road to reach sankri was so long (approx 220kms) that you might get bored till you reach there. And if you have motion sickness problem then better to avoid it.
5. You won't feel Mountain sickness at here like in leh,so its good thing for thik trek.
6. Invest mainly in shoes, jackets, and hand gloves. Don't take them lightly.
7. I saw many trekkers has told to carry slippers in the night. Who walks in the snow with slippers. Slippers are exclusively not necessary in the snow trek,so don't carry extra weight.
8. No network is there at sankri too. So tell your relatives that you will be offline for 3 to 4 days.
9. Take extra 1 or 2 powerbanks because cold weather drains your battery very fast even if you are offline.
10.50 to 60 litres rucksack is more than enough. Take one small backpack.
11. I don't thing any thermal water bottle will sustain its capacity in this much cold.
So better not to invest more in this type of bottle, one liter Plastic bottle is enough.
12. If you want to do summit better to avoid January month, its frequently snowfall in this months, better to choose November and up to mid December.
Thank you..