Every one has their special day which is above all other days of an year. The day on which we are born, our Birthday! and my birthday became more than special at Triund.
Most of us go out for parties, treat our friends, take a day off from work, pamper ourselves and thank god for the wonderful gift of life. I’ve been doing the same from last so many years. Offcourse , Birthdays are to be celebrated and why not? Its the day when we become part of a wonderful creation by god and come alive as an individual on this planet Earth.
As I growing up from a kid to being a teenager my curiosity and thirst to see more of it kept increasing. “The more is saw, the more I wanted to explore” and this gave birth to my curiosity towards places and traveling to them. With the confidence that I’ll be turning 24 soon. I wanted my birthday in January 2016 to be extraordinarily special and I decided to celebrate it under the sky and over the mountains, being as close as I can to nature and peace and hence my trekk to Triund, became a reality.
How it started ?
Last few day of December 2016 and I knew my birthday was coming. As I said earlier, I wanted it to be really different this time. Working in a corporate IT startup, takes a lot of energy and time and I was missing adventure and travel from my life. I had decided that “I am gonna travel this New year eve and will be out of city buzz on 3rd Jan.” Which is my Birthday by the way. 😉
Discussed it with my Roommates and we all started looking for possible options of a 3-4 days trip. That is when internet introduced us to Triund Trekk, and we were sorted !
What homework we did ?
- Checked Youtube videos posted by others to understand if the place is really worth it.
- Read few blogs and travel websites, to get an idea about the place, routes and to know possibility of odd experiences. (Tip : This helps to understand the terrain, if it is right time to visit or not, what could be the worst case scenarios and what resources you can expect or need on trip.)
- Checked hotel prices and availability to save ourself from being overcharged by hotels.
- Randomly discussed with colleagues and friends. “you never know who might suggest you a good place around. I got to know about Masroor Temple near Dharmshala from one of my colleague, which you will be reading down below.”
And the Adventure Begins…..
On 31st December around 11:00 PM, just an hour before New Year, we (4 people) started from Chandigarh on a Himachal Roadways AC bus towards Dharamshala. Tickets – Not more than ₹600/person. It was a nice bus, not a Volvo! But comfortable enough with reclining seats to fall asleep during night. Yes, we started our New Year in the bus few kilometers outside Chandigarh, heading towards a great adventure. After about an hour of new year messages and calls when excitement calmed down, gradually we all fell asleep.
DAY 1
It was around 5:30 AM in the morning, when our bus arrived at Dharamshala and it was still dark. We witnessed a beautiful view of city, lit with lights and lamps shining in a stretch coming from several homes uphill to the top. The bus stand was almost quite, we could only see some Bus Stand employees and a canteen. We asked them about the best way to reach ‘Masroor Temple’ which was first on our list to begin.
Rock Cut Masroor Temple
Located around 40km on the outskirts of Dharamshala, Masroor Temple is one of its kind in Northern India. I came to know about this place from one of my colleague during our random discussion. The place is easily reachable by a local bus which starts from Dharamshala bus stand and drops you at Ranital, followed by a walk of about 2 kms and you will be there.
We boarded the first bus early in the morning somewhere around 7 AM and reached the Ranital around 8:30 AM.
The Masroor temple has an enormous viewpoint on top and we were able to see bright blue sky covering the mighty and gorgeous Dhauladhar range of mountains and it was a pure delight to eyes. The atmosphere too quiet and peaceful, was almost like a cherry topping on an icecream.
After staying there for about an hour at Masroor Temple we started back to Ranital from where we took another bus towards our next destination Tatvaani. Which was not on our list but we came to know about it while talking to locals around and our bus conductor.
Taatvani- Hot Water Spring and Temple
Explained by bus conductor and few locals Taatvani seemed to be place that we didn’t wanted to miss. We took another bus and asked the driver to drop us at Tatvaani.
Bus journey of previous night and all the workout since morning made us sleepy whenever we found a comfy seat and that’s what happened next. After asking driver to drop us at Tatvaani, all of us felt asleep siting in our seats and were awakened by a sudden shout from conductor informing us that we have arrive and its right down the hill, which was literally true but not that simple as it sounds!
As we rushed out of the Bus getting ourselves to consciousness and gradually coming back to our senses, we realized it wasn’t that easy and I had a voice in my head saying ”This is going to be fun !”. As the driver had instructed, Yes Tatvaani was down the hill but it was on the other end and we had to cross a stream of river to reach there.
It wasn’t a regular way to Tatvaani and we were the only humans up on this side of hill. However, from the top we saw few people near the river and that was comforting. We managed to reach the bottom of hill somehow (wasn’t that tough). We looked for the place where banks were closest, the river wasn’t deep (just upto thighs), tied our shoes to our bags, pulled up our pants and somehow crossed the river.
A 5 minutes walk and we were there. It is an ancient Hindu temple with hot water spring and with a small canteen to settle your little hunger. This time our destination wasn’t that exciting as compare to the journey towards it. All this took almost our entire day and we moved back to Dharamshala and further to Mcleodganj.
We reached MCleodganjaround 6:30 PM and started looking for a place to stay for night. It wasn’t a tourist season and there were many options and we tried looking for cheapest accommodation. We found ‘Yellow Guest house’ which was closer to market and charged us around 700 in total for 2 rooms which were decent enough for a night stay. Later we checked out the market, had dinner and came back to our rooms to sleep.
Day 2
We were able to get up early and on our feet at around 10:00 AM, after having Paranthas near Main Square we started our day towards the trek. We hired a cab from Mcleodganj Bus stand which took almost ₹400 to cross Dharamkot and dropping us at Gallu Devi Temple. This is the place from where the trekk start. It’s easy to notices a trek and people moving up from there.
Starting the Trekk – Off on Triund Trail
The real trek starts once you reach Gallu Devi Temple which is about 12 kms from Mcleodganj. Its easy to find people going up and some returning back. It’s a moderate trek of about 8 Kms which can be cover in 3 hours if you are fast and take less stops or around 6 hours if you go slow taking too many breaks in between.
We were able to reach the top in around 3 hours and 15 minutes despite the fact that we stopped for about 15 minute of tea break. The entire trek has rocky terrain with sharp rock pointed upward. “Make sure you go with Boots, probably of Brands like Red chief, woodland, Lee Cooper which are really good to trek up such a terrain”. Going with flat shoes, formals or sneaker would not be a good idea in such a trek. There are few steep curves and at times you will encounter slant heights to climb up, which gets more tough once you are about to reach the end point.
On reaching the top we were mesmerised with the view around us. It was gorgeous and one a kind. One can easily see huge snow covered mountains in front followed by the whole range of mountains to the right. Triund is vast and its easy to see a lot of camps up there.
Right after we reached the top, we spoke to shops up there and got ourselves a Tent for 4, along with sleeping bags, which costed us around ₹1500. We kept the bags in our tent and came out to enjoy the beautiful view. At around 6 we saw sunset, which was a pure pleasure. Watching Sun getting lost somewhere between two horizons is a rare experience.
The night was followed by a sky full of stars and it was the best sky I have ever seen in my life. Beautiful sky lit with stars all around, it almost felt like a sheet of shiny sparkles covering our head in the dark. We got ourselves our dinner from the tent shops, spoke to few people up there, danced with some of them and enjoyed the company of other travellers around. In the night it gets very cold and our sleeping bags did came to our rescue.
The morning was beautiful and more pleasant, I was quite, cool and had beauty that’s hard to put in words. After having our morning tea and enjoying the Sunrise I tried to capture and gulp down the beauty into my eyes as much as I could before we started back to Mcleodganj. That view and feeling are hard to describe, its something that you keep in your memories and cherish all the time.
Started back early morning around 7 AM, we were able to reach down in about 4 hours. As there was nothing much to do at Mcleodganj, we took many break and enjoyed the view wherever we can. We spend some decent time at Mcleaodganj, checking out market and eating street food. Later we boarded the bus back to chandigarh.
What you should be carrying ?
Since its trekking no matter how much fun it is, one should always have some basics things which might come handy in case of any emergency or mishappening. I would recommend taking the few things that I am mentioning below along with reasons.
- Warm hoodies and sweaters (Because it will be cold and chilling during nights.
- Pair or warm socks (cold feets make you feel cold faster than cold upper body, so avoid it)
- Good strong Boots (Treks can be a dirty struggle if your shoes don’t fight the terrain)
- Raincoats (Because it rains frequently on mountains)
- Torch (You won’t get street light up on trek and hills)
- Chocolates/Snickers (Emergency diet and energy supplement)
- Small Knife (Multipurpose)
These things covers almost all that you will need to safely do the trek.
Things to do and what to avoid
- Make sure to check the connectivity and timings of bus to your destinations.
- Speak to 3-4 locals about places to make sure you are going right.
- Avoid over eating and oily food (some people might have issues while breathing).
- Try to start early in morning, a trek is safer be done in daylight.
- Be careful and don’t try risky things like short cuts and following new trails.
- Keep cash with you, don’t trust ATMs up in mountains.
- Make sure you tag you bags and they are easily identifiable.
- Don’t litter, keep you garbage with you and maintain the beauty of nature as it is supposed to be.
Final words
Treks are fun and adventurous, they make you realise your strength, nature’s beauty and god’s supremacy. Going out of homes and traveling world is exciting and a great learning experience. Go ahead and take your time off from boring office cubical and computers. The life is much more than it. Makes sure that you are careful, responsible, smart and courageous for new adventures……
And most importantly…… stay curious, stay moving….!