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explorations explore phulara ridge treks transformed

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Fascinating Stories About How Some Of India’s Most Famous Treks Got Their Names.

Fascinating Stories About How Some Of India’s Most Famous Treks Got Their Names

Here's a backstory of the 10 treks that we explored that changed how trekking was looked at in our country. Read on to know how new treks impact trekking!

How Trekking Changes When New Treks Open Up

This is a series of  9 stories about treks that changed Indian trekking forever.

All of these treks were brought out and made popular by Indiahikes.

You may have done these treks yourself, but you may not have known their origin stories.

I never usually share these stories. I keep telling our founders they are too modest about their past, about the legacy Indiahikes has created, never sharing their stories with the world. They usually wave me off and I usually back off.

I’ve extracted out of them stories about 9 Treks That Changed Indian Trekking.

In this series I’m going to be talking about the stories behind them and how each of them impacted trekking in India. I’m going to attempt to play the role of a narrator, looking at Indiahikes from a third person point of view. These stories are so interesting, full of twists and turns, I hope I can do justice to them.

Today, we’ll start with Roopkund. Where it all began…

Roopkund: The Trek That Brought About A Dramatic Shift In Indian Trekking

“Roopkund was a trek that brought about the biggest shift in Indian trekking,” starts Arjun Majumdar, the founder of Indiahikes.

“It brought about an era when a new generation of modern Indians, recently exposed to the global world, transformed themselves into ‘trekkers’,” he reflects.

Roopkund was a trek not many had heard of prior to 2007. “Hardly anyone knew of Roopkund. In a year, a maximum of 50-60 people would do the trek,” recollects Arjun.

“So when I returned from Roopkund and wrote a detailed guide on the trek, the whole trekking world came alive. Suddenly, a very new, very different and an extremely adventurous trek looked possible,” he says.

The blog, titled The Roopkund Trek Adventure erupted an adventurous flame in the hearts of regular people like you and me. It created thrilling possibilities in their minds.

“This was something unthinkable back then,” chimes Sandhya, the co-founder of Indiahikes. “Back then, trekking in the Himalayas wasn’t considered something accessible to the common man. It was reserved for those handful of hard core adventurers, who would make expeditions and come back with stories to tell. Normal people like you and me would only listen to stories and try to live the mountains through their eyes,” shares Sandhya.

So the single-page-blog of 12,000 words really caught the attention of trekkers across the country. That was the start of our country’s first interest in Roopkund.

Everything changed the next year, in 2008, when Indiahikes was founded. “We started the organisation with the Roopkund trek”.

Was it the beauty of the trek that attracted people?

“Yes, but the beauty of the trek was not everything. Along with Roopkund came about a new way of trekking, a new generation of trekkers, and a new organisation that was changing the way trekking was being done. That’s what slowly began changing the face of the trekking industry,” Arjun says.

This new generation of trekkers were not regular trekkers, who had trekked earlier, say, in the Western Ghats. This new generation took to trekking by starting to do a trek like Roopkund, simply because it became accessible to them.

They suddenly became aware that such locations existed. They saw photographs of the Roopkund trek and were enthralled.

What the Roopkund trek meant to Indiahikes:

“Do you know at that time if you wanted to start a trekking organisation, you needed a long catalogue of treks to offer,” says Arjun. “That was how trekking businesses were at that time.

“And here we were, talking of only one trek. Roopkund. We had no other trek to offer,” he adds.

“At Indiahikes we rarely spoke about the organisation. Instead we celebrated Roopkund. Even on our website we told people how to do the Roopkund themselves, and not with us,” Sandhya adds.

“Nobody knew Roopkund like we did. For most trekking businesses, Roopkund was just another trek to do. For us Roopkund was our blood. We knew every nuance of the trek, every different alternate trail, every small tree and stream. We knew all the people of the villages. They were like family to us. We had spent months in the region!” exclaims Sandhya.

How The Roopkund trek brought about the concept of ‘Trek Leaders’

“With Indiahikes we were trying to bring in a new way of trekking. We wanted people to experience the trek like we did. We wanted to show them Roopkund like how we saw it. That’s how I started to lead the first few groups to Roopkund. I wanted them to see the trek with my eyes,” says Arjun.

“Yet, I was very firm on who could do the trek. I was very clear with my trekkers that I would take them up to the high camp of Bhagwabasa, but I would take the final call on who would go ahead finally to Roopkund.

“It was a very high altitude trek, and most were new to trekking. I did not want unfit and unprepared trekkers trying to attempt Roopkund. This was the birth of the concept of trek leading. A trek leader was someone who not only showed you the trek for what it was, but also took full responsibility for your well being.

“I remember very clearly. On the very first trek, I introduced myself as the Trek Leader to the group. Though everyone knew I was behind starting Indiahikes, they accepted me more in the role of the trek leader,” explains Arjun.

Today Trek Leading has become a much coveted profession. Every organisation has Trek Leaders. Indiahikes Trek Leaders are much sought after around the world. But with Roopkund, started the use of the word “Trek Leader” and the acceptance of the role. Prior to Roopkund, “guides” used to lead trekkers on treks. Not Trek Leaders.

The advent of expedition-like trekking equipment in India started with the Roopkund trek:

“With Roopkund came another big change in Indian trekking,” says Arjun.

“Trekkers started to experience and use modern trekking equipment. Dome tents were a big departure from the earlier ‘A’ shaped tents. Dome tents were more suitable for high altitude treks we felt, but trekkers had not seen anything like them before. I remember they would marvel at them — and feeling very expedition-like inside them!” smiles Arjun.

“Even at that time, we had our custom-made sleeping bags, which could take the extreme colds of high altitudes. These were very new to Indian trekking. Most sleeping bags available at that time were flimsy and suitable only for mild temperatures. And here, trekkers were using high grade sleeping bags, in attractive colours, just like foreign expedition members!” Arjun reminisces.

The beginnings of how cooking started on treks

“Trekking at the time was synonymous with eating Maggi. No one expected any other food on the trek. On the other hand, I was very particular that trekkers ate the right food for an attempt at Roopkund, which was close to 16,000 feet. That’s what I had learnt reading in Chris Bonington’s Everest expeditions. The right food was crucial,” informs Arjun.

Cooking on Indian treks changed with Roopkund. A cooking team along with helpers went with the group. That became the norm and still is. Earlier, the guide and team members would cook their own food.

Roopkund changed trekking even after the first few expeditions

“The Roopkund story is not just about the first treks that we ran. Roopkund was our home and our office. We lived, ate and breathed Roopkund,” Sandhya adds.

“We experimented all our ideals on Roopkund,” continues Sandhya. We helped create an ecosystem at Roopkund along with local folks in that region. “For example, Raju Shah Ji started his transportation business along with us at Roopkund. Today he is the largest trek transport operator in Uttarakhand.”

“Like him, more local ecosystems started to grow around us. We nurtured homestays in Didina village. Local landowners started to grow their lodges at the base village in Lohajung.”

“More than that, Indian trekking took a new turn. There was a sudden growth in trekking. Other organisations spawned. They too flocked to Roopkund. Suddenly Roopkund became the trek to do — the bucket list trek for everyone. From a trek no one had heard of, in 5 years Roopkund became India’s most popular trek,” Sandhya observes.

“Meanwhile, we continued our experiments in Roopkund,” continues Arjun. “We brought in new safety norms, new safety equipment, new safety protocols related to altitude and life threatening situations. It didn’t happen in a day, but it happened at Roopkund,” adds Arjun. These fundamentally changed how safety was looked at in Indian trekking.

How Roopkund changed modern environment management system in trekking

“One of the biggest changes that Roopkund helped us bring to Indian trekking was how we started looking at the environment,” Sandhya continues moving forward with the Roopkund story.

“As we saw how trekking was growing around us, we realised that we had to play a big role in learning how to manage the environment around us. This started the Green Trails initiative as early as 2012. It was at Roopkund where we sowed its seed,” adds Sandhya.

Today, as I write this, I know how much Green Trails has changed trekking. If our mountains are cleaner, better, it is because Green Trails has led the change. Today the Green Trails team is felicitated around our country for the work they do. They are invited for talks, for presentations and to show others how to keep our mountains better.

Roopkund is where Green Trails started. It became the symbol of new age trekking.

Here’s one for posterity: A picture of the first team that went to Roopkund with Indiahikes. Spot Arjun in the centre of the frame wearing blue. Sandhya is on the left, the only woman on the team.

As I concluded my conversation with Sandhya and Arjun, I realised how much Roopkund meant to them. How much of their lives they had given to Roopkund. It was a conversation that was very insightful yet very emotional. I was looking back at Indian trekking as well as our past as an organisation.

I couldn’t help but feel terrible that we no longer run the Roopkund trek. There is a high court order that bans camping in the meadows of Roopkund.

Perhaps in future Roopkund will open again to trekking.

Whether Roopkund opens or not, it will stay as a trek that changed the future of trekking in India. This is the legacy of Roopkund. This is the story that I wanted to share with you today.

Like Roopkund there are 8 more pivotal treks that changed the face of trekking — some incrementally and some exponentially.

I’ll continue to bring you these stories over the next few weeks.

I hope you’ll enjoy this ‘Treks That Changed Indian Trekking’ series.

I’ll be back next week with another trek that Indiahikes brought to Indian trekking — the Rupin Pass. It is the story of another obscure high altitude trek that is now one of India’s favourites.

In the first of the series - '9 Treks That Changed Indian Trekking', we write about Roopkund. A trek that has truly pioneered and defined trekking, and trekking practices in India. Click to read more.

Roopkund - #1 of 9 Treks That Transformed Indian Trekking

Last week, when I wrote about Roopkund and how it impacted Indian trekking, trekkers loved the story. Over 35,000 of them read it. They connected to almost every line of the story. Many of them wrote back to me saying they had goosebumps. 

Today, I have another magnificent story for you, about an all time favourite trek — the Rupin Pass. 

If you don’t know about it, Rupin Pass is one of the most popular treks in India. Even more popular than a classic trek like Goechala. Not only trekkers from India, but trekkers from all over the world flock to Rupin Pass. It is one of the flagship treks of Indiahikes and of trekkers in our country. 

Trekkers crossing the Rupin waterfall. Picture by Vishwas Krishnamurthy

Just like last time, I’m going to assume the role of a third person and narrate the stories of Rupin Pass and how our founders, Arjun Majumdar and Sandhya UC, brought out Rupin Pass to the world. I hope I can capture their feelings in this story.

Below are the topics that will be addressed in this article -
1. What’s so special about the Rupin Pass Trek? 
2. The True Birth of Indiahikes 
3. How Rupin Pass became as popular as it is today  
4. The Birth of a Trekking Community 
5. What Impact Did Rupin Pass Have On Trekking? 
6. What Impact Did Rupin Pass Have On Indiahikes?

What’s so special about the Rupin Pass Trek?

“If you ask me Rupin Pass would easily be in my top 3 treks to do in our country. It is hard to find a trek that has superb scenic beauty, great adventure, the thrill of an expedition and a deep rooted culture experience, all in one trek,” Arjun tells me quietly, almost like revealing a secret.    

“Even though I have done this trek a couple of times, I am still taken in by the scenic surprises it throws up. For a long time it was my most favourite trek,” observes Sandhya. 

The Rupin Pass story begins in 2008, interestingly, much before Roopkund happened, much before Indiahikes was born…

“Rupin Pass was an absolutely unknown trek in our country. If very few had heard of Roopkund, then almost no one had heard of Rupin Pass,” starts Arjun, as I sit to dig out the history of this famous trek. 

“When I did the Rupin Pass trek in 2008, it was not the trek that we had originally started out to do,” reveals Arjun. And just with his first line, I am hooked.

“You may not know this, but we had set out to explore a completely different trek. It was the Barua Pass.

“At that time, it was not easy to set up a trek. Hardly a handful had done these treks in our country, information was sketchy. There were no phone connections in the interiors of the Himalayas. Yet, we had heard that the Barua Pass was a splendid trek to do. 

“We were struggling to set up the Barua Pass trek. Our local contacts in the region were difficult to get in touch with. Finally, in the last few weeks of heading towards the trek, we pulled out of Barua Pass, and focused our energies on our next option, the Rupin Pass,” reveals Arjun.

I must reveal something to you here. Barua Pass is nothing but the now popular Buran Ghati trek! I’ll cover that in another story.

“But Rupin Pass was not easy to set up in such short notice. When we arrived at Naitwar village, our original local contact person was nowhere to be seen. In his place was a person who claimed he had done the Rupin Pass — yet seemed very hazy about it. With light fading fast and not too many options, we quickly rounded up a few folks as porters for the trek, and hurried towards Dhaula, the starting point of the Rupin Pass trek,” says Arjun. 

As he narrates this, I can picture a motley team of 5-6 trekkers, porters and helpers headed into dense jungles, where Dhaula sits. 

“The entire trek was fraught with surprises — some not very happy ones and not the scenic types. Our porters refused to work, our local guide hardly knew what to do. At one point, we almost came to the verge of abandoning the trek,” Arjun continues.

“But we eventually got to climbing the waterfall, heading over to the vast snowfields, cutting steps with our ice axes below the pass, and then making our way through the Rupin gully to the pass. These were moments of pure adrenaline.

“It was one of the most exhilarating treks we had done!”

“In those days, we didn’t use microspikes. It was just our trekking boots. People wonder how we did treks then. But that’s how it was. You worked with what you had,” chips in Sandhya.

“After returning from Rupin Pass, and enduring the kind of problems that we did on the trek — the lack of dependable people, the need for good trekking gear, the big void of information — I was more than ever determined to solve them. I didn’t think trekking could ever evolve in our country if everyone faced such big challenges of people, equipment, and information to mount a trek. 

“While everyone knows Roopkund is the trek that started Indiahikes, you could say, the thought to finally launch Indiahikes was firmed up after I got back from Rupin,” Arjun surmises.

How Rupin Pass became as popular as it is today 

I don’t know if you know, but Rupin Pass is one of our most popular treks. And this was thanks to a brave step that Arjun and Sandhya took in the very first season of organising the trek. But there was a terrible twist when the second season began. Let’s hear that story.

“Even as I was running the first group of Roopkund trekkers in 2009, I remember trekkers in the group were already quizzing me about what could be their next trek. I was still fresh from my Rupin adventure, and I found myself narrating stories about Rupin to them,” shares Arjun.

“Trekkers were already excited about the trek, before we even opened it up.

“Most of them had already done Roopkund with us. Rupin Pass was the next obvious answer. For one, they were not aware of other treks. But more importantly, there was a new movement that was happening around Indiahikes.”

“When we started Indiahikes, we didn’t see ourselves as a trekking organization. We saw ourselves as members of a new trekking community. We saw our trekkers as an extension of us. We never spoke to our trekkers like clients or customers. We were trekkers and so were they,” says Sandhya. 

“The stories we shared or the advice we gave came from the feeling of a community. We were trying to build a trekking community — with a new breed of modern trekkers. They were new to trekking but with a very global outlook. 

“Our trekkers loved being part of this community. They would enthusiastically rally around us. Long after the trek would be over, they would call us or email us with suggestions, advice, or even take up roles of coordinators. They would scold us, prod us but always be with us.

“When we wanted to start the Rupin Pass trek, we were very confident that our community would be itching to do the trek. They were already asking for it,” she adds.   

But to run the Rupin Pass trek like Roopkund, Arjun and Sandhya faced a big problem. 

“We just didn’t know how to set it up,” recollects Arjun. “Logistically, it was far more difficult than Roopkund. It didn’t start and end at the same place. It crossed two different states. We had poor local connections. The trek was far more remote than Roopkund. And it had to be totally done with the help of porters. Mules didn’t go on the trek.

“We spent considerable time setting up the Rupin Pass trek for the summer of 2010,” remembers Sandhya. “The whole trek depended on getting the backend right, especially the men behind the scenes. I remember having multiple talks with many of our mountain folks to see who we felt most comfortable to take on the challenge.” 

“What everyone was wary about is that we were talking about a scale that was unprecedented,” reveals Arjun. “We wanted to launch 4 batches right away in a season, each batch going back to back on the trek.” 

“At that time no one in India had ever imagined that a trekking organisation would have multiple groups on the same trek, one after another. It was strange and unbelievable to them. They were more used to trekkers coming in small groups, usually foreigners,” quips Arjun. 

“Yet, here I was talking to them about multiple groups for our first season when they had not even seen a single trekker from us on that slope. The whole idea seemed outlandish! They were excited but skeptical. 

“Eventually we launched Rupin Pass for June of 2010 with 4 batches right away. It was unprecedented in Indian trekking!

“That summer all 4 batches ran full. Trekkers went ga-ga over the trek! They loved it!” he smiles. 

The second Indiahikes batch of Rupin Pass on the trek. You can see our co-founder Sandhya in the red sweater.

But everything was not rosy with Rupin Pass

“In the next season, the autumn of Sep-Oct 2010, the worst thing that could happen to an organisation happened. We got smashed by unseasonal rains. All our treks had to be cancelled. We refunded all our trekkers. All our expenses on the slopes were made. At the end of it, we were left with no money in the bank,” recollects Sandhya.

“Trekkers returned mid-way from the trek, battered by the rains. They were mentally and physically drained. They were not in a happy mood. The community feeling that had built up so far started to crumble,” she adds.

“At the end of it we wondered if Rupin would have a future. Yes, deep down we had the confidence in the trek. But I’ll be frank. Our confidence was badly shaken. We were truly down and out, with no one by our side and no money, we wondered if we could carry on as an organisation. 

“But we did stay stoic and pulled ourselves out of the crisis. That’s another story for a different day,” Arjun says.

What Impact Did Rupin Pass Have On Trekking?

Rupin Pass was a very big milestone for Indian trekking. For the first time people were experiencing the adventure of high altitude pass crossing. They were seeing sights and scenery that was assumed as reserved for veteran mountaineers. 

It was a new generation of trekkers. These were not seasoned trekkers who had done multiple treks before. In fact most were new to trekking. Rupin Pass signalled the start of modern high altitude thrill trekking in India. 

Today trekkers are easily venturing on treks like the Pin Bhaba, Buran Ghati, Hampta Pass. The confidence of doing these high altitude treks came from the Rupin Pass. A generation of trekkers have passed on a love and thrill of high altitude trekking to another generation after doing the Rupin Pass trek. The second generation is doing these treks quite unaware of how impactful Rupin was to make high altitude treks a very doable possibility.

What Impact Did Rupin Pass Have On Indiahikes?

“I think Rupin Pass made us take safety on treks more seriously,” shares Sandhya. “While Roopkund made us think about the perils of altitude sickness, it was Rupin Pass that made us think about slipping and falling on snow.

“Very early in the initial days of starting the Rupin Pass trek, we had a nasty accident on the trek. A trekker following a shepherd slipped on ice and hurtled down a snow bridge. It was in the middle of the Rupin waterfall. Luck was on his side, because he got stuck in a gaping hole in the ice bridge close to the edges. A few feet this side or that, he would have slid into the Rupin. He was concussed badly and had to be evacuated immediately,” she recollects. She was on this team, and personally evacuated the trekker.

“That incident compelled us to see ice slips differently. It was the precursor to our eventual introduction of microspikes in Indian trekking,” she adds. 

When the first few teams went to Rupin Pass they did it without any safety gear. So climbing on snow was a lot more difficult. Picture by Sandeep Janardan

But Rupin opened their eyes to other safety issues as well. 

“At the Rupin gully, stones would continuously pelt down the chute. The stones would fall from a great height. They were not big stones or boulders, more like small pellets. But even a small stone was like a potential bullet. In small groups this was fine, we could dodge these missiles. But in a larger group these could be disastrous,” says Arjun.

“On the other side of the pass, trekkers were gleefully sliding down the pass. These were long slides on snows, with trekkers picking up incredible speed as they hurtled down the slope. While they were whooping with fun and laughter, it made us go cold from within. A small bad bounce or turn could turn very ugly.  

“The continuous pelting of stones down the Rupin Pass gully made us introduce helmets in Indian trekking in 2012. I remember our staff looking at them in disbelief. They were incredulous. Their question was, are you serious about carrying helmets all the way from the base camp, over 4 days, over snow, using a lot of manpower for a 20-25 minute section of the trek?

“But we were very sure we wanted helmets. It was a nightmare to transport 15-20 helmets up to 15,000 feet, with such minimal resources, but we did. It was a very big safety step. It showed people how we would go totally out of our way to ensure safety.

“Funnily, the stone pelting reduced sharply after the first two years, and we stopped carrying these helmets on the trek. I hear the stones have started coming down again, so the next time we run Rupin, we will probably bring back the helmets..

“People often ask us how we became India’s safest trekking organisation. Well, the seeds were sown in all of these early experiences. It is a safety-building journey of many years,” Arjun says.      

Read how Indiahikes is making your trek safe

“Personally, Sandhya and I were buoyed by the thought that an unknown, obscure trek in a very remote corner of our country could find ready acceptance among our trekkers. It gave us hope to do more explorations and to bring out more such treks in our country,” muses Arjun. 

“Look, we knew Rupin was a superb trek. We had done it ourselves. But that didn’t mean that the world had to see the trek the way we did. So when trekkers loved the trek, it was very gratifying that we could bring out treks that trekkers would eventually love.”

You’ll be surprised,  but doing the Rupin Pass trek, gave Sandhya the much required confidence to go on some more great explorations the same year. They did the Hampta Pass trek (which is another story to be told sometime), the Kugti Pass trek (which they never launched) and the famous Kedarkantha trek (I’ll share this story in my next email!).

Interestingly, for 3 years, it was only Indiahikes who ran the Rupin pass trek. No one else.

“As I had mentioned earlier Rupin Pass is a logistical nightmare. For other trek organisations it was not an easy trek to mount,” shares Sandhya.

“In these 3 years, we established our network and a basecamp at Sankri, a village close to where the Rupin starts. We also launched the first true winter trek in India, the Kedarkantha, out of Sankri. Together with Rupin and Kedarkantha, a trekking ecosystem started to form out of Sankri,” she concludes.

Today Rupin Pass is one of India’s favourite treks. But it all started with the first exploration of the trek in the summer of 2008. It is now 12 years since. The trek still holds the same charm as it did then. 🙂

Did you ever imagine that the much loved Rupin Pass was brought out in Indian trekking this way? Share your thoughts in our comments below.

Here's the thrilling backstory of how one of India's all time favourite treks - the Rupin Pass trek was expored by our Founders.

Rupin Pass - #2 of 9 Treks That Transformed Indian Trekking

When we’re talking about treks that transformed Indian trekking, Kedarkantha would be one of the biggest changemakers.

Kedarkantha is a trek that single-handedly revolutionized winter trekking in our country. It also changed the perception of “high altitude trekking” as a sport.

It showed the world that the Himalayan treks are possible outside of summer and autumn. Dare I say, over a decade, it made winter trekking more popular than even summer in India.

But for us, that’s not all. We have many personal stories attached to Kedarkantha as well. They are stories of hope and despair.

I’ll cover the whole Kedarkantha story here, where I’m interviewing the founders of Indiahikes, Arjun Majumdar and Sandhya UC, who explored this trail and put it out on the map as a winter trek way back in 2010.

It’s a story that is rarely told. So sit tight and read away. 🙂

“I first heard of Kedarkantha in casual conversations with our staff members.

“We have to go back 10-11 years from now, Swathi,” Arjun starts. “This was when we had just started Indiahikes, it was a very young organization.

“We had just launched Rupin Pass, the story of which I told you last week. Our bonds with our staff from that region were evolving, getting stronger. Most of them were from the villages around the Sankri area.

“We would often talk to each other, about our lives and our treks as we sat around a fire with a warm cup of chai. In one of these conversations I remember the head of our staff, Rajmohan ji, telling me about this hill behind their homes.

“I remember him telling me, Sir, kabhi aa jao. Hamare ghar ke piche ek chota sa trek hai, Kedarkantha. Hum aksar hamare bhed bakria wahan le jaate hai. Kafi sundar hai, uppar ek mandir bhi hai. Chaliye, kabhi ghum aayenge.”

“It was very casual, a lot like how we invite people to our homes and take them to the local malls for a visit,” says Arjun.

“Later that year, when we resumed our Rupin Pass trek season, a friend of mine had a few days to kill before the trek. She and her husband wanted to see if they could do a trek before they headed to Rupin.

“At a loss for which trek to suggest — every trek that came to my mind was a long one — I recommended Kedarkantha. I really didn’t think they would do the trek. But they actually went on the trek that summer and really liked it. I still remember the lovely forests and clearings in the photos they had shared. The photos of the trek stayed on my mind,” says Arjun.

Listen to Arjun narrate the backstory of the Kedarkantha exploration here:

Indiahikes · The Backstory Of The Kedarkantha Winter Trek Exploration — Narrated by Arjun Majumdar

But how did Indiahikes explore Kedarkantha in winter?

“We were very idealistic back then Swathi! I am not saying we are not idealistic now, but at that time, we were caught in the fervour of bringing out great treks in our country. We had already brought out Roopkund and Rupin. And now we wanted to bring out a true winter trek in our country,” resumes Arjun.

“At that time trekking was firmly associated with very high altitudes — treks that went above 14 or 15 thousand feet. And treks were largely seen as activities that you did mostly in summer, and a bit in autumn.

“Trekking in winter was not even considered a possibility in India.

“Even hill stations in India would largely be closed in winter. Only a few hotels and restaurants would be open,” adds Sandhya. 

“And here we were, thinking of introducing a true winter trek in India. By a “true winter trek,” we were looking for a trek where you camped in the wilderness, went from one camp to another, walked on snow and experienced a great adventure on the way,” says Arjun.

Opening up a winter trek was fraught with problems

“Finding a winter trek was next to impossible. You don’t get water in winter. Streams are all buried under snow, usually frozen. Even in the cities, water pipes freeze in winter. Added to that we were looking to camp in the wild, inside the mountains, at an altitude, with access to water.

“Even if we did find such a spot, we needed to find not one but three such camping spots that could be put together to form a trek.

“If that’s not enough,” continues Arjun, “the bigger problem is to actually form a trail on snow. When snow falls, it dumps many feet of snow. This loose powdery snow is not easy to cut through. It rises up to your waist or even your head at times.

“You can clear about 20-30 meters of such snow to form a trail, like how you shovel snow out of your sidewalk, but it is impossible to do that for many kilometers linking one camp with another,” says Arjun.

“On top of this, we had to think about the winter cold. We were talking about trekkers trekking in negative temperatures, with snow all around where night temperatures would fall to around minus 10 or so,” adds Sandhya.

“I tell you, being idealistic was one thing. But being mad was another!” laughs Arjun.

“Yet, we were very firm about bringing out a winter trek in India. We wanted people to experience the magic of fresh snow in winter, especially in the wilderness,” he adds.

“But for the life of us, with all our experience, we could not find a trek that would suit a winter trek. We looked across the country, in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, West Bengal… but none suited a winter setting.

“I think we were probably trying to convert our summer or autumn treks to winter,” remarks Sandhya thoughtfully. “What was required was to actually make a whole new trek for winter. This realisation brought about a big shift in thought.”

How the Kedarkantha exploration finally came about

“With this in mind, I spoke to Rajmohan ji again. Somehow a wild idea had struck me. I asked Rajmohan ji if the Kedarkantha could be done in winter. To me it looked a great fit for a feasible trek in winter. It had easy access, a good climb to the summit, and very good scenery.

There were just two thoughts on my mind. Would it be possible to find camping spots, and that too at the right distance and altitude. And could we make our way in these forests in snow?

“When I sounded out my idea of trekking Kedarkantha in winter to him, he thought I was delusional! I remember him telling me that there would be snow up till our necks. “Nobody goes there in winter, not locals, not even sheep.” He outright dismissed my idea”, recollects Arjun.

“But the thought of Kedarkantha as a winter trek kept coming back to me. The more I thought about it, the more it looked plausible.”

“I went back to Rajmohan ji with these thoughts. I asked him what if we could force a route through in this snow. We could put people and manpower behind it. We had ice axes, we had trained mountaineers who knew ice craft. We could create new campsites at shorter intervals. We could at least try.

“He looked hard and long at me. He realised I was serious. He slowly started to come around to the idea. Once he warmed up to the thought, he took it upon himself to expand it further.

“He suggested that we could think of camping at Juda Ka Talab, it had a ready water source. We could make another camp at the base of the summit, where there were some shepherd’s huts. We could keep our supplies there. We would call it the KK Base.

“On our return we could camp at a clearing beside a clear stream. It was not far from Juda Ka Talab, and we could ration it from Juda-Ka-Talab itself. This would be Hargaon, our final camp on our return.”

The famous Juda ka Talab on the Kedarkantha trek. Picture by Shubham Singh

“With an earnest look, he told me, Sir, aap team banao. Hum trail nikal lenge. These words gave me a lot of confidence.

“So that winter, 2010, we put up a Kedarkantha Exploratory Trek on our website,” smiles Arjun.

“It still amazes me how 18 trekkers actually signed up for the exploration, by looking only at the summer photographs that my friend had lent me,” recollects Arjun.

Here's the thrilling backstory of how one of India's all-time favorite treks - the Kedarkantha trek was explored by our Founders.

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