manu's blog

Against all your expectations, part 3 comes much sooner. So, where were we? Yeah, we were sleeping in the TRH in Ghangharia. Day 3, Mon Aug 25 . We got up early again at about 6-6:30. Had tea, ordered for the hot water bucket, took bath and phew, we were ready to trek again. Now, when it comes to having breakfast in Ghangharia, there are not many options. In fact the only options are aloo paratha, if you are lucky and there is bread in town then butter toast, and if you don't mind eating eggs which could be 2-3 months old then bread omelet. On that day we had butter toast. Bread slices were the smallest I had ever seen and to make us feel even worse about it, each butter toast cost 35 bucks. Anyway, we started our trek at around 8:40 am or so. After climbing on a decently steep trek for about 10-15 min we reached the point where the route for valley of flowers separates from that going to Hemkund. This is also where you have to pay the valley of flowers national park entry fee. Yes

Day 2, Sun Aug 24 : After spending a good night in Joshimath, time was now to further our journey . Our day started early. We got up at 6 and had checked out of the TRH by 7:30 am. Plan was to take some mode of transportation till Govindghat. From there we were to start our first trek, to Ghangharia. We got a jeep for Govindghat from Badrinath taxi stand in Joshimath. After a drive of less than an hour, the jeep dropped us just at the border of Govindghat. From the road itself, we could see Laxman Ganga, river that flows from glaciers beyond Hemkund, falling into Alaknanda. After walking for about 10-15 min, we reached our trek start point. By the way, our cellphones had stopped working as soon as we left Joshimath, so luckily we were unreachable now and we remained so till the end of our trip. We hired a porter for our luggage here (for Rs. 405). Though there are lockers available in Govindghat for luggage, we didn't want to leave anything behind as we were going to be in Ghanghar