Waking up in the middle of the night to hike up the mountain to reach the temple, it was very cold. Even though there was a lack of motivation and sleep, the energy was there. We were getting ready by just getting up and brushing our teeth. We were already close because of the temperature. The drinking water we had with us was frozen as well, great start.
Hiking in darkness
We were walking up and it was slippery because of the ice and it was very peaceful. Nobody was awake and we were on our way to the top, to reach there at sunrise. This whole adventure started like the sunrise hike in this article. There I also traveled with Bana, but in Indonesia.
I am usually not a big fan of being in darkness, but somehow I was enjoying it this time. The relaxing time was a bit ruined by the flashlight Bana needed, luckily after being out of the little forest he stopped with it and we were able to enjoy the stars.
It was a rough way up, also because the air was getting less and the cold temperature was just adding to it. The sun was getting up slowly and with it came more energy and a good feeling.
Getting delusional
The further we got, the weirder I was getting. For a while I wasn’t able to keep the speed up with Bana, he was just feeling the day more than me. Also not much liquid was in my body.
It was weird, I wasn’t sure anymore what the word “bird” was called in German, so I just made a word up to tell it Bana, because of seeing some in the distance. I was never in such a situation, just being delusional from the height and not much water in the system.
The situation stayed like that for actually quite a while and I started finding it funny, never experiencing something like that, just a weird situation. After drinking a bit of water and eating some snacks, which I brought from Germany, everything was slowly getting better.
The Tungnath Temple
It took a little while, but we ended up reaching the temple. I was super hyped for it, but then the temple was closed. It was something I wasn’t prepared for, the whole fight to get up there for nothing? NO I didn’t want to keep it that way! I went underneath the fence and just smuggled myself into the region of it. Taking a selfie and some normal pictures of the place. It felt weird doing it, but at the end I didn’t want to hike up for quite a while and then have seen just a gate without experiencing the temple a little bit.
Bana joined me and the cameras didn’t matter. The whole village was empty and in the distance there were two people who also wanted to make it where we were.
I thought of going down after being at the temple, Bana decided differently, he wanted to go up the peak of the mountain. The peak was roughly 1km away, so I ended up joining him.
Chandrashila
Making it up there was hard, but not as hard as going to the temple. The sun was up and you were able to see where you would go!
After being up there we were speechless. Just a stunning landscape and view, we couldn’t believe it, at least I was, because I honestly wasn’t expecting that from India before coming. It was beautiful. The little snow on the mountain and the possibility to look far in the distance was something I enjoyed a lot.
Other people were there, with whom we were having some great conversations. It was the perfect place to do some meditation, so that’s something we did, also shirtless in the snow, because we promised that to another group from the day before.
It was very relaxing up there and so we were able to enjoy it for a while, before a bunch of people made it to the top as well and were destroying the peace.
Indian Flag
There was out in the distance an Indian flag, not far away from falling down the mountain. I was making it to rescue it. The people were really happy around us and were taking many pictures with us and especially with the flag.
It was very interesting to see what kind of high value the flag is having for the Indians around. One Indian wanted to keep the flag, which I found quite unfair that he took it from me, so I motivated him to hang up the flag to the holy house up the mountain, so that others could also enjoy seeing it when making their journey up the mountain, to which he luckily agreed.
che shri ram
Something I was learning, while talking to some Indians on the way down, was che shri ram. It is something which he told me means something like “victory to god”, I can’t explain it better. I was saying it to many of the people who were walking up the mountain and they were all really happy and hyped which I liked seeing.
In general when you travel and try getting involved in a different culture or even language it makes people more likely to accept you in their country and heart. That is for sure something you should be using when traveling to India, mainly for the Hindu people, but also others might like hearing it.
Last night up the mountain
Walking down wasn’t fun, it was slippery and bad for my knees, but we were meeting some people who we knew from the night before. We had great conversations and saw many people falling down.
Grabbing some food in our “favorite” restaurant and walking a bit along the street, because we had nothing to do there and we needed to get some heat, before the sunset. Inside of our room was colder than outside, so the best call was to stay out.
We were meeting some interesting guy who was telling us that this place is mystic. Some ghost stories and more were told to us over a hot cup of tea. He was from that region, but was about to move to Canada to have his own weed cafe.
An interesting person, who wanted to get to know us better. The next morning I was taking a morning walk with him, while Bana was chilling in the room, trying to get some rest.
It was cold at night and we were trying to get us warm, while talking a lot and doing a podcast as well, which you can listen to just click at the link on the bottom of this article.
Actually it was helping a bit by being distracted, but feeling warm wasn’t something happening.
Getting back to Rishikesh
We were up early and tried to motivate people to drive with us down to the town. It wasn’t easy finding many people, but in the end we made it which was great. We decided to not waste so much time and make it in one day back to town. We were having a host from Couchsurfing, we didn’t want to make him wait so long, so we spent some money to not hitchhiking.
The people in the car were really nice and I was feeling very bad. It was the lack of energy from not being able to eat much of the food and the height difference from the mountain. I was trying to sleep as much as possible, but it almost didn’t work at all.
Eating for me in India was very bad. I wasn’t able to handle the spices at all, which led to not eating that much and having not as much energy, not a good cycle.
It took a long time to reach Rishikesh, but we drove differently than they told us, so we decided to cancel the request of the Couchsurfing host. The ride was hard, but we exchanged contact details to the people in the car. Bana was asking them many interesting questions. It was probably his super power to do so. Some questions were handled well and others not. I was happy when we arrived in town!
What’s up next?
In the next article I will share our time in Rishikesh and how everything turned out. Stay tuned!
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