Rishikesh
- 25th of August
- Chopta - Ukhimath - Kund - Tilwara - Rudraprayag - Srinagar - Devaprayag - Rishikesh
- 220km
Chopta is a really small and beautiful village. About a 3.5km trek away is a temple called Tungnath. In good weather, it would be possible to see all the Char Dham (four holy abodes) - Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangothri and Yamunothri, from Tungnath. But this particular morning, Chopta was shrouded in thick fog, and we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces, let alone the Char Dham. Needless to say, we were still recovering from our trek a couple of days back, and Tungnath was out of the question.
We were lucky enough to get a single shot of these snow capped peaks, before the fog and clouds covered them again.
After a leisurely morning, replete with bath, breakfast, and lazing around, we hit the road at 10:30 or so. We moved about 10m and stopped again… Sandy’s rear tyre was flat. An hour, lots of grunts, groans and curses later, we’d managed to replace and re-inflate the tube.
On the road to Ukhimath
Luckily for us, the road was great. At Kund, we joined the national highway which leads to Gaurikund. Though the traffic was rather higher here, the road was excellent, and we kept really good speeds. It was around here that my bike had its first issue. My right cylinder was misfiring. On opening the plug, we saw that it was coated thick with carbon. Damn these fancy imported NGK plugs. I replaced it with a good old MICO, and we were off.
A suspension bridge across the Alakananda. The highway is dotted with exotic riverside resorts with names like "The Glass House on the Ganges". - Courtesy Prashi
Throughout the day, we always had a deep valley with a large river on one side of the road. To start with, it was the Mandakini, which was assimilated by the Alakananda at Rudraprayag. Alakananda, in turn, joins with Bhagirathi and is assimilated into the Ganga at Devaprayag.
The Ganges takes a stiff hairpin bend below us. - Courtesy Prashi
The road, the bikes, and the Ganga. - Courtesy Prashi
We reached Rishikesh-on-Ganga well ahead of schedule, and spent a good 2 hours of the evening in a hunt for booze, till we found out that Rishikesh is a dry town.