Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

The other perspective approved!

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

Introduction:
Firstly, let me start off by introducing my fellow riders and myself so that you guys can better relate with the group and our adventure. These photos were all taken at some point or the other during this trip.

Sai Karthik D, a.k.a “Sai“ or “Super Sai”
His ride: CBR250R


Dhanesh B Chandran, a.k.a “BC“
His ride: Normally rides an RC390, but for the purpose of this trip, he borrowed a friend’s R15


Vikram Hattangady, a.k.a – since I am relatively new to this group, they have not come up for a fancy nickname for me, so for the purpose of this travelogue, it will be “Me” or “I”
My ride: Impulse


Special Appearance: Satyanarayana Tejaswi K, a.k.a “Teja-vu”
Teja-vu also had his parents along with him since they were not able to complete their Chardham yatra a few years earlier. They had only Badrinath left on their yatra, so this was a good reason for Teja-vu to join us on our road trip (or for us to join him on his – I am not very sure how the plan came about). We had similar route plans, so we ended up riding/ staying together on some days, and our plans deviated slightly on others.
His ride: Alto K10


Day 0 – 7^th Nov, 2015: Gurgaon to Meerut
Like many of our other trips, we generally set out straight from work since on long holidays like this, it is difficult to add on another day. So this trip too, like others starts off with a Day 0. Just trying to get as far as possible with the time available to reduce the travel time in the following days.
My Day 0 started quite a bit later than the other 3 guys. BC and Teja-vu both left office at around 1pm. BC to pick up the R15 from the service centre where it had been given the previous day, and Teja-vu to pick up his parents from the railway station. Super Sai left around 3 and met up with BC at Gurgaon.
I, on the other hand, was stuck in a department organized get-together. One which we had been warned that there would be consequences for anyone who missed it. So I had no option but to inform the guys to get started without me, and I would try to catch up with them at the night halt.
The get-together, that had been scheduled upto 8pm mercifully finished around 6:30, and now I had 2 options.
1) Ride in the dark to meet up with the guys at Meerut
2) Call off the trip on account of bad luck of the office stuff getting in the way of fun times.
However, this being my first road trip with the guys, I was keen not to inherit the title of “Ditcher” from one of our friends in the group. So ride at night it was.
The advantage that I had however, was that I had done a Gurgaon – Lansdowne ride earlier in the year, and for that too, we had started around 7pm after office. So not only had I done this route before, but I had also done it in the same conditions.
Keen not to waste any time, I quickly got on the road and headed towards Meerut. Luckily for me, since I had left much later than my friends, I managed to avoid most of the traffic, and made it to Meerut by around 10 pm. Had a beautiful view of India Gate under lights on the way, but was in too much of a hurry to stop and take a photo.
So sadly, no photos from Day 0, but many to come from the following days.
And for those who are wondering, yes the Ditcher ditched us on this trip too.

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

Thanks for sharing the same experience from a different pair of eyes!

Sent from my Xperia L.

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

Waiting for more ...

How difficult to get permission to go beyound mana village ??

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

More on the way.

Getting permission, from what I hear is nearly impossible. I have heard that recently, only 1 person was giving permission, that too after he waited outside their office literally begging every day for an entire week. (But I cannot confirm this, It is just what I heard from someone)

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

^th Nov, 2015: Meerut to Rudraprayag
The day started bright and early for us. We were all full of energy to get the trip really started. Leaving the hotel around 6:45am, we were out of the city pretty soon and on a highway flanked by fields. About 45 minutes into the ride, BC decided it was time to pull out his DSLR and start capturing the moment.



Around this time, Teja-vu caught up with us. We were pleasantly surprised to see that he had been behind us all this time. Since he had left from office before the rest of us, we expected him to be further up the road.








After crossing Bijnor, we rode straight to Lansdowne, stopping once or twice on the climb up for photographs.






Entering Lansdowne, the home of the Veer Garhwalis


We stopped for lunch at Lansdowne at a restaurant Oaktown next to Gandhi Park. The place served some really good non-vegetarian food, the last good non-veg that we had for some time.

Riding on after lunch, we wanted to try and reach atleast Srinagar by nightfall. However, the road was better than expected, so we decided to stop at Rudraprayag instead. On the way there, we got a beautiful view of Srinagar. There was a blind corner, and coming around the corner, this was the view that greeted us.

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

^th Nov,2015: Rudraprayag to Badrinath/Mana
Morning shot: this was the view from the hotel verandah right outside our room




Breakfast place felt very promising with a big Maggi board outside, but alas, no Maggi. He did have some good chowmien and omlette, which took almost an hour to be made, making this by far our longest breakfast stop.




BC and Sai talk shop while we wait for the food to be prepared.

Riding on after breakfast, we got some great photo ops of some overhanging cliff faces where they would have cut into the mountain to make space for the road. My first good chance to take some panorama photographs on my phone.




Slowly but surely, we were getting there.

Up ahead, Sai and BC got to Joshimath before Teja and myself, and as part of plan A, they took the turn towards Auli. However, a little down that road, they spoke to a few locals who told them that there is not much activity at Auli since the major attraction is skiing, and there is not enough snow for that. It was around this time that Teja and me reached the junction. Getting the news from these guys, we decided to switch to plan B, which was to skip Auli, and go straight to Badrinath/Mana.
The rest of the ride, while scenic, was not so eventful. So for the moment, I think I will stop talking and let the pictures do most of the work.

Bridge across the Alakananda river




Wise words:




Nearing Badrinath




Man, I wish I had a DSLR with me. A long exposure shot with that waterfall in the background would have made an awesome wallpaper.


Since I ride a little slower than the others in the twisty sections, by this time, I had fallen behind, so I was not sure if the guys had entered Badrinath or gone straight to Mana. Initially, I bypassed Badrinath and headed towards Mana, stopping just beyond Badrinath to contact the guys. While waiting for their replies, I had the time to take a few pics.



Badrinath Temple




No longer hungry, we headed over towards Mana, the last Indian village border that is accessible to civilians before the border.













For those wondering how the tent is so bright and blue, BC had a power bank with a blue color LED torch. He left that on inside the tent, and the light diffused pretty well.
Around 9pm, Sai and BC decided it was time to sleep. I let them go ahead while I stayed out to try my hand at some astro photography. One thing to note is that the villagers at Mana kept 2-3 street lights on the entire night, right upto almost 7 in the morning. Due to this, you would notice that most of the photographs and landscapes are tinted orange from the street lights. But I guess one of the keys of photography is to try and adapt to the lighting conditions, rather than complaining that the lighting was not how I would have liked. This is the end result:









^rd

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

Day 2 continued: Night at Mana
My spot awaits me.

Probably the biggest problem we faced that night was camping on cold sand. Did not seem to matter how many layers you were wearing, or whether you had a sleeping bag or not. The cold from the sand below the tent seem to cut through all that and chill you to your bones.
Sleep came and went as it pleased, each time, the cold making it harder to fall asleep again.

As it turns out, Super Sai is not so super after all. He apparently suffers from migraine attacks that at times, can get dangerously bad.
Halfway through the night, he wakes me up to tell me that he is not feeling well, and wants to head back to Badrinath to spend the night in a guest house. Our discussion carries on for some time working out different options from Teja coming by car to pick us up to the 3 of us packing the tent in the middle of the night and heading back to Badrinath.
In my sleepy state, I was shivering inside the tent, so I had no intention of stepping outside, let alone riding a bike in those conditions.
Our discussions soon woke up BC, and he too joined in. After lengthy debates, where Sai insisted that he had to return to Badrinath and did not want to ride alone, it was decided that BC would accompany Sai to Badrinath, and then return to the tent. We called up Teja, as late as it was, and asked him to get a room booked for Sai. Surprising was the fact that I actually had better network reception down in the valley near Mana, than he had at Badrinath. Sai and BC left and BC returned after a while. I have no idea how long I was alone down there in the tent. I was just happy to finally get my hands on a sleeping bag.
Inside the sleeping bag too, I was finding it a little hard to keep warm. The main problem for me was to retain heat in my feet(I realized later that my outer pair of socks was damp, and that was the main culprit). However, we made it through the night.

^th Nov, 2015: Badrinath



Then some of mine:


Could not capture the entire photo in a single panorama, so stitched together 2 photos.



We stuffed all our belongings into the tent, and headed up to our bikes to go to Badrinath for breakfast and to check on Sai. Along the way, we got some beautiful views of the sunrise from Mana village.




Panorama of the valley

On the ride back to Badrinath, we noticed that many of the puddles that we had ridden through the previous day were iced over.



After breakfast, BC and me headed back to Mana to pack up our tent and bring all out belongings back. I have an app on my phone called Framelapse, which is a free app on the Play store that allows capturing of time lapse videos. While I had played around with the app earlier, this was the first chance that I got to really use it.
Here is a time lapse of us packing our bags, and eventually the tent. The playback will be at 15x speed.




One of the selfies taken by the river, because why not?


On the way out of the town. If you notice very closely, you will see BC sitting on a pile of bricks trying to take some very cinematic shots of his bike. I only noticed this when uploading this picture, not when I took it.

The problem that faced us now was that we had 3 bikes worth of luggage, but only 2 bikes with which to carry them back. While we were planning logistics of potentially overloading our bikes vs making 2 trips, Sai called us. Good timing huh?
He said he was feeling almost back to normal and insisted that he would also come to help with carrying the luggage back. So we waited at the tea stall for Sai to join us. He had not eaten anything yet, so all of us had maggi there before heading back. There were some clouds rolling in, and that really made the guys complain about how we came a little too early to experience snow, and how these clouds would just pass by, and how this trip would suddenly become boring to come this far and not see snow properly.
We got back to Badrinath, and shifted into the room from which Teja and family had vacated earlier in the morning. This one had 3 beds. We also managed to obtain a heater from the caretaker. This was a major achievement. Most of the heaters there are rented by the guest house on request of guests. The person who provides these heaters had already left Badrinath for the winter. The heater that the caretaker had gave some problems due to which it kept tripping the MCB, hence the caretaker had stopped using it. However, on our persistence, the caretaker and a friend finally got the heater to work, tripping the MCB about 4 times along the way. But finally it worked. But honestly, it barely made a difference unless you sat 1 foot away from it. But still, it came to good use to warm our hands and feet, and also dry our socks.
We had lunch around 3, and this time, we stuck to north Indian food. I forgot which gravy dish we had, but along with that, we had alu parathas, and for the first time ever, I tasted parathas made in a tandoor, not on a tawa. They were so good, they did not even last long enough for me to take a photo.
On the way back from lunch, there was the first hint of snow. But so light that the snow would melt as soon as it touched anything, and you could tell that the snowfall would not last too long. It did not last very long as expected, but it did snow a little heavier before it stopped.
Captured a very short video just to send home because I could not capture the snowfall in a picture. In the video, you can also hear BC shouting that he cannot pick up the snow on picture on his DSLR. I also managed a quick selfie before the snow that fell on me had melted.

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

^th Nov, 2015: Badrinath to Tharali
Opening shot:

Achievement unlocked: Get your bike covered in snow



As the result of the overnight snowfall, the morning site was truly a wonder. BC and Sai wanted to head back to Mana to see how the snowfall had transformed the place. However, I was keen to finally capture the sunrise time lapse that I had missed the previous day. After some quick pics of the bike, we started the surprisingly satisfying task of de-icing our bikes.

We found a handle of a bucket lying around and it came in very handy scraping the ice off our bikes. The centre part of the handle, being coated in rubber also meant that we could scrape quite hard without fear of scratching our bikes.



Following this, we doused the bikes in hot water to melt the remaining ice clinging to the bikes. BC and Sai then made their way to Mana while I headed down to my chosen spot to setup for the timelapse sequence. I was able to capture a few pictures, including a panorama while waiting for the sun to hit the mountain.



I am saving the panorama for later. You will see why.
In the mean time, since Badrinath is in a valley, it is not enough for the sun to rise. The sun has to rise above the range that is behind us to then illuminate the range and the temple in front of us. From the time that the light hit the top of the mountain to the time that the temple was fully illuminated, it was over an hour. So even at 15x speed, it is almost a 5 minute video that is incredibly boring in its raw form. That will take some editing, either speeding up the initial part or adding some nice soothing music. Anyway, the best part of the video was the 20 seconds at the end. That is below. This was around 8:40am.



By this time, BC and Sai were back from their Mana visit and discussing ice riding techniques. Apparently there was a lot more ice this morning than there was the previous day when I rode back. After a comfortably long breakfast, we were leaving the restaurant around 10:30 am. And then something caught our eye that we had not noticed earlier. In the 2 hours that the sun had been up, the snow had almost entirely melted. Now comes the panorama that I had taken earlier. The first one is at around 8:40 am, the second was taken less than 2 hours later at around 10:30 am. I have tried to line them up as much as possible.




With this, we bade good bye to Badrinath and began our descent. Since we were leaving so late, we knew that we had a lot of ground to cover. The plan was to reach Kasauni since that was where Teja was making his night halt. So we got back on the road, and tried to make as few stops as possible. Some views however, were too good to miss.

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

Superb narration. Carry on!

Sent from my Xperia L.

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

Superb narration and nice pics! Keep going!

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story



Thanks. That was how much I had typed out over the last few days. Remaining 2 days yet to by typed, so will take some time.

But this was the main roadtrip. rest of it was pretty much getting back.

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

Dear Moderators, Please Do not Allow Members to Post Such Stories...

And If they Are Allowed, Then it should be with a STRONG CAUTIONARY NOTICE that Says:-

WARNING - The following Travelogue contains AMAZING STORIES COMBINED WITH OVERWHELMING and STAR STUDDED SCENIC PICS, THE CONTENT IS NOT SUITABLE FOR THOSE VIEWING FROM THE CONFINES OF THEIR OFFICE !

That being said. awesome Journey Guys!!

My bike too has been asking to see Snow so I guess I gotta start planning soon now!!

Re: First snow in Badrinath Mana - The other side of the story

Thanks man. Cannot hope for a better praise.

359 days out of 365, I am one of those viewing from the confines of my office.

These 6 days of riding was pure bliss