My first solo trek, and the 2 am hot chocolate

The plan was never to go alone

It started the way most trips start, with a group chat and a lot of enthusiasm. I floated the idea of a winter trek. One friend had work. One had a wedding. One had that thing where he does not say no, he just stops replying. And one said, straight up, that trekking is not really his thing.

Huh, who doesn't want to do trekking :)

So the group plan died in about four days. Small problem though: I had already applied for my leaves. Approved and everything. Very funny, life.

At that point there were two options. Cancel the leaves and spend a week pretending to be productive, or go alone. I went alone.

Mirror selfie before leaving for the bus

Since this was my first solo trek, I did not want to also be my own guide, cook and emergency contact. So I booked with Trek The Himalayas, which people online kept calling one of the best. And honestly, it was good ;) especially the food. But we will get to the food, that part deserves its own section.

The trek: Dayara Bugyal, in Uttarkashi. Winter batch. Which means snow, and if you are lucky, snowfall.

Delhi to Dehradun, and the 2 am hot chocolate

I went to Kashmere Gate ISBT to catch the bus. If you have ever been there at night, you know the vibe. Half the people look like they are going somewhere important and the other half look like they have been there for three days.

Overnight sleeper to Dehradun. Nothing much happened. I put on headphones, pulled the curtain, and slept like a baby.

Bus selfie with headphones and neck pillow

Then, first stop. 2 am. The bus stops and the driver honks like we have arrived at the final destination. I woke up in full panic, checked my phone for the time, and my first thought was that this guy must have found the 7th gear, because there is no way we are in Dehradun already.

Boom. It was a dhaba.

Anyway, since I was awake, I got down to see what was happening, walked into the restaurant part, and drank a hot chocolate. Very tasty by the way. Ten minutes later everyone hopped back on and we were off again.

6 am, Dehradun. I got off, found a place, and had aloo ka paratha with chai. This is genuinely the correct way to start a trek.

Then I waited at the pickup point the company had shared, and the Traveller showed up with the rest of the batch in it.

The Force Traveller that took us to base camp

The drive nobody warns you about

Dehradun to Raithal is another 8 to 10 hours. Ten. Hours. On mountain roads. By hour six I had stopped taking photos and started negotiating with my own spine.

To be fair, the road is beautiful. The Bhagirathi keeps showing up on your left in this unreal green colour, and there is a point where the water comes down with enough force that everyone in the vehicle wakes up at once.

We reached Natin, Raithal village, in the evening. Base camp. And then I looked up, and the tiredness kind of cancelled itself.

This is the view from the balcony at sunset. The peaks go gold for about eight minutes and then it is over.

Raithal village at sunset with golden peaks

Then came the briefing. The trek leader ran us through the route, the gear check, how to use the poles, what to do if the weather turns, and roughly a hundred small things you do not think about until you are at 9,000 feet. Then we ate like babies and slept like babies. This becomes a pattern.

Day one, Raithal to Gui

Morning. Group photo at the start, because of course.

Group photo at Raithal before the ascent

Then the actual climb. Around 4 to 5 km of pure ascent through oak forest. Not technical, just relentless. The kind of trail where you tell yourself "just till that tree" about forty times.

And since this was winter, the snow started showing up on the way. First in patches, then in sheets, then in the whole "wait, is that the trail or is that just white" way.

Halfway up, I met this guy. He was extremely unbothered by all of us.

A Himalayan bird sitting on a snowy branch

And then, Gui camp. 9,800 ft. Tents, snow, a mule that had done the climb faster than every single one of us while carrying more.

We spent the rest of the day just roaming around Gui. Snow everywhere, everyone clicking photos, everyone slipping at least once. There is a small pond near the camp that had not frozen over, and it was sitting there reflecting the whole forest like it was showing off.

Okay, now the food

I promised we would come back to this.

Somebody carried gas cylinders and ration up a mountain so that a group of strangers could eat rajma chawal at 9,800 feet, and I do not think we thanked that person enough.

Snacks were mandwe ke momos, which are momos made with ragi flour, and they were so good that people started standing near the kitchen tent "casually". Breakfast one day was mandwa pancakes. There was paneer. There was kadhi. There was chole. There were roughly nine chai breaks a day, and every single one felt earned.

And then there is maggi. Maggi in the snow, holding the bowl with both hands because your fingers need it more than your stomach does. It is not the same maggi you make at home at 1 am. It is a completely different food item.

Sleeping at minus something

Before dinner we did the acclimatisation exercises, which look silly and are not silly at all. Then dinner, then the briefing for the next day, then bed.

Bed being: a tent, a sleeping bag, and an outside temperature somewhere between minus 5 and minus 10.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about a good sleeping bag. You are warm. You are genuinely warm. But your face is out in the open doing its own survival project, so you wake up with a cold nose and a warm everything else.

And then the night got interesting. It started snowing, properly snowing, and it did not stop. Enough snow piled on the tents that the fabric started sagging down towards our faces. So a few of us had to keep getting out and shaking the tents off through the night, in the dark, in the snow, half asleep.

Would not call it fun in the moment. Absolutely call it fun now.

In the morning it was worth it, because this is what we woke up to.

Naag Devta, and a snow storm with good timing

Next stop was the Naag Devta temple above the camp. Small temple, big silence, fresh snow all over the path.

We hung around, clicked photos, and then the weather flipped. Wind first, then snow coming sideways, and the trek leaders did that very calm "okay, we are heading back now" thing that actually means move. We rushed back down to the tents.

An hour later it stopped like nothing had happened. Blue sky, sun out, everyone back outside. The mountains do this. They are moody and they do not apologise.

So naturally we used the fresh snow properly. Snowballs, obviously. Then someone started making snow angels, and then I drew this absolute masterpiece with a trekking pole.

The summit day that did not happen

Next morning we set off for the Dayara Bugyal top. And this is where winter decided the terms.

The snow was deep. Not pretty-photo deep, waist deep in sections. Progress got slow, then very slow, and the leaders made the call to turn back from midway.

I will be honest, there was a bit of a "so close" feeling for about ten minutes. And then you look up, and you are standing above the clouds with the Gangotri range lined up in front of you, and it is very hard to feel short-changed.

The bugyal is not going anywhere. I will come back in a season where it lets me walk on it.

The people, who turned out to be the actual point

Here is the thing I did not expect from a solo trip. You are not solo for very long.

My batch was mostly Gujaratis, and mostly software engineers or something adjacent to software, all of us quietly escaping our own lives for a week. Within two days we had shared snacks, shared power banks, taken each other's photos in the same three poses, and complained about the same three things.

Nobody asked what anybody did for a living until day three. That was nice.

Then we descended to Natin, spent one more night at base camp, and the Traveller took us back down to Dehradun.

Two extra days, so, Mussoorie

I still had two days of chutti left. So I asked them to drop me at Mussoorie instead of the Dehradun bus stand, and just figured out the rest there.

I checked into Zostel, and this was the view from the terrace at night. Dehradun sitting down there like someone spilled a jar of fairy lights.

Zostel is a good hack for solo travel in general. You get a bed, and you get people, and you do not have to commit to either.

Two days of just walking Mall Road and nearby spots with zero plan. Which mostly meant eating.

My favourite omelette guy, who slices it up and hands it over on a foil plate while the whole road walks past behind you.

Pav bhaji, because the mountains make you hungry in a way cities do not.

And then jalebi with rabri, standing in the middle of a market at night. If you go to Mussoorie and skip this, we cannot be friends.

One proper sit-down dinner at a restaurant on the last night, mostly so I could sit somewhere warm and do nothing.

Then I booked a Zingbus back, they sent a cab from Mussoorie down to Dehradun, and the bus took me from there to Delhi.

So, would I do a solo trip again

Yes. Immediately.

The thing I was actually worried about, being alone, turned out to be the part that lasted the shortest. You are alone for exactly one bus ride. After that you are with fifteen people who are also cold, also hungry, and also very impressed by their own photos.

A few things I would tell someone doing their first one:

Book with a company for your first solo trek. Not because you cannot manage, but because it is nice to have someone else worrying about the weather.
Winter treks are a gamble. You might not summit. Go anyway.
Do the acclimatisation exercises properly, even though they look ridiculous.
Carry more socks than you think you need. Trust me on this one.
The 2 am dhaba hot chocolate is mandatory. That is not a tip, that is a rule.

My friends still have not done a trek.