Snow Trek To Nag Tibba – Part 2

Snow Trek To Nag Tibba – Part 1

Reached Pantwari at around 0700 hrs. The weather was chilling and the sky was cloudy. While freshening up, our hands got numbed due to chilled water. To make our hands normal, we did a small bonfire session. After freshening up, we had our breakfast of Poori Sabji cooked at Parmar Sweet Shop. Really,  mountain folks are really good cooks. The best thing about mountains is the pure water available in that vicinity. Eat whatever and how much you want, one can digest almost everything (talking about food) with the help of that water. I don’t think that mountain folks have ever had constipation problem 😛.

After having our breakfast, I decided to give some tips to all because I was the most experienced trekker in the whole group. So I gave a short learning session to my fellow trekkers on how to ascend and descend on a trek and then we started our trek. The initial trek was through the village. The trail was made up of stones and was covered with goat and cow shit. Soon we came out of the village and reached the trek route. The terrain was mild steep and it was an uneven surface.

There is also a road that gets connected to the trek route. If one doesn’t want to start the trek from Pantwari itself then he/she can opt for that motorable road. However, we didn’t choose that route. We did the whole trek. The whole trail was easy and mild steep except the last two stretches. Those last two stretches made us tired. We took some small breaks during the trek and reached the basecamp at around 1600 hrs. After reaching the base camp, we relaxed a bit and had piping hot Maggi. As the weather was quite cold, we started a bonfire and spent a good time with the gang. We had a discussion for about 2 hours which included some ghost stories, college/hostel stories and discussion about next day trek. We all were wishing for snowfall because we wanted to experience the snow trek. Later we played a game called “bluff” with the playing cards and after having dinner we all went inside into our tents to sleep. As late night arrived, the storm started with rain. The storm was terrible. We were scared of collapsing our tent but with the god’s grace, our tent remained intact. Somehow we got able to sleep.

Day 3:

Woke up early at 0600 hrs, came out from our tents and it started snowing. It was seeming like the weather was waiting for us to wake up. We all started shouting and thanking the weather. Then we got ready and had our breakfast of delicious Aloo Parantha. Aloo Paranthas in snowfall, it was really fun.

After all this, we put on our ponchos and then started our further trek to Nag Tibba summit. Today’s trek distance was 12 km (3 km up and 9 km down). Now the weather and landscape got completely changed. We were trekking in the snowfall. All the vegetation turned white as it got covered with the white blanket of snow. We were really enjoying the trek during snowfall. It was an amazing experience. It took us around 1 hour to reach the Nag Tibba temple. The temple was girded by 3-4 feet of snow. We quickly explored the place and checked out the condition of the further trail to the summit.

The further trail was brimmed with heavy snow and we did not have equipment such as gaiters, crampons, etc. to trek in that much snow. So, unfortunately, we had to drop our plan of our further trek to the summit and decided to spend our remaining time at the temple. We had a ball at the temple. It was great fun to play with snow and build the snowman. We did everything that we could do with the snow.

Going back to Nag Tibba base camp

Later we started descending towards the base camp. We had our lunch there and then descended back to village Pantwari. While descending, some of us got fallen several times due to wet mud but it was also a part of our fun. The good thing was that no one got injured during the trek. After reaching the village, we relaxed and enjoyed the dawn. We had our dinner and slept in the guest house.

Scenic Dawn

Day 3

Woke up at 0800 hrs, got ready and departed for Delhi. As the day was Sunday, we decided to take the Vikasnagar road instead of Mussoorie so that we could pass through less traffic. Our decision came out to be correct. The road was almost empty. We enjoyed the whole journey and also explored a roadside waterfall. We reached Delhi at 2000 hrs. The overall trip was a great fun and a memorable one.

This was my second trek to Nag Tibba and I couldn’t reach the summit this time also. The first one due to hailstorm and the second one due to heavy snow. Still no regrets. I will plan for 3rd time and reach the summit. 😊