The Ralam Glacier Trek With Manoj Bothiyal — But first Khaliya Top
I recently did the Ralam glacier trek with Manoj Bothiyal our guide. Here is the story of how it all transpired. This is part 1 of the series, which covers the trek to Khaliya top with pictures.
Trekking the Himalayas was on my mind since the year started. I wanted to do a trek which isn’t very touristy, but also I wanted to come back alive. Most of the treks in the region tend to open towards the end of May and I hence I had to finalise my plans and make the needed bookings by mid march. So I started putting my options together.
Initially I thought of doing the Dodital to Dayara Bugyal trek which starts from Uttarkashi. While a lot of folks trek to Dodital OR Dayara Bugyal, but not many trek FROM Dodital TO Dayara Bugyal, so that was a good stretch to spend some time with pure nature. I called a friend and informed her and she agreed to come along.
After sleeping over this plan for a few days, it didn’t seem very exciting. I wanted something a little more remote. My mind started going back in time, when I visited Munsiyari in 2017. The early morning foggy clouds through which we needed to steal glimpses of the lovely panchachuli peaks. The beautiful winding roads, with long trees on both sides. Munsiyari itself is at the north eastern corner of Uttarakhand, which makes reaching there a long formidable journey. Which makes the treks in this region remote.
I couldn’t resist the thoughts of Munsiyari and the treks in that region any more. So I changed the trek plans, instead of Dodital to Dayara Bugyal, it would be the Milam Glacier Trek with Nanda Devi East Base Camp.
I called up my sherpafeet guide and informed him of my plans. Unfortunately he wasn’t available for that period, and he proposed for one of his friends who was also a guide to help us. Since his friend wasn’t listed on sherpafeet, I wasn’t sure of his credentials as a guide. So I told him, I would come to Munsiyari and meet his guide friend before finalising anything.
With the guide part settled, I booked my flight and bus tickets.
The most popular trek in the Munsiyari region is the Milam glacier Trek. The Nanda Devi East base camp trek can also be combined with the Milam glacier trek if you have a few extra days. The Milam glacier trek used to be the trade route between india and tibet before 1962. The people in this region used to be well off, but since the end of trade, most of the villages are empty.
As my trek date drew closer, the team size grew to three.
On June 1st, I took the noon flight from Bangalore to Delhi. Just before I boarded the flight in Bangalore, I found ‘Nanda Devi’ trending on twitter. For a split second, I suspected twitter intruding my privacy. But then, on checking the tweets, it seemed an expedition to summit Nanda Devi led by mountain guide Martin Moran had gone missing in that area.
A took the night sleeper bus from Delhi’s RK Ashram metro station at 830 pm, the bus reached Haldwani at 6 am in the morning the next day. I had booked a seat in a shared cab from Haldwani to Munsiyari. The shared cab driver picked me up on time and I was on my way to Munsiyari. It was a long drive, we stopped for breakfast and tea just after Almora. We had lunch a little after Berinag. Reached Munsiyari a little after 5 pm.
My trek mates had already reached Munsiyari, I checked into the hotel. The plan was to visit the SDM office to get the needed permits to trek to Milam Glacier and Nanda Devi East base camp the next day. In the evening my sherpafeet guide called and informed that his friend who could guide us for this trip would meet us in the morning to discuss.
Next morning right after my Sadhna (Art of living yoga/kriya), Manoj Bothiyal our to be guide, came to the hotel. I had a good first impression of him and after a little more prodding we agreed to hire him for the next 12 days.
We then set off to the SDM office to get the permits. In reaching the SDM office, the SDM told me they aren’t issuing any permits due to the Martin Moran incident on Nanda Devi. I was saddened to know that the expedition members were still missing. Nevertheless, I tried my best to convince the SDM to give us the permit as we are going on our own risk. But he didn’t budge, there was a lot of pressure on the SDM as the news of the missing expedition team was all over the media and there were attempts being made to search and rescue.
Seeing no chance of getting the permit to Milam, I proposed that we do the khaliya top trek, camp at khaliya top for the night and return back the next day to check if the SDM office has started giving permits again.
So we started the trek towards khaliya top at about 3pm after purchasing some maggi, tea, sugar, milk etc for the night. Btw, there is a guest house which lies just 15 minutes before the top, but I suggested we camp on the top.
We hired the tents and sleeping bags from Deepak Panwar, fondly called Deepu da. Infact, Deepu da runs the guest house on Khaliya so we had to carry the tents/sleeping bags only from the guest house to the top!
If we had to carry it all the way, we surely wouldn’t have made it as one of my trek mates was relatively new to trekking and he struggled quiet a bit even to make it uptill the guest house.
The trek from Munsiyari till Khaliya top took us about 4 hours with lots of breaks and fun.
We passed by a few houses initially with beautiful roses.
I really enjoyed this trek, there were steep sections as well.
Below some pictures from this part of our trek.
We camped on khaliya top, the evening was very windy and by night it become silent and there was hardly any wind. We had chocolates and snacks for dinner.
We woke up relatively early and trekked around the top. It is a big place and we spent a few hours trekking around.
In my next post, I will cover the trek and pictures from Munsiyari to Ralam Glacier and back.
