Mighty Gangotri

This is was a biking trip to Gangotri, the birth place of river ganga, in the uttarkhand state, distance 500 kms from delhi, at an altitude of 10300 feet, with 220 kms in plain roads and 280 in the mountains, and our decision to go with the bikes was because of our passion of riding and the curves of the mountains and excellent scenery on the way to gangotri from rishikesh. One of the restriction of our trip was they are of few days bcoz of leave problems to some, and we three friends decided for gangotri all of a sudden.


The route to Gangotri is as follows,

Delhi ,Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar, Roorkee, Haridwar,Rishikesh, Chamba, Dharasu,

Uttarkashi, Gangnani, Bhatwari, Harsil, Gangotri.



Day1:- Noida to Rishikesh, 220 kms, 7 hrs.


We started at 2 pm from Noida and left for rishikesh after lunch, and headed towards rishikesh on the national highway, we had two bikes, one honda unicorn, and another hoodibaba, so i was riding the caliber 110, and was doubt full of this bike bcoz of lack of power whether it could make this 1000 km, and the 10000 feet ascent, but finally we reached rishikesh around 9 pm, this leg of our journey was full of highway traffic, with trucks and buses, and dusty which we did not enjoy much, we had our dinner and slept in a hotel in the night to start Early morning next day, as driving in the mountains in night is banned.

Day 2:- Rishikesh to Harsil, 250 kms, 12 hrs.

We started early the next day morning at around 6 am, we had already left the hotel and took a snap at rishikesh and headed to gangotri, through one of the most beautiful valleys, and a memorable bike ride, from rishikesh we started our ascent towards the mountains and reached chamba 50 kms from rishikesh, as soon as we left rishikesh we started getting a good panoramic view of the city and landscape below us, after chamba we were moving along with the sides of tehri dam, on of the biggest, and also the clear, unpolluted and green ganga was flowing by the sides, and a great view in fact, believe me by the time the river reaches Banaras this beautiful clear green ganga is turned to brown, and becomes polluted. The picture shown is taken near the ganga river, and also the valleys are very big, with deep gorges, we enjoyed the ride till we came across a landslide, where we had to halt for a few hours, landslides are common phenomenon in the Himalayan regions, we used this time to take rest and spend some time by the river side, and sandeep took this opportunity to make some meditation.

As soon as the BRO cleared the landslide, we again started our travel towards Gangotri, as it had become late it was almost dark, and also the deep gorges below, we were just travelling in some of the most dangerous roads in the world, on single mistake on ur bike will be ur last, sandeep was going in a taxi jeep with out luggage, and we were travelling behind the jeep with its light, and it helped us move easily without the luggage, finally at around 8 pm we reached Harsil, gangotri was around 30 kms from here but we decided to stay here as it was not good to travel in night in the mountains, we were about to go still higher and colder, we hired a room and stayed there for the night, and it was damn cold there, with the scorching heat of delhi to chilling cold of harsil in one day, such diversity in temperature u can find, i india, we spend the night with discussions , chatting, verbal conflicts and some funny topics, and finally slept at around 11.pm. It was a hard journey of 250 kms, the scenic beauty made it joyful.

Day 3:- Harsil to Gangotri - Bhajbusa - Gangotri.

We started at around 7.00 am towards Gangotri, today we came across some wonderful scenery found only in the Himalayas, and we realized what we had missed yesterday while travelling in the dark, u just find might mountains, and deep gorges below, the mountains are majestic u can think it inspired to do meditation, u can think about the reason why great rishis's mediated here, as we approached we came across some huge glaciers in road, and sky touching mountains, masked with snow on them a wonderful view. and reached gangotri finally.

We took Dharshan of the bhagirath temple and headed towards our destination Gaumukh, we started our trek of 20 km with the help of a local guide, along the shores of the river ganga, and it would have inspired many a people to mediate here as sandeep again started mediating here and it was a small trail for walking only there as vehicles cant move ahead, as we were the earliest trekkers and the GMVN had still not cleared the trails, we came across some huge glaciers, and we did manage to cross this glacier and move ahead , and we again came across one more glacier and it was dangerous to cross this glacier without rope or ice axe and we aborted the further progress. we played for some time on a glacier below which water was flowing.

While returning we meet a team of American people on a education tour , they were trying to write something about the place they were seeing, and we had a chat with them for a while and headed back, to Harsil, it was dark by the time we reached Harsil and we planned to leave early morning at the earliest to Delhi, which was supposed to be a marathon drive of 18 hrs 500 kms, but in my mind i was cursing our timing bcoz we could not reach Gaumukh after coming so far.


Day 4:- We were ready at 6.00 we meet tapavani matha ji, who did tapasya in tapovan for 10 years, we had lot of spiritual discussions and some doubts w.r.t to god, and by 7.30 am we left Harsil, we were supposed to reach Delhi without going anywhere else and we raced as early as possible, we had our lunch at Uttarkashi at around 11.30 am and we took some snaps on the way, with some beautiful man made water falls, and had a break for a few minutes and headed to rishikesh, i was wearing thermacoat inner wear to beat the Harsil cold and as we descended to rishikesh the temperature increased and it my body was being baked in this heat along with thermacoat, and we very much tired after 250 kms of mountain ride, and it was difficult to carry the bag and cover another 220 kms to delhi, so we decided that sandeep will carry our bags and go to delhi by bus and we would pick him up in delhi, and it was becoming very hot for me, i found a place and changed my dress, and was much comfortable now, and at around 10 we halted at a dhaba for dinner had it and moved forward, my ass was in fire after sitting for around 12 hours in bike and we were too tired, and finally at around 1.00 am in the night, we were so tired to took a two or three nights sound sleep to get back to normal.

We took back in memories the wonderful scenery of the Uttaranchal along the mountains, and Tehri dam, and our beautiful riding experience which enjoyed to the fullest along the beautiful mountains.