Panch Kedar Series - Kalpeshwar Mahadev

Planning

This was the final kedar in my quest to complete all five kedar's.

This temple is at a walkable distance from Urgam village. 

Since there was no trekking involved I decided to trek to places nearby Urgam. 

I wanted to do a leisurely hike, the one that involves walking from one village to another. I planned to start the hike at 7 a.m and reach the next village by 1 p.m.  

In my Rudranath trek I had seen Toli taal on my way back. I had read about this meadow being in the middle of a dense forest.

I had also read about the Dumak village which has been struggling for road connectivity since many years. 

So I made a plan to visit Toli taal from Urgam. It was going to be a round trip meaning I would be back to Urgam. 

I contacted several homestays with this plan. I visited waymakred trails , alltrails and mapy.cz.

I found that mapy.cz has the best maps for this trail.

I zeroed in on Krishna Palace homestay in Urgam. 

This place is run by Inder Singh Rawat. He is the most experienced guide in Urgam valley.

Contact details for this homestay are listed in the end. 

Note: It's possible to add Bansi Narayan to this itinery. It would need you to stay at Kalgoth. The trail from Urgam to BansiNarayan is very steep and involves a 1500m climb. I did not visit BansiNarayan since I had not seen a single video of this trek so I was not sure how challenging the trail would be. I always prefer set and defined trails. Also there is no food in the Kalgoth-BansiNarayan-Urgam route. There is a baba at BansiNarayan but you need to be sure that he is present when you reach there. The best time to visit BansiNarayan is on raksha bandhan when many people from Urgam visit this temple.

Day wise itinery 

Day 1 - 9th June 2024 - Pune DDN flight

Stay at Hotel Devbhoomi Inn, Rishikesh

Day 2 - 10th June 2024 - Rishikesh - Urgam (shared cabs)

Travel to Urgam village

Stay at Hotel Krishna Palace, Urgam

I left hotel early morning at 4 am. I had planned to catch a direct bus to Joshimath.

However due to yatra season all private buses were booked and govt busses were not be seen.

I has to take shared cabs for this route

    Rishikesh to Rudraprayag

    Rudraprayag to Chamoli

    Chamoli to Joshimath 

This cost me around 800Rs. I had reached Helang at 2 pm.

I had to get down at Helang which is 15 km before Joshimath.

From Helang, Urgam is 16 kms by road. 

However you don't get frequent cabs on this route.

I had to wait for 45 minutes to get a shared cab. 

It would be wiser to go to Joshimath, since all shared cabs get filled here. If you wait at Helang the cab is already full. Add to it there are some cabs at Helang which were quoting 1000Rs for this ride. They were also not allowing the shared cabs to pick me up.

I had to offer the cab guy 200rs for this ride (It's 100Rs from Joshimath to Urgam)

The last leg of the journey which connects to base village is generally the toughest one to crack.

Day 2 - Visit to Kalpeshwar Mahadev temple (walk)

After a quick bath I had lunch and then visited Kalpeshwar Mahadev.

I found Kalpeshwar Mahadev as one of the most peaceful temples I have visited in my life.

There are no commercial stalls , there is river flowing next to temple.

It was a very peaceful experience. I stayed in temple from 5 pm to 7:30pm.

The evening aarti starts at 7 pm. I feel this is how temples must have been in the old days.

Quiet, peaceful and in the lap of nature. 

At the temple I enjoyed being in the moment. For a super anxious person like me there are very few monents in my life where I get to be this calm.

I reflected on the 2.5 years of following the panch kedar series which I had just completed.

Day 3 - Urgam - Bansa - Kalgoth pass - Kalgoth - Dumak  (walk)

Inder ji had arranged a porter cum guide for me. 

Per day I was supposed to pay Rs 1000 for the guide charges. This did not include the lunch , dinner and stay expenses. 

After a good breakfast of stuffed paratha (also included in the packed lunch), we left for our destination .i.e Dumak.

The trek route from Urgam to Dumak goes through Kalgoth Pass. This is an uphill climb. 

We started the trek at 7 a.m. 

After walking for 30 minutes we reach Urva rishi temple. We took a short break for about 10 minutes. This temple is located in Bansa village and is part of Urgam valley. 

After the temple, the trail enters the forest. 

We reached Kalgoth pass at around at 10 a.m. I was very hungry at this and had the packed lunch. 

After Kalgoth pass the trail descends to Kalgoth village. 

We had tea break at a homestay in Kalgoth village at 11 .a.m. 

This is the only homestay option in Kalgoth. However I did not find it very clean. We started for Dumak at 11:30 a.m

Kalgoth to Dumak road construction is in progress, instead of going down all the way to main Kalgoth village my guide decided to walk via the road to Dumak. 

This road well defined and wide , however there are two river streams where it gets little tricky. 

There was a heat wave in North India at this time. We were walking on the dirt road at 12 noon and the heat was quite intense. 

We finally reached Dumak village at 1-1:30 pm. In Dumak i stayed at Rudra Home Stay. It's run by ex-army staff.

This is best home stay of my entire trip. It had geyser, was nicely kept and they serve very good food. 

Rest of the day was spent roaming around Dumak, enjoying songs , tea and some yoga.

Kalgoth is connected by road. There are shared cabs from Joshimath to Kalgoth. You could also go by cab to Kalgoth. However I decided against it since it would have been very costly for a solo traveller (Rs 2500) and I preferred to hike via Kalgoth pass.

Day 4 - Dumak - Toli Taal - Dumak (walk)

We started at 7 a.m. 

There is an initial descend till a river bridge and then a steady hike all the way to Toli Taal. 

We reached the bridge at around 8:00 a.m. I had some snacks at this point. 

Today's walk was in dense forests. On the way to Toli taal there was no human settlement or a single human in sight. I was quite scared the whole walk. I don't know how someone would do this trek completely solo. 

 

We reached Toli taal around 9:30 a.m. There is small dhaba where a single person stays for the entire season. There is also a forest rest house which was closed when went. It is not allowed to camp in Toli taal. However you could spend the night in the dhabha. There is an arrangement of atleast 10 people to sleep in there.

At dhabha we had maggi and tea. I fed the dog a packet of biscuits. 

I spent half an hour enjoying the views and calm of this place. 

Around 11 am we left back for Dumak. 

On the way back at Toli taal , I met two ladies from Dumak village. They had some work in Toli taal. 

It was nice to have some human company on the way back. I realised that while I hate over crowded treks , completely isolated treks are no fun either. 

The climb back to Dumak from river bridge was quite difficult with the sun directly above our heads. 

We reached Dumak around 1:30 pm for lunch.

Rest of the day I spent in leisure around Dumak. 

Day 5 - Dumak - Kalgoth - Kalgoth pass - Kalpeshwar Mahadev waterfall - Urgam (walk)

This day we would retracing the steps back to Urgam.

We left for Urgam at 7 a.m. Our targeted time was 6 a.m. However I realised that this is not possible. The women of the house start their day quite early. To prepare breakfast for tourists along with the other home activities takes time. 

I wanted to take the trail route this time, however the guide did not favour it much. He said that it's broken at few places due road construction. So we took the road path again. After negotitaing the tricky patches I heaved a sigh of relief. 

At Kalgoth village I met a young trekker who was on a 12 Jyotiling, 5 Kedar walking trip. It was his 77th day of walking. He had started from Bhilwara Rajasthan. He joined us for the walk from Kalgoth to Dumak.

Once we reached Urgam village, I decided to have bath in the Kalpeshwar waterfall. 

We reached Urgam at 2 pm.

It helps you refresh and is a nice ending to a trek. 

Day 6 - Urgam - Rishikesh (by shared cabs)

I started at 7 a.m. 

There are shared cabs from Urgam to Joshimath in the morning which charge Rs 100 per seat.

After this I hopped multiple shared cabs to Rishikesh.

Urgam -> Joshimath -> Chamoli -> Rudraprayag -> Rishikesh. 

I reached Rishikesh hotel at 8 pm

I do miss the Indiahikes arranged point to point transport on these days :(

Overnight stay at Hotel Devbhoomi InnWQ

Day 7 - Rishikesh - Pune (By flight)

If you are travelling solo, you can take the Rishikesh - Dehradun govt bus. It charges 30Rs and drops you to a point which is 1.6 km from airport. I find this a better option than paying 600-800 for a cab to airport.

A dog had accompanied me on this whole trail and was a secondary guide in this trip.

Pics for the trek

https://photos.app.goo.gl/SVSmSPvJqcFA4vYt6

Name of guide : Inder Singh Rawat 

9410933169/7818048114

 

Badami-Pattadkal-Aihole (all using public transport)

I am writing this post to detail the logistics of doing this tour purely using public transport.
While researching this tour I didn't find any such blog, most people went by their own transport.
Also many people do this tour in one day, I wanted to share our relaxed itinerary of 3 days.

This trip had been pending since a year now.
Last diwali we had booked Pune - Badami train tickets, but due to heavy rains in mumbai the train to badami got delayed by several hours and we had to cancel the trip.
This time we decided not to take that train but go via Pune-Solapur-Badami route.

Date of trip : 7 September - 11 September 2016

We took the Indrayani from Pune, it reaches Solapur by 1:35 p.m.
From Solapur we took the Golgumbaz express to Badami. It starts from Solapur at 2:10 and reaches Badami by 7:45 p.m. During our journey the train was mostly empty.
We hired a shared autorickshaw from Badami railway station to Badami bus stand (20 Rs each).
We stayed at Hotel RajSangam ( Rs 1800 per night for 3 guests) which is just opposite the bus stand. This is a very decent and good hotel and is centrally located.
For food we preferred Hotel Anand next to Badami bus stand.

First Day - Pattadkal in morning , Badami caves in the evening 

We went to Pattadkal by NWKRTC bus, there are buses in the morning at 30 minutes interval.
The bus drops you exactly at the heritage site.
We hired a certified guide and the whole visit took around 3 hours. The guide charged us 300 Rs.
At the gate of Pattadkal local women sell jawari bhakri do have it , it tastes awesome.
There are frequent buses from Pattadkal to Badami.

In the evening we hired a rickshaw from Badami bus stand to Badami caves. He charged us 50 Rs.
From the drop point you need to walk around 75 steps to the end of the caves.
The view of lakes from the top of the caves is very beautiful.


Second Day - Mallikarjuna, Bhuthanatha , Upper Shivalaya in the morning  , Mahakuta temple in the evening 

On this day there was bandh declared in Karnataka due to Cavery issue so we decided not to take any risk. We decided to spend the day in and around Badami.

We trekked up to the Upper Shivalaya.
Here the last fight sequence of Rowdy Rathore was pictured. The trek took us 30 -40 minutes.
We went till the base of the hill by shared rickshaw (50 Rs) and returned to the hotel by horse cart (40 Rs).

In the evening , we hired a private rickshaw to Mahakuta temple.
This place is not connected by bus, we need to hire a rickshaw.
The rickshaw guy charged us 280 Rs.
This temple is very calm and beautiful in the evening and is a must visit.


Third day - Aihole in morning , Badami museum in the evening

Aihole is the farthest as far the whole trip is concerned also the frequency of the buses is not very good. There is a bus every hour from Badami to Aihole.
While coming back we had to wait around an hour for the bus. Also do note that there is no good eating place near by so do pack something to eat.
Aihole is quite vast , the guides focus more on the Durga temple but you should also visit the ravan phadi and the jain temple at the hill top.

Since the bus frequency on the return journey is not very good, you could also take a shared rickshaw to pattadkal from aihole , have lunch at pattadkal and then take a bus to badami.

In the evening we went to Badami museum since it was closed the earlier day. The museum is at the base of the Upper shivalaya hill and we took a shared auto.

Return journey we took the Badami - Solapur train Golgumbaz express which leaves Badami at 6:45 a.m and reaches Solapur at 12:30. From solapur we booked Solapur - Pune Indrayani at 2:00 pm
The train from Solapur to Pune is very crowded on weekends so prefer an AC coach.