Pindari Trek Day2

We woke up and started from Loharket quite late, around 8 am. The uphill climb from Loharket to Dhakauri is fairly tough. It took us around 4.5 hrs to go up the hill. To reach Dhakauri, we descended a couple of meters. On the way we came across the grave of a certain Mr Peter Kost with an engraving, “This is your paradise”. Repeated inquiries yielded no story of Mr Kost. He was now part of the landscape.

Dhakauri is a charming little place, consisting of dhaba shacks and KMVN. It’s not really a village, but a beautiful plateau like land with lush but short grass. The best part though is the view of the mountains of Kumaon. We enjoyed our lunch overlooking these mountains and discussed the various perils of mountaineering (our only experience was the we read).

Since we had the usual entourage of IAS guys and the school brats behind us, the lack of any accommodation in Dhakauri was fairly obvious. After almost 2 hrs of lazing around into he meadow, we decided to push on to Khati. Khati is about 8 km from Dhakauri. But mostly downhill, so we were able to cover the distance in about 3 hrs. The views offered on the way to Khati are quite majestic and villages are charming with flowers of various kinds coloring the landscape. A signpost on the way told us we were around 20 Km from motorable road.
We stopped for a bit of rest about 1.5 km from Khati. A small hotel/chai-shoop is nestled almost perfectly to watch the view of four mountains. Sundar-Dunga and Mektel on the left, Pindari and another I fail to remember on the right.

Once we reached Khati, I was surprised to find some good coffee, maggi and fell into conversation. An Englishman came over to talk to us about the availability of beer on Oct 2nd. He was planning a biking trip for his friends on the Pindari route. And surprisingly for an Englishman, he was interested in cricket. He’d even been to Pakistan to watch England play.
After dinner, which was fairly good, we found accommodation in the PWD guest house. Derelict, cold concrete structure planned with the best of intentions but constructed with the genuine Indian shoddiness. A signpost read Khati to be at 2210m above sea level. I went to bed and crashed for the day.

(To read a Short Itinerary of the trip: click here)