Dayara Bugyal: The Trek I Was Not Fit For

Before this trek I was not able to run one kilometer. Then I walked twenty-one of them in six days. Book the trek first and let the readiness arrive on the trail.

The first day set the terms. Rain fell hard, my lungs burned, my shoes soaked through, and the path turned into a stream. The group walked ahead and I fell behind. Every breath felt like a toll payment. Why am I here?

The question arrived with every step. No answer came, and I kept walking because forward was the only exit. Dayara Bugyal gave me a first step toward becoming a person who does hard things. Six days of rain and a group that waited for me bought that step.

How I Came Here

I trek because of Ayush and Sabu. They walked these trails for years before I came near one. They are not my brothers by blood, and after what the three of us went through together, that is a technicality.

Ayush came back from those trips with photographs and a calm I was not able to explain. Then he told me about a Dayara Bugyal trek and asked whether I wanted to join. I said yes before I reconsidered.

The group already held a September 2024 slot with Indiahikes, which is the end of the monsoon season. I took the slot. Choosing a season was never part of the decision.

People warned me. Monsoon treks are brutal, and the rain does not stop. They were right about the rain.

Six of us went. The other five knew what to pack and how to train. I had a borrowed backpack, cheap rain gear, and blind optimism. I was not ready. I went anyway.

The Beginning: Raithal

Nine hours of road separate Dehradun from Raithal, and most of it is hairpin turns. The views take your attention off the drop. I never saw mountains at that size before, so near and so real that the scale confused me. Everything I knew felt small.

We reached Raithal in the evening. The Indiahikes basecamp sits in a small village, ringed by hills that vanish into cloud. Mt. Srikanth stood half hidden in the distance.

That night I met the group. They were strangers from different cities and different lives, in one place for the same reason. Nobody knew anybody yet.

I hardly slept. Rain hit the tent all night and nervous energy did the rest.

Into the Forest

The first day broke me.

The trail out of Raithal climbs from the first step. It runs steep and constant through oak and rhododendron, and it offers no warm-up. Within an hour I struggled. My lungs and my legs had no experience of this work, and at 8,000 feet the air already felt thinner.

Then the monsoon arrived, and it arrived as a downpour. That kind of rain soaks through everything within minutes, and the trail turned to mud and then to running water. Every step became a negotiation.

I huffed and puffed and stopped every few minutes to get my breath back while the group moved ahead. Four and a half kilometers took five hours. I reached the Gui campsite and went straight down onto the floor of the dining tent, soaked and wrecked.

My body did what my mind ruled out that morning.

Walking Through Storms

A monsoon trek has its own discipline. Everything is wet. Your clothes, your bag and your boots are wet, and so is the inside of the tent. You wake damp and you sleep damp. Nothing dries.

Cheap rain gear is a decision you make at home and pay for on the trail. Mine gave up in the first downpour and spent the rest of the trek holding water against my back. The borrowed backpack did the same for everything inside it.

The forest drips all day. Mist moves through the trees like smoke. The trails run as streams, so you wade instead of walking.

I wanted sun and dry socks and the postcard version of a trek. Around day two I stopped fighting the rain, and it stopped being an obstacle. It became the sound that made everything else quiet.

Deep mud and moving water take all of your attention. The next rock and the next breath are the only things that fit. My head had no room for work, and the rain bought that.

Where the Forest Ends

The change happens between Chilapada and the meadows. One minute the branches touch your shoulders and the ground is soft with fallen needles. Then the trees stop and you step into open sky.

The grasslands run in every direction, like waves frozen in mid-motion. The meadows sit at 11,000 feet and they are wide enough to swallow your sense of scale. They hold grass, sky and peaks, and nothing built by anyone.

Bandarpoonch, Kala Nag, Srikanth and Draupadi Ka Danda came through the cloud. The Gangotri range stood at the edge of the world, white and enormous. I stopped walking, and that was not a decision.

I stood there and breathed hard. This was the reason I came, and I did not know it until that minute.

Summit Day

Day four runs from Chilapada to Dayara Top and then down to Nayata. The weather was rough for the whole trek, and that morning the cloud sat low and thick. We started early and saw less than twenty feet of trail ahead.

The climb to Dayara Top at 11,830 feet is a steady grind with nothing technical in it. My lungs still burned and my legs still complained. By then their complaints carried no new information.

At the top we stood inside a cloud. It was white in every direction. We saw no mountains and had no view, only wind and the sound of our own breathing. It was my first summit and the highest place I ever stood.

Then the cloud split for about five minutes. The Gangotri range appeared in diffused light, snow peaks nearer than seemed possible. Bandarpoonch, the tail of the monkey, stood above all of it.

I did not take a photograph. Five minutes is enough time to take one, and I spent all of them looking.

The People Who Carried Me

I did not walk this trek alone, and I was not able to.

Ayush and Sabu stayed with me on the hard sections and matched my pace when I fell behind. They walked these trails many times before, and they never once made me feel like a burden. That is what a chosen family does. It keeps no score.

The rest of the group waited at rest points, shared snacks, and made jokes when the rain refused to stop. We were strangers in Raithal. At Gui we shared meals and stories. At Chilapada we pulled each other through the mud.

Nobody has energy for performance at 10,000 feet, which is how a group of strangers ends a week as friends.

Coming Back Down

The descent runs over known ground. You walk the same trail through the same forest, and you are not the same. The trees are familiar, you know the rocks, and you recognize the turns. The trail has nothing left to threaten you with.

At Raithal the Indiahikes team waited for us. They give a standing ovation to every trekker who walks back through the arch, and they cheered and clapped for all of us.

I struggled the whole way. I was the slowest person on the trail and I questioned every day of it. The ovation still counted, because it marked a finish that other people spent their own hours buying.

The drive back to Dehradun felt like a return from another world. My phone woke up, the messages arrived, and normal life started making its noise again.

What It Started

I wanted to go back before the drive ended.

No person conquers a mountain. The mountains let you visit, and then they stand there whether you come again or not.

The change showed up in my calendar. I kept walking after Raithal, and every trail I booked after that one was longer than the trail before it.

What the Mountains Taught Me

Being slow costs the group time. Those hours belonged to Ayush and Sabu and to a group of strangers, and every one of them chose to give them. A slow walker owes them the walk and nothing more.

A summit pays without a view. I stood at the top in white cloud and saw nothing of the range for most of the time I was there. The altitude on the map did not change, and neither did what the climb cost me. The view is a bonus that the weather decides.

If You Are Thinking of Going

You read this and ask whether you can do it. I was unfit, untrained and afraid of it. Go anyway.

Book an easy-moderate trek of about six days. Start the training after the booking is paid for.

Easy-moderate is a real grade with a real bill. It means the trail climbs from the first step. My worst day on it was five hours for four and a half kilometers.

The mountains do not care how fast you walk or how many times you stop. They ask you to come.

The Last Morning

On the last morning the rain stopped. The sky was clear for the first time on the trek, and the mountains stood sharp against blue. Rock, snow and light, with the cloud and the mist gone.

I stood outside the tent at Raithal and looked at the hills I walked through, and at the forest and the meadows above them. Dayara Top was out of sight from there. I knew exactly where it stood.

I decided under that sky to keep walking, and I did not stop.

Trek Details

• Duration: 6 days
• Difficulty: Easy-Moderate
• Highest point: Dayara Top, 11,830 ft
• Total distance: 21 km
• Season: Late September 2024, in the monsoon
• Starting point: Raithal, Uttarakhand
• Key campsites: Gui, Chilapada, Nayata
• Highlights: Vast alpine meadows, Gangotri range views, dense oak-rhododendron forests
• Organizer: Indiahikes

I booked Goechala next, and it is longer than this one. I chose it because I survived these six days rather than walked them.