Why visit Chopta at Uttarakhand, India?
Chopta is truly a hiking paradise, boasting of dozens of trails amidst the Bugyals (velvety alpine pastures in Himalayan region), lush-green meadows, waterfalls and misty clouds, even at the peak of summer!

Chopta, as seen on the road

Road Trip From Dehradun to Chopta

It takes about 7 hours to cover 250 km of distance from Dehradun to Chopta.

The entire route meanders around several rivers, including the holy Ganga – the longest river in India.

Ganga, as seen from our pitstop at Kaudiyala

#FunFact – The confluence of rivers Bhagirathi and Alaknanda, forms the revered 1500-mile Ganga river.

You can spot the distinct shades of Bhagirathi (left) and Alaknanda (right) rivers at DevPrayag

Dhari Devi – A Guardian Deity

Along the way, we also visited Dhari Devi temple, considered as the guardian of the entire region.

#HighlyMysterious – In 2013, the government moved Dhari Devi deity while attempting to relocate the temple to construct a dam for a hydroelectric project. Hours later, the entire region was hit with devastating floods and landslides, known as one of the biggest natural disasters in India. Locals believe that it was the wrath of Dhari Devi. After the incident, the government shifted the deity back to its original place and lifted the entire temple instead.

The ‘elevated’ Dhari Devi temple

Soothing Alaknanda river, as seen from the temple

Karthik Swamy Temple – Drive and Hike

After taking blessings from the God known to be a little wrathful, we headed over to our next stop – a challenging yet rewarding hike to reach heights over 12000 ft. and visit picturesque Karthik Swamy temple.

The road to the temple base was highly constricted at times!

You need to wade through moderately challenging 6.5 km out-and-back hike, to reach the temple.

The hike is a little challenging due to the elevation

If you can spot the white thingy in the middle, that’s how small the base looked from the temple peak.

The entire trail is dotted with several eye-popping vistas.

Just when we thought we had ascended enough, we had to plough through dozens of stairs to get to the temple.

The temple gets cloaked under misty cloud cover during summer, which gets replaced with frosty snow in winter.

Weather changes rapidly at that altitude. Suddenly, thick clouds took centerstage and the temple looked ominous from the near-by ridge.

And it was back to blue skies and sun again in a few minutes…

As we headed over to Chopta post the hike, the sun started to take its leave.

And amidst the dwindling daylight, we saw the acclaimed Bugyal, velvety alpine pastures of the region.

Our Cottage at Chopta – Peace Trips

There are many options to stay in/near Chopta – most populat being the luxury tents. We reserved a cottage from Peace Trips.

A misty morning greeted us the next day

The weather is quite shifty in the region, and heavy clouds sneak in out of nowhere.

Here’s another view of the near-by area from a vantage point.

We braved through our first 13-er (a friendly name for hike over 13000 ft.) the next day – Chandrashila peak, before heading back. Will write about it in another blog, was quite an experience.

There are acclaimed places like Deoria Taal, Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary which we could not visit this time.

So long, Chopta..

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