Rudranath Trek Guide: My Four-Day Solo Panch Kedar Journey

After saying goodbye to Eddie, I thought of extending my stay at the place where we had spent the night near Gopeshwar. The uncle would not reduce the price of that room. He showed me another one, initially quoting ₹1,500 and eventually agreeing to ₹800.

It was small, with an outside Indian-style toilet. There were alcohol bottles in the room, and I did not feel comfortable staying there. I apologised and told him I really could not stay. He said it was my choice. I packed everything again and left.

I headed towards the Chopta road because I remembered seeing homestays that way. The funny part is that I had imagined Sagar, the Rudranath starting point, was towards Badrinath. Before leaving Gopeshwar, I looked up a homestay and called. They said a room was available. About ten minutes later, I reached it—and discovered I was already in Sagar.

I could not even scold myself. I was relieved to have found somewhere that felt good.

The place was called Karthikeya Homestay. A grandfather, a mother and her son ran it, and he agreed to ₹900 without food. As usual, I managed with aloo paratha in the morning and dal chawal at night.

There was Wi-Fi, but the internet was not working. Between the network problem and how I was feeling, my attempts to work on the videos failed again. Can you imagine being alone, wandering through the Himalayas from temple to temple? I had not told my family or friends about the network problem.

I remembered a board I had seen while travelling to Gopeshwar and assumed that was the way to begin. I followed that side. Only later did I realise I had taken a harder approach rather than the usual starting route. This is a memory of my experience, not a set of trail directions.

Someone asked whether I knew the route before I set off. I said yes—but soon I was looking for the path, with no other walkers in sight. There was a starting-point board, small arrows and the sound of birds. The dense forest even reminded me of the Tamil film Guna. I kept telling myself, “Hopefully I can make it.”

Finding a small shop along the way brought real happiness. It was a difficult trek, and those little signs of people mattered. I was watching for arrows and cloth markers; after the rain and wind, parts of the trail were hard to make out.

By the time I stopped, I was exhausted. Walking alone through mist, with leeches and uncertain weather, had taken its toll. I decided to stop and rest at the tent shelter I found.

There was a mobile signal at that stop. Friends and family contacted me and made sure I was okay. A quiet old man looked after me there. He did not say much, but he prepared tea and food. In that place, those simple acts mattered.

That night I did not sleep. It was not the cold keeping me awake. Thunder, rain and the storm came together with a sound that felt so close—as though it was happening directly above my head. Even now, remembering it, I wonder how I went through that night.

On day two, the weather kept changing—sunshine, fog and rain. I spoke about hail and how cold my hands had become. I was struggling even to talk to the camera. I joked that this pilgrimage was like being told each next stage of life would make everything easier: I kept expecting the next journey to be easier, but Rudranath was proving very hard.

Then there were the yellow flowers. In the middle of the rain and cold, I could still stop to admire them and make a joke. I described this trek as an example of finding happiness within difficulty. The beauty did not erase the struggle; it existed beside it.

When the temple came into view, I said it felt as though my tiredness suddenly lifted. Yet the final approach took much longer than I had expected. Something that looked close still demanded time and effort.

I did not have the energy for every extra place people mentioned nearby. I wanted to reach Rudranath, the shrine where Shiva’s face is worshipped. By the evening of the second day, I finally reached the temple and attended the evening puja. I was really there. The temple I had been walking towards was no longer somewhere in the distance.

The night near the temple was another challenge. I could not find a restroom nearby and had to go outside. I managed the cold with two bedsheets. I thought I was alone there, until a family arrived: a husband, his wife and her mother.

At the morning puja, everyone was looking towards the temple. The priest played the damru near me. The sound did something inside me that I still find hard to explain. Was I about to cry? No—let me just pray.

For me, reaching Rudranath felt like a gift. I felt that Shiva had chosen and guided me there; I could not imagine entering that place without his guidance. He is the ultimate truth to me. Those are the words that come closest to what this pilgrimage meant inside.

The family came with me on the way back. They shared snacks and stayed with me through the descent. After so much walking alone, I had people beside me.

The return was hard. We reached a place to stay at around ten at night and stopped there. Imagine how long that day had been. Reaching the temple had not meant the difficult part of the walking was finished.

The next morning, we came down to the usual starting point—the one most people used. I realised I had missed it too because I could not read the Hindi words. My room was only about a hundred metres away. All I wanted was to get back and lie down.

I could not find the husband when it was time to say goodbye, so I said goodbye to his wife and her mother. Back in my room, I realised I had not taken their number. They had mine, but I had no way to call them. The trek had ended, and suddenly they were no longer around.

At the time, I was too tired to understand much beyond the relief. Later, I thought about how different it all had been: arriving alone, being cared for, walking back with a family, and not even exchanging numbers properly before parting.

I felt so relieved. I thought the hardest part was over.

But the truth was, it was only the beginning.