Whispering Trail: Chasing the monsoon in all its glory - A road trip to Kanatal, Uttarakhand!

A simple Kanatal Trip (Delhi-Dehradoon-Kanatal Camp) turned into a 950 kms drive covering the entire belt of Dehradoon - Mussoorie- Dhanaulti- Kanatal- Chamba, only in 2 days because of massive rainfalls, landslides and what not.

We started our journey of chasing the rains in the mysterious land of Uttarakhand - famous for landslides and cloudbursts. Despite all our apprehensions, we decided to go for this long awaited monsoon road trip to Kanatal, Uttarakhand to celebrate our friend’s birthday. To begin our adventure, we started from Delhi at around 3:30 am in morning driving through Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut bypass-Saharanpur to Dehradoon- Mussoorie road. We celebrated our friend’s birthday on the way when we stopped for breakfast.

We decided to go through mussoorie bypass road to avoid the traffic of mussoorie and as expected, Uttarakhand welcomed us with stones falling, landslides and road closed. We encountered the first landslides after travelling for around 20 km on the bypass road and had to come all the way back and the first detour of the trip was to go through the crowded mussoorie. We spent almost an hour in the traffic at mussoorie and landour road and reached kanatal camp at 2:30 PM almost after 11 hours of drive but the drive from landour to kanatal was amazing and the views were breath-taking.

After having lunch in the camp, we decided to go for a walk despite the rain and falling stones and it turned out to be one of the amazing rain walk we ever had with eye-catching views of green and fresh hills of uttarakhand. The walk was very refreshing and peaceful and we forgot all our tiredness of the long drive.

After coming back to the camp, we had to stay inside the tent only as it was raining heavily all the time. Next day we left the camp and started our drive back at 9 in morning thinking to spend some time in Rishikesh over bank of Ganges so we took the route Kanatal-Chamba-Narendra Nagar – Rishikesh – Haridwar – Delhi to drive back and the real adventure began. It was raining heavily and around after an hour drive, our car’s tyre succumbed to one of the sharp stone which had fallen just before us and we couldn’t avoid it. The tyre suffered a huge cut which resulted into flat tyre. We changed the car tyre while it was raining like cats and dogs with the fear of falling stones from above. After an hour of this exhaustive exercise, we proceeded towards Rishikesh, searching a café on Trip Advisor to stop by for lunch, but then when Rishikesh was just 17 kms away, a massive landslide stopped us. Huge rocks fell on the road, some 300 meters ahead of us crushing 2 cars and blocking 3 layers of hair pin like highway.

Not knowing what to do, clueless and horrified and clueless we took a U-turn, back to chamba - kanatal- Dhanaulti - Mussoorie – Dehradoon route. Mussoorie was some 100 kms from where we were stuck. We had started early at 9 am from kanatal but again reached back Kanatal at 3 PM, driving continuously for 6 hours we finally reached Dehradoon at 6 PM and landed at a friend’s relative place. Luckily, it was his cousin’s birthday and we had another birthday celebration, awesome dinner and an hour of good sleep.

On reaching Dehradoon, we were bit relaxed as we were in the plains and were out of danger. We decided to take Haridwar-Delhi Highway from Dehradoon to reach back home, but our adventure just didn’t stop there even after all the detours we took in last 48 hours. We were informed that Dehradoon- Delhi route was blocked because of heavy rainfall and flood like situation in Haridwar. River Ganga was flowing well above its danger mark and we were advised to stay away from it. Five of us just became hopeless with panic calls from our parents every hour. It was already 10 PM and we absolutely had no idea what to do. One of our friends had suggested us to come via himachal via poanta sahib and again we had no idea of the route so relied on technology- GPS, which to increase our fears chose the most abandoned road between agricultural field with no one in the sight, except us at 12 in midnight and it was still raining heavily. We somehow gathered all our courage and kept going through that narrow, empty route driving through heavy rains. After an hour we reached Shimla bypass (sigh of relief). We then went to Poanta Sahib from there and entered Himachal. It was already 2 am by the time we reached there. At Poanta Sahib, we inquired from the toll tax guys for route to Delhi and they diverted us to Yamunanagar and another 3 hours of drive we finally reached Karnal highway via Yamunanagar (saw clear sky without rain almost after 48 hours) and that's how we reached Delhi.

This truly was a road trip with us chasing Monsoon in all its glory in the hills. The road trip had everything - adventure, fun, great views, fear, prayers, courage, patience and last but not the least learning (how to brave such situations). It was indeed an unforgettable trip of chasing the monsoon in the most thrilling valley of India and we are happy and thankful that we are returned alive.

PS: Special thanks to Gaurav Verma (The birthday guy) to drive 950 km in all these thrill, fear, fun and rain.