The Magnificent Garhwal Himalaya

This past week we enjoyed a marvelous opportunity to explore some of the spectacularly beautiful 'Garhwal Himalaya'. A major highlight was a hike beyond the tree line  to the summit of Chandrashila, above the Tungnath Temple. Chandrashila is at an elevation of 4090 metres (13,419 feet), and the panoramic view from the summit was awesome in the truest sense of the word.

The "trail head" for Chandrashila is the village of Chopta, which is the beginning of a major rock-paved walking road that has been built for Hindu pilgrims.The ancient temple is situated about a kilometre below the Chandrashila summit. Although there's an elevation gain of nearly 1,400 metres (4,600 feet) between Chopta and Chandrashila, the hike did not seem overly strenuous. The scenic payoff would have been worth far greater effort. 

We've included just a few pictures in the slide show below to give you an idea of the tremendous beauty we experienced--along the trail and on the summit. (You may need to view the slide show in full screen mode to see the captions, especially on a handheld device.)

The two minute video below shows just some of the panoramic view from the summit of Chandrashila. We were delighted to learn that the Youtube video editor allowed me to slow down my rather rapid video pan!