Dayara Bugyal: Return to the Meadows
Eleven and a Half Years, Our First Himalayan Trek
Shreyasi and I have been together eleven and a half years. Long enough that I wanted to share trekking with her. She'd heard me talk about it for years. Time she saw it for herself.
She'd listened to my stories about Dayara, Goechala, trails that meant something to me. She'd seen the photos, nodded at the right moments, and understood that this was part of who I was.
But she'd never walked a Himalayan trail herself.
So I asked if she wanted to come to Dayara Bugyal, the place where it all started for me. First week of January 2026. Her first Himalayan trek.
After more than a decade together, there aren't many truly new things left to share. The mountains were one of them. I wanted her to see why I keep going back.
The People We Brought
Pratik and Abhishek came too.
Both first-time trekkers. They trained, read up, bought gear. But there's a gap between reading about mountains and standing in them. I knew that gap. I'd lived it sixteen months ago.
Four of us. One trail. A winter week in Uttarakhand.
We booked with Indiahikes again, the same group that led my first trek. Same route. Same campsites. Same distance.
Everything was familiar. And nothing was.
Where Was the Snow?
We expected snow.
January in the Himalayas. High-altitude meadows. Winter trek. The math seemed simple. Every winter photo of Dayara shows white meadows, buried trails, that clean transformation.
We got something else.
The meadows were brown. Golden in places, rust in others, but not white. The trails were dry. The streams ran low. Nights dropped to minus five, but the snow never came.
At first, I didn't understand it. Then I learned why.
The Science of an Empty Winter
This winter was supposed to be different.
La Niña, the Pacific cooling pattern that shifts weather across the world, was active. In typical La Niña years, the Himalayas often see heavier snowfall. The jet streams strengthen, and more Western Disturbances move across the mountains. Western Disturbances are the low-pressure systems that bring winter precipitation to North India.
More Western Disturbances usually means more snow.
But this La Niña was mild and short-lived. It didn't behave the way La Niñas usually do. Through November and December 2025, the Western Himalayas saw almost no significant weather activity. The disturbances that should have arrived just didn't.
The result, as weather agencies put it, was drought-like conditions across the mountain states. January arrived. The snow didn't.
Climate change plays a role too. The snowline has been creeping higher for years. Western Disturbances have become erratic, fewer in number, sometimes more intense when they arrive, but harder to predict. Winters that would have been reliably white a decade ago now come and go without accumulation.
I'd walked these same trails in monsoon, soaked through, the world hidden behind rain and mist. Now I walked them in winter, dry and exposed, the land stripped bare.
You take what the mountains give.
The Beauty of Dry Grass
The meadows were still beautiful.
Not postcard beautiful. Not the kind that performs for a camera. A quieter beauty. More honest.
The grass had turned gold and amber, spread across the slopes like something poured from a jar. In morning light, the meadows seemed to glow. By evening, they rusted, then faded into purple shadow.
Without snow to pull focus, I noticed other things. The shape of the hills. The way the grass moved in wind. The texture of a landscape that wasn't trying to impress anyone.
There's beauty in things that aren't at their peak. What you see is what's there.
Shreyasi saw it too. She kept stopping to photograph angles I would have walked past. The curve of a slope. Light cutting through a break in cloud. The stillness.
"It's not what I expected," she said. "But I like it more."
I knew exactly what she meant.
The Cold That Stayed
What winter lacked in snow, it made up for in cold.
Zero degrees in the day. Minus five at night. The kind of cold that doesn't just touch your skin. It moves into you. Our water bottles froze solid. Getting out of the sleeping bag each morning felt like bargaining with yourself.
But cold is honest. You can prepare for it. Layers. Movement. Warm drinks at camp. After a day or two, what felt brutal just felt normal.
The trade was clear skies. No precipitation meant no clouds. Night after night, the sky opened up in ways I never saw on my first monsoon trek.
I'll take cold over rain. Cold stays outside. Rain gets into everything.
What Changed in Sixteen Months
The first time I did this trek, I couldn't run one kilometer.
I still remember the forest trail from Raithal. Rain hammering down. My lungs burning. Stopping every few minutes to gasp while the group pulled ahead. One thought looping in my head: What am I doing here?
This time, I ran parts of that same trail.
Not to prove anything. Not to chase time. Just because my body could, and because it felt good. The same inclines that had broken me barely registered. My lungs didn't burn. My legs didn't scream. I wasn't negotiating with myself.
Sixteen months of running, training, trekking. Goechala. Higher passes. Longer distances. The work had stacked up. What used to be survival was now enjoyment.
But fitness wasn't the point.
The point was presence. I wasn't fighting my body the whole time. I wasn't falling behind, locked inside my own struggle. I was there, actually there, walking with Shreyasi, noticing things, talking, being available.
The first trek, I was carried by others. This trek, I could carry.
Walking Together
There's something about walking with someone through a place that matters to you.
Every section felt like sharing something important. The forest where I'd struggled. The point where the trees end and the meadows begin. The campsite where I'd collapsed, soaked and wrecked, sixteen months ago.
She listened. She asked questions. She had her own observations, things I'd stopped noticing. The way light hit certain ridges. The silence that settled over the meadows at dusk.
We walked at whatever pace felt right. Sometimes talking. Sometimes quiet. Sometimes just breathing the same cold air and letting the silence be enough.
After eleven and a half years, you'd think there wouldn't be much left to discover. But watching her experience something new was good. I noticed things I'd forgotten. The curiosity. The calm under strain. The way she took it all in without performing enthusiasm.
Reaching the summit together was the part I'd pictured most. Standing at Dayara Top at 11,830 feet, the Gangotri range spread out in front of us, the sky that impossible blue that only exists at altitude.
The last time I stood there, I was alone in a cloud, barely believing I'd made it.
This time I stood there holding her hand, peaks sharp and visible, air clean and bright, and felt glad she was there to see it.
The Nights Under Stars
Winter gave us what the monsoon never could. Stars.
The first time I trekked Dayara, I never saw the night sky. Clouds were always there, always threatening rain. The mountains showed themselves in brief gaps, then vanished again.
This time, every night was a show.
After dinner we'd step out of the tents and look up. The cold was brutal, well below zero, the kind that makes your face hurt. But the sky was worth it.
Thousands of stars. Not the scattered handful you get in cities. Dense and layered and almost too many. The Milky Way as an actual band of light. Constellations I knew getting lost among the ones I didn't.
One night, the four of us sat on rocks for an hour, wrapped in every layer we had, just watching. Someone pointed out Orion. Someone found the Milky Way's center. We talked about how old that light was, how far it had traveled, how strange it was that we could sit on a mountainside and see something that began its journey before humans existed.
The mountains make you feel small. The stars make you feel smaller. Up there, deadlines and noise feel far away.
Shreyasi leaned against me, both of us looking up. Neither of us needed to say anything.
Watching First-Timers
I watched Pratik and Abhishek the way Ayush must have watched me on my first trek.
The wonder when the forest opens into meadow. The moment the peaks appear and scale stops making sense. The exhaustion and doubt, and the quiet pride of making it to camp.
They struggled in places. Altitude hit. Cold bit. Their bodies complained the way bodies do when you ask them to do something new.
But they kept walking.
Somewhere between Raithal and the summit, I saw the shift. The moment when exhaustion fades and the view makes the whole effort make sense.
You can't explain that to someone. They have to walk it.
I'm glad they walked it. I'm glad I got to see it happen.
The People We Met
Every trek makes its own temporary family.
The Indiahikes group was different this time. Different trek leads. Different strangers from different cities. But the pattern held. We started as people sharing a trail. We ended as something more.
At 10,000 feet, you can't pretend for long. You don't have the energy. The people who see you tired and struggling become something else. You might not know their jobs or backgrounds, but you know how they handled a hard climb.
When we finished and got the Indiahikes welcome back, the cheers, the standing ovation at Raithal, it landed differently.
The first time, I felt like I'd barely earned it. I struggled every step, fell behind, questioned everything.
This time, I felt like I'd given something back. I brought my people. I walked the trail without drowning. I enjoyed it instead of surviving it.
What This Trek Taught Me
The first Dayara taught me my body could do more than my mind believed.
This one taught me other things.
Work accumulates. Every run, every climb, every hard day you push through doesn't vanish. It stacks. Sixteen months later, the same trail felt different because I was different.
Sharing matters. I could have done this trek alone. I'm grateful I didn't. Watching Shreyasi meet the mountains for the first time multiplied everything.
Conditions don't have to be perfect. We came for snow and got dry grass. The beauty was still there, just different. Life doesn't always give you what you planned for. Learning to value what you actually get is a skill.
Coming back is its own kind of progress. Returning to a place that changed you lets you measure the distance you've traveled. The trail was the same. I wasn't.
The Mountains Don't Change
Standing at Dayara Top, the Gangotri range in front of me, Shreyasi beside me, I thought about the first time.
Monsoon. Clouds. Gasping. Barely believing I'd made it. The mountains showing up for five minutes, then disappearing into white.
Now it was winter. Clear sky. Easy breathing. Peaks standing there like they'd been waiting for me to return ready.
The mountains hadn't changed. Bandarpoonch was still there. Kala Nag. Srikanth. The same walls of rock and ice. The same silence. The same indifference to whoever stands below.
But I had changed. And I'd brought the person I'd wanted to show this to for years.
The mountains don't care about your story. They don't care how many times you come back, who you bring, whether you struggled or ran. They just stand there, offering the same view to everyone.
What you do with that chance is up to you.
Trek Details
- Duration: 6 days
- Difficulty: Easy-Moderate
- Highest point: Dayara Top, 11,830 ft
- Total distance: 21 km
- Season: First week of January 2026 (winter)
- Temperature: 0°C to -5°C
- Snow conditions: No snow due to mild La Niña and reduced Western Disturbance activity
- Starting point: Raithal, Uttarakhand
- Key campsites: Gui, Chilapada, Nayata
- Highlights: Clear winter skies, Gangotri range views, stargazing, golden alpine meadows
- Organizer: Indiahikes
The first time, I couldn't run one kilometer. I walked twenty-one, soaked and struggling.
This time, I ran parts of the trail. Shreyasi was beside me. The sky was clear, the grass was gold, and the mountains were exactly where they'd always been.
Waiting.