Bandarpunch from Mussoorie

There are many villages inbetween, but Bandarpunch is a classic part of the Mussoorie skyline during the clear months following the monsoon. Here's a picture from October 21, 2005.

Bandarpunch from Darwa Top, above Dodital, Uttarkashi, Garhwal, India

The euphoria of reaching the ridge above Dodital is tangible. In December, before the winter snows set in, the air is warm and sweet, the long meadow grass dry and soft, the alpine flowers and wild strawberries, long dead, a fragrant afterthought, the clear sunlight, pure joy.

Halfway up to Dodital in 2003 we met this village lady and shared a Kit-Kat chocolate bar with her. She said she made four trips a day with this load. When we asked her where, she pointed to a ravine below us and then to a cliff somewhere impossibly high above us. Obviously, our own packs didn't seem all that heavy any more.

I love Garhwal!

Bandarpunch from Darwa Top, near Dodital

Here's a picture of Bandarpunch in the Garhwal Himalayas, from Darwa Top, just above Dodital. Students of Woodstock School, Mussoorie, were there on their annual field trip.

Why the fascination with Bandarpunch?

I think I've been to Dodital and up the ridge to Darwa Top Bugiyal at least seven times now. The ridge puts you right in front of Bandarpunch (6316m) and its southside glaciers at an altitude of a little over 12,000 feet. The "bugiyal" is a soft mountain meadow filled with wild strawberries and flowers nestled in the rich long mountain grass that nomadic gujjars like so much for their buffaloes in the summer months (it's also a great place to lie down after the climb up). Even in the short climb (2-4 hours) from Dodital you experience the exhilaration of increased altitude, clear mountain air, and that humbling sense of shrinking distances as you gaze at the snow-clad giant before you.

Bandarpunch Peak, near Gangotri

 
 

About the name: Bandarpunch

It's a Himalayan mountain I have often looked at, a beautiful snow peak. Bandarpunch means "monkey tail," a name rooted in Hindu mythology. But I want to tell the monkey's "tale"--talk about some of the people living within sight of this range of the Himalayas.