Ski Resorts and Log Cabins

Sandy and Prashi in the cable car.

After spending about an hour on top, we headed back to Joshimath. Gear up, check out, hit the road. The actions were almost automatic now. From Joshimath, we headed down to Chamoli. At Chamoli, we took a diversion from the highway to a state road.

This is a road that’s visible from Joshimath. I guess it might be military access only. Those guys save the best for themselves. It keeps winding up till it disappears into a glacier on the top.

The main roads in these areas are access roads to military outposts on the border. They are maintained by a military wing called the Border Roads Organisation (BRO). The lesser used roads are maintained by the Public Works Department (PWD). In Bangalore, the tourism PRO had warned us that the PWD roads are usually in much worse shape than the BRO roads.

The road from Chamoli to Chopta was a PWD road, and we were very pleasantly surprised. This road was way better than the BRO maintained road from Chamoli to Joshimath. We would have done good time too… except that it started pouring. Civilisation is very sparse around these parts, and there is a good 10km between tea shops on the road.

The road to Chopta - Courtesy Prashi

We reached Chopta early in the afternoon, when Prashi’s bike started misfiring from all the water in the air-filter. Sandy found us a nice log cabin to stay in. Although it looked very rickety, it was pretty cosy and, more importantly, didn’t leak. We slept comfortably though it kept raining right through the evening and night.