Ghairoli Patal to Wan - Heavenly forest trail | Roopkund Trek – Day 8 – Bedni Bugyal trek

Day 8 of the Roopkund trek is all descent in the forest area till you reach Neel Ganga river, after which there is a gradual climb for about an hour, followed by the man-made trail through the Wan village for another 1 hour. It's a short and easy trek on day 8. Once you reach Wan where there is road connectivity, take a local jeep back to Lohajung, which is the starting point of this trek and is about an hour's drive.

Mt Trishul, as viewed from Ghairoli Patal camp, late in the evening.

Roopkund trek - past 7 days of hike

If you have not gone thru’ my previous seven days of trekking at Roopkund, then check out these links:

Day 1 – Jeep Ride

Day 2 – Lohajung to Didina village

Day 3 – Didina to Bedni Bugyal (same as Bedni Bugyal trek till day 3)

Day 4 – Bedni Bugyal to Pathar Nachauni

Day 5 – Pathar Nachauni to Bhagwabhasa via Kalu Vinayak temple

Day 6 – Bhagwabhasa to Roopkund and back to Pathar Nachauni

Day 7 - Pathar Nachauni to Ghairoli Patal

Our campsite at Ghairoli Patal which is in the forest area is the last place to get a glimpse of Mt. Trishul. The early morning view of this mountain peak that appears in gold color is mesmerizing. There is a small overpriced Tea shop where you can have breakfast. Continue your trek all the way down in the forest. It's a zig-zag trail and can be vertically down at some places. As you reach the Neel Ganga stream/river, you can hear the water movement. There is a concrete bridge to cross this river.

Fun time at Neel Ganga

Trekkers stop at Neel Ganga and a few take baths here. The water at Neel Ganga is crystal clear and can be used to fill your bottle. Ideal place for photographers to get some long exposure shots of the stream and also for a few selfie shots. Spend some time, maybe an hour or so, and enjoy this place. Cross this bridge to continue your trek further. This is a gradual climb. As you climb further you will find less number of trees and more agricultural, cultivated land and small huts. And this is where the man-made stone block trail starts.

Continue till you reach the highest point where there is a U-turn. On the other side of the hill is Wan village. Few people don't like to be photographed, so, remember to get permission/ or request them if you can photograph them. Respect them, and don't blindly click on the shutter button. Few were friendly, and they were happy to be photographed. You will find a lot of kids around and they ask for toffees or money. These kids just say "Bakshish" and also a few kids say "namaste".

The trail continues further down and you will find a lot of wild colorful flowers as you continue further in the trail. As you hike all the way down, don't forget to see the mountain slopes and the scenery around. Once you are about to reach Wan village's main road there are huge pine trees and a temple. Just sit under the tree and take a rest for a while, as this will be the last place to take some rest and you are almost done with the trek. Pray in the nearby temple for your safe return and continue for another 10 minutes will you reach the main road.

The final drive just before the camp

This is where you get cabs that will take you back to Lohajung which was our starting point of the Roopkund trek. Wan village is connected with this main road and you get to see many shops here. Have some snacks here before you get into your cab, as it is another 60 to 90 minutes drive from Wan to Lohajung.

The drive from Wan to Lohajung may not be too far, but the drive is not easy. The roads were good, but scary in some places. You get to see landslides, roadblocks, bridges, under-construction bridges, tar roads, concrete roads, walls, etc. Overall it was a bumpy drive. On reaching Lohajung, we had our backpacks back in our room. Freshen up and have lunch. You get enough time in the evening to go around in the Lohajung village. I visited the local shiva temple and went on shopping. Bought some showcase items and spent the evening in our room in Lohajung.

Bedni Bugyal trek starts from Wan

Update: Most of the hiking groups start the Roopkund trek or Bedni Bugyal trek from Wan as this is easier but you will miss out on covering the beautiful Didina village which was our first-day campsite. Also, camping these days is not allowed in the Bugyals (meadows). So, most of the hikes in Uttarakhand are now under a protected zone. So. check and confirm with your trek team before you register for a hike.

https://youtu.be/_v0-9ljioJA

We packed our bags the next day morning and soon after having breakfast, our cabs were ready to go back to Kathgodam railway station which was another 8 hours of journey in the ghats and mountain slopes. Roopkund trek was a wonderful experience and a must-do. I would recommend you to do this trek sometime at the end of June if you don't like snow and also if you want to reach Junargali Pass.

If you have managed to complete this trek then you might want to try some advanced trek like the Kanamo Peak trek in Himachal which stands tall at approx 19,600 feet. If you find this blog post interesting then you can buy me a coffee to support my work. Also, consider subscribing to my YouTube channel for more and you may join my friendzone.

How to capture Milky Way Timelapse? Capture Stunning Astro photos under 30s.

The internet is full of amazing photos and videos. Timelapse is one category in between, it is a video made of photos captured at a certain predefined interval. Modern cameras have a built-in timelapse option which is very helpful and saves a lot of your time, memory, and editing tasks. Capturing Milky Way timelapse isn't that easy for a few reasons which I have mentioned below. But the final output that we get after all the effort is truly heavenly.

The built-in timelapse option in your camera can be very helpful while capturing Milky Way timelapse or any other timelapse videos. This is good if you can get everything right in the camera, with no further editing or post-production work. All that you need to do is set the time interval. Once this is set, the camera will take care of capturing images, convert them to JPEG, collate, and then stitch all of them into one single small video file.

Note that it will delete all the photos that it had captured and will only keep the final timelapse video. You may edit the video in post-processing. If you do not have this option then you can always use an intervalometer to capture multiple images at different time intervals.

How do you do astro timelapse?

The below video was captured in the Himalayas at Tarsar Lake, Jammu & Kashmir, India. Capturing Milky Way timelapse videos are not that easy. The temperature had dropped to almost four degrees celsius. I'm all alone away from my tent to avoid any kind of stray light from the tent and other trekkers moving around with their torchlight on, around the campsite. I could have used the tent in the foreground which would have been better, but it was too distracting. Moved away from the campsite late at night.

Used my Manfrotto tripod which has a 3-way head used for video. Over which I placed my Nikon D610 full frame camera along with Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8 lens. I used a remote wireless trigger. You may use the in-built feature of timelapse available that will auto stitch all the photos and make a short video or you can have a lot of photos and later edit it using editing tools.

How do you do a Milky Way Timelapse?

About milky way photography settings: Switch to Manual mode. Set the exposure to Bulb mode. Aperture at f2.8, wide open. Set the ISO around 1000, and adjust accordingly if needed. Focus to infinity and set the focus to manual as well. You can use apps to find out where the galaxy is. If it's a clear dark sky then you can make out where it is. I have not used any app when I captured this as we were camping in the Himalayas far away from any human activities. No moonlight, no light pollution as well.

How long does it take to get exposed to the Milky Way?

Now that your camera is focused on infinity, set the intervalometer or the inbuilt timelapse option. But before you do this, take a test shot, as shown above, to see how each of the shots will appear. Once you are done with this, set the intervalometer. To get Milky Way timelapse, use exposure in the intervalometer of up to 60 to 120 minutes. Have extra batteries as this will drain the battery. See that you have charged your batteries to their max.

Best interval for star time-lapse

Try a 10-second exposure time to begin with. After experimenting with 10 seconds, try 30- or even longer exposure lengths to add even more light to your photographs. To get the best interval for star time-lapse, play around with the range between 10 - 25 seconds, and find a sweet spot at around 20 seconds. Long exposure settings' one drawback is their tendency to produce "star trails" while photographing the Milky Way as it sweeps through the night sky.

Now, All that you need to do in post editing is import all the images and then stack all of them. Once the final output is ready this is what the Milky Way timelapse would look like.

Read Next: Night Photography Cheat Sheet – 9 tips

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