Eight days on the Kuari Pass: a field log

The Kuari Pass sits at 3,640 metres in the Garhwal Himalaya, and for a long time it was overshadowed by its flashier neighbours — Kedarkantha, Har Ki Dun, Roopkund. That's partly why I chose it. Fewer groups on the trail means quieter campsites, more honest conversations with your own lungs, and a better chance of actually seeing the Nanda Devi massif without someone's drone in the frame.

I did this in late November, which is shoulder season. The monsoon is long gone, the rhododendrons are dormant, and the first serious snowfall is a few weeks away — if the forecast holds. It rarely does perfectly, but November has the cleanest skies I've found anywhere in Uttarakhand.

The route

The classic Curzon Trail starts at Joshimath and exits at Tapovan, though most groups now reverse it or do variations. I went Joshimath → Auli → Gorson Bugyal → Tali → Kuari Pass → Khulara → Pana → Ramni → back to Joshimath. Eight days, roughly 65 km, maximum elevation 3,640 m at the pass.

The ascent to Gorson is deceptively gentle — a wide meadow that opens up slowly, with the snow peaks appearing at intervals between the oak and rhododendron canopy. By the time you reach the bugyal proper, you have an unobstructed panorama from Nanda Devi (7,816 m) east to Dronagiri (7,066 m). On a clear November morning, this view is almost aggressive in its clarity.

On pacing in thin air

Above 2,500 metres, every rule of thumb from your regular hill training becomes unreliable. I've been on enough trips now to have a working theory: your perceived exertion is roughly correct, but your recovery time is not. You feel fine — until you don't, and then the window to correct it is shorter than you expect.

The practical result: I slow down more than I feel I need to, and I stop more often than feels necessary. On the ascent to the pass, I was moving at roughly 60% of my flatland pace, taking a full five-minute break every 45 minutes regardless of how I felt. This felt conservative in the morning. By the afternoon it felt exactly right.

The other thing that helped: eliminating decisions from the first two hours of each day. Same breakfast, same pack order, same departure time. Decision fatigue at altitude is a real thing, and the cognitive load of "what goes in the hip belt pocket" at 3,400 metres in the dark is higher than it sounds.

Weather and the cost of optimism

Day five. We were at Tali, planning the pass crossing for the next morning. The forecast showed a weather window of 18–24 hours before a western disturbance moved in. Our guide, Bhuvan, wanted to move the crossing to that afternoon. I wanted to rest and go the following morning as planned.

We went that afternoon. The sky closed in at 11pm; by 3am it was snowing hard. We had crossed the pass at 4pm in full sun with Trishul and Nanda Ghunti reflecting light off their ice faces. The people who camped one day behind us turned back.

I don't have a tidy lesson from this. Bhuvan read the weather correctly because he's crossed that pass forty times. I had a spreadsheet and a confidence interval. The right answer was to listen to the person who had the data I didn't.

Nights above 3,000 metres

This is what I keep coming back to: the sky at altitude. Gorson Bugyal on a moonless night in November is as dark as anywhere I've been. The Milky Way is not a pale smear — it's a structural feature, dense and three-dimensional, with dust lanes you can trace with a finger. Orion comes up around 10pm and by midnight is directly overhead.

I spent an hour each night just lying on the tent's rain fly and watching. No phone, no headlamp. The cold was real — minus eight at the pass campsite — but a good sleeping bag liner and a thermos of black tea made it manageable. The stars more than paid the toll.

What I'd change

• Carry a real altimeter watch, not just GPS. Pressure-based altitude is more accurate in changing conditions.
• More electrolytes, fewer snack bars. At altitude your appetite suppresses but your electrolyte needs don't.
• Leave Joshimath one day earlier to build an acclimatisation day at Auli before ascending to Gorson.
• A warmer glove liner for the pass crossing — the windchill at 3,640 m in November is serious even in full sun.

The Kuari Pass won't challenge a seasoned trekker technically. The reward isn't difficulty — it's duration, altitude, and the particular quality of light on the Garhwal peaks in late autumn. It's one of the most visually sustained treks I've done.

I'll be back. Probably with a better glove liner.