Frozen lakes, oak-and-rhododendron forests and a ridge with Trishul and Nanda Ghunti front and centre — why Brahmatal is the perfect first winter trek.
If you have never walked on snow before, Brahmatal is where to start. The gradients are gentle, the campsites sit low enough to sleep easy, and the payoff — a frozen lake ringed by pines with a wall of Himalayan giants behind it — is out of all proportion to the effort it asks of you.
The trail begins at Lohajung and climbs through oak and rhododendron forest that, in a good winter, is loaded with snow from the first day. You camp by the lakes — Bekaltal, then Brahmatal itself — small, still sheets of ice tucked into the folds of the ridge, each one a natural place to stop and take the whole scene in.
From the Brahmatal ridge the whole skyline opens up at once. Trishul and Nanda Ghunti stand close enough to feel, so near and so sharp against the blue that they seem to lean over the trail; Mount Neelkanth and the Chaukhamba range are strung out along the horizon behind. It is a great deal of mountain for a walk you can do in a long weekend.
What makes Brahmatal such a good first winter trek is that it lets you learn the craft of cold-weather trekking — layering properly, keeping water from freezing, walking in soft snow — without ever feeling out of your depth. Come away from it and the bigger winter routes stop looking quite so far off.
