"Above the Clouds: A Hiker's Journey to Chandronath's Peak"

Chandranath Hill isn't your average walk in the park. It's a climb through misty forests and risky turns, all to reach a peak with epic views.

On January 18, 2024 me and my cousin suddenly planned a tour where we will catch the Chattogram Mail train from Komlapur and get down to the Sitakundu station . Because we found out that it's the best way to go to Chandranath Hill easily. Otherwise if we take the express train it will not stop in the Sitakundu Station , then we have to get down in the Chittagong Station from where we have to go around 20-25 km by bus to reach the hill track. So we started our mission by having breakfast and we took a flask with us in which we took tea because when we reached the peak of the hill we wanted to enjoy the hot tea and have some important discussion while enjoying nature.

Basically we can see that most of the trekkers went to track with a big or a small team but we love to travel with 2-3 people group because we want to make friends in the journey.We believe that it's the journey and the people meet along the journey makes the trip more memorable.Every time we went for a tour we make lots of friends and those friends aren't stay just for that tour only later we share a good bond and plan tour together later on. It's the magic of traveling in a small group or two . 

“Chandranath Hill” is the most suitable place for new hill trekkers. As it was my first time tracking a hill we chose that .The height of this hill is about 1020 feet and is located in Sitakunda of Chittagong. But I found it more challenging to go down than to climb this Hill. Our Trekking started by buying a stick from the trekking point. At first, its function is useless to me, but at the last moment, this bamboo stick helps us a lot. There are two trekking routes in Chandranath. One is a mud road and another is stairs. When climbing, you must go through the mud road. The higher we went, the more green nature we could see. There were a lot of Small shops we could see in different places. Local mountaineers sell fruit juice, various fruits, chocolates, drinks, etc. in these shops for tourists. We sat there for a while to revive our tiredness on the way.

Before reaching the top, I saw a temple. There are a lot of Hibiscus Rosa Sinensis trees around the temple. This flower is used in worship. It looked like locals were praying in this small temple. This place is quite flat and the sea is visible from here. We rested for a while and walked again.

One last small shop came into view before reaching the summit. One thing I noticed was that the higher I went, the higher the price of food. Actually, the shopkeepers buy this food and drink for tourists from the foot of the mountain, so that’s why the price is a little higher.

After about 2 hours of trekking, we reached the top of Chandranath. A temple came into view while climbing up. This is called “Chandranath Temple”. There is a place to sit around the temple. There was a lot of crowd that day.But there was a restriction on that time only people from Hindu community can pass through the road in front of the temple which will be used later on as the path for going down. It all started some days back when some other community members broke the rules of Hindu religion which ended up as a clash between them and the Deputy Commissioner of that region imposed that rule for other community people. But somehow we managed to go through that by promising not to do anything while passing the road .But still  someone was taking group pictures, and someone was capturing the surrounding environment from the peak. We saw the distant sea clearly from here. Chandranath Temple is a holy place for local Hindu community residents. They Worship this temple regularly. Chandranath Peak is not as wide as other hills so there is no accommodation here. I looked around for a while and took some pictures and videos of the scenario and then we started to go down.

There are two roads up and down the hill. One is made of mud and the other is of stairs. However, it is said that it is better to take the mud road while going up and the stairs road while going down. Climbing the steep stairs is very difficult. We were proceeding along the stairway. Earlier these stairs were made of mud but now they are paved with brick cement. It is all stairs from the top to the bottom. There is no place to rest on this road. We were getting too tired to step on the stairs. Our feet were shaking. After about an hour and a half of trekking, we reached the ground.