Uttarakhand, the land of Gods, is a trekkers paradise since the beautiful Garhwal Himalayas range is located here. Nestled between the mountains and adding variety to the landscape is the Valley of Flowers which houses some of the rarest varieties of flora and fauna. The pictures on internet show a beautiful shallow valley filled with carpets of pink, yellow, violet and green surrounded by mountains and white streams gushing by.
So, when it was time to plan for the yearly August trip, we headed to the Valley of Flowers. The valley is covered in snow till May. Once summer sets in, the ice melts and fresh plants start sprouting out of the Earth. The valley fully blooms in July and August. This is also the monsoon season, so there is a constant challenge of rains, landslides and rockfalls; however, this is the best time to visit the Valley. There was one flower that I wanted to see in particular – the elusive Blue Poppy.
This was one trip where everything that could go wrong went wrong, and still gave us some of the most exciting moments. Read on to find out.
Day 1 – We decided to take a train to Haridwar as we had time at hand, and we didn’t want to spend on flights.
To start with, I couldn’t get a cab to go to the station and by the time I hailed a taxi and was on way, I knew it was too late and we would miss the train. However, 15 mins into the taxi journey, we got to know the train is delayed by 6 hours. The station had no retiring room, so we had to wait it out at the waiting room. Finally, the train started at night instead of afternoon. The train journey itself wasn’t so bad, our co-passengers were an aged couple who were very pleasant to talk to. They were on the same trip as us, in fact most of the people in the train were on their way to the Valley. We landed at Haridwar the next day at midnight. We had initially planned to explore Haridwar in the evening and find a place to stay. However, with our new midnight arrival time, we had to book our stay from the train and also arrange for a cab which would take us to Govindghat the following day. We reached our hotel past midnight, the experience there is a story I will park for now.
Day 2 – The morning started with more confusion with the driver asking us to meet him at a place which we couldn't figure out and had to walk around for quite some time. Eventually, we started around 7 am for Govindghat post a short breakfast break. This journey too had its own adventure, there were multiple landslides and we kept getting stuck on the way. What was supposed to take 10 hours took us 15 hours to reach. The hotel that we were planning to stay at informed us late evening that their water supply was cut off due to rockfall and hence our booking is cancelled. With no place to stay at night, the driver took us to a village called Pandukeshwar, to try our luck at finding accommodation at the government guest house.
Reminder – Border towns have their own restrictions.
Pandukeshwar being close to the border, the police close the road to the village at 8pm. We reached at 10pm and were told to wait till morning for the road to be opened.
The GMVN bungalow was right after this barricade and we walked over to them and requested for a room which thankfully they had. After a lot of reasoning with the police and assuring them that we have accommodation at the govt bungalow, they finally let our car pass while a serpentine queue of unhappy travelers continued to wait for morning. They also expressed their unhappiness that our car was allowed to pass, but we just thanked the police and moved on. The GMVN bungalow was very pretty and we had a comfortable stay though we didn’t get any dinner as it was 1 am.
Day 3 – Next morning, we had an early breakfast, took a cab to Govindghat and then a share cab to reach Pulna.
Info: Travelers are required to register their names and fingerprints before traveling to Pulna.
We had to reach the base camp, Ghangria, which is a 10 km trek from Pulna. Travelers can take ponies or a chopper to fly directly. We pulled our bags on our backs and started walking. The trek wasn’t easy, we went up from 1800 ft to 3000 ft, at times the climb was steep, the road uneven and our heavy backpacks were cutting through the shoulder. On top of that, there are ponies and Pittus (people with baskets on their head to carry tourist) who we had to make way for.
We reached Ghangria late in the evening and it was pure chaos. We were informed by the hotel owners that no rooms were available, that the village was overbooked, that they had not anticipated so much crowd and that we should go to the Gurudwara immediately if we didn’t want to spend the night freezing on the horseshit laden street. After inquiring at more hotels, we realized Gurudwara was our best bet. We were put in the family dormitory which accommodated about 200 people. The accommodation was very basic, but we were still very thankful that they provided us with a place for the night. We went out to try our luck once more and this time we found a tent that was set up on top of a hotel and that was our home for 3 nights. We made some new friends at the hotel.
Day 4 – The next morning, we started for the Valley of Flowers. The weather wasn’t great, we had limited visibility. We hoped that as the day progresses, the clouds would clear, and we will get to see the Valley in its entirety. The queue at the ticket counter was very long and took us an hour to get the entry tickets. Walking to the Valley was easy, the initial part was uphill but post that it was mostly downhill or plain. The hike route is covered with beautiful flowers. There is a natural spring from where we had a drink, since we missed carrying water bottle. The entrance to the Valley was marked by a huge gushing stream, once we crossed over the bridge, we saw the most beautiful set of plants. There were stretches of whites and pinks and purples.
There is a narrow track to walk on inside the valley, the valley itself stretches to about 3 KMs. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any blue poppy which is what I wanted to see the most. It is advised to leave the valley around 2 pm as the entrance at the ticket counter closes at 5 pm. During the trek, we had another fiasco which has been the common theme of our trip. My partner and I missed each other while I was having a drink at the spring. It was so crowded that we couldn’t find each other and were all by ourselves in the valley.
To add to our woos, it started raining heavily, and I decided to head back to the hotel and wait there. The way back was slippery, and it was difficult to climb down. With massive anxiety pangs, I ran all the way to the hotel, while my partner kept running up and down the slippery track worried if I had slipped and fallen somewhere. It was a relief when we finally met and knowing that we are safe. By now you may have guessed, the valley has no mobile network, hence the running around. Unfortunately, one of our hotel friends fell on her way down and fractured her leg. The evening went well with all of us laughing about all the stress we went through over cups of hot tea.
Tips to travelers –
Entry ticket for the Valley – INR 150 for Indians, INR 600 for foreigners
Carry food and water while visiting Valley of Flowers, there are no shops inside the national park.
Day 5 – After yesterday's hectic day and with terrible body pains, we started early in the morning and headed towards Hemkund Saheb. Most blogs and trek information sites state that Hemkund Saheb trek ranges between moderate to difficult. Surprisingly this was the easiest part of the trip for me. As soon as we started, we saw the first of the many frozen waterfalls. The initial part of the trek was filled with waterfalls, multiple of them falling together, it was such a beautiful side to behold, no doubt I never felt tired.
On the way, there were small shops selling food, lime juice and tea. The lime juice was the most refreshing thing I had in the whole trip. We climbed non-stop till we reached a much higher altitude where we spotted the first of the many mesmerizing Blue Poppies. Growing casually along the side of the track, we saw this blue flower slowly swaying in the air; we couldn’t believe our luck. The locals had told us the Blue Poppy grows only in the Valley; however, it was on the way to Hemkund Saheb that we saw many of them. They were in multiple shades – Purple, blue, some had a slight pinkish tinge.
As we moved further up, we met 2 guys who needed help to climb over the trekking fence. Out of curiosity, we wanted to understand what prompted them to get off the path and they told us that a little down the mountainside were the biggest Brahmakamals in this area. We couldn’t resist it and after helping them get up, we chose to go downhill and saw these huge flowers. There were far more variety of flowers on this route than what we saw in the Valley.
The ponies kept pushing climbers aside on their way up and there was this one time when a pony pushed me off the track and I almost fell off the edge of the mountain, thankfully my observant partner pulled me back just in time and I didn’t roll off. Exhausted, I reached the top. We had not stopped anywhere for food, so when they served us hot khichdi and tea at the Gurudwara, it took me a few min to finish it off. Unfortunately, it was another cloudy day and we could hardly see the lake at the Gurudwara. Our trek down roughly took 1 hr 40 mins.
Once at our hotel, we chatted with the other travelers on the floor. We tried to figure out where we would head the next day as we had not planned the next part of our trip, and finally retired for the night.
Day 6 – Early next morning, we trekked down to Pulna. It took us 4 hrs to cover the 10 KM stretch. From there we hired a cab to Badrinath. However, due to landslide the way was blocked, and we had to get off midway. The locals asked us to climb down to the Aloknanda River banks, walk for a while and then climb up to the main road with the help of ropes.
It was a very risky option, but we didn’t want to turn back without seeing the Badrinath temple. Post climbing up, we had to walk for about 700m to get a shared cab. As the roads were blocked, there were no tourist and hence no share cabs. We had to wait for an hour before we managed getting a cab and reached the temple at 1pm.
Badrinath temple remains closed in the afternoon, we had time until 3pm on our hands and we decided to walk to the Mana village which is 3 kms from Badrinath. This got hectic for us given we had been walking for most part of the day. On the way, there is a stream running across the road that we crossed barefooted. When roads are operational, most tourists usually take a cab from Pulna to Badrinath and cover Mana. Once in Mana, it seemed like a different world. Narrow road, small lanes with homes on both sides, tiny shops, it all looked like a doll house setup. I loved every bit of Mana, the last village on the Indian side.
We visited the significant mythological spots, though immense commercialization seemed to have killed some beauty of the place. We walked to the last shops on the India side and had some piping hot Maggie. Weather continued to be bad and it started raining heavily. After waiting for a while, we walked out in the rain, and hired a car to go to Badrinath as we were short of time and also quite tired.
The darsan didn’t take long, however, we were told by locals that on normal days, the queue runs for a few hours. Post darsan, we walked for a couple of kilometers trying to hire a vehicle to go back to the landslide spot, then had to climb back down to the river bank with the help of ropes. Things got really difficult this time as the rain had made the way too slippery and we were struggling to maintain balance. Eventually we managed, the river was splashing crazily and reaching dangerous heights. We climbed up onto the main road, spoke to some other travelers who were stranded like us and negotiated with a minivan to drop us at Pulna. About a kilometre before reaching Pulna, minutes before our van reached the spot, a huge rock fell and blocked the road. We sat stunned for a while, then got off the van and walked the rest of the distance with heavy rain pouring down on us. The 8 of us then took another jeep to Joshimath. We, then, headed to Auli where we stayed at the Auli Ski Resort for the night. The resort is very beautiful, though could do with better maintenance.
Day 7 - The following morning, we got a glimpse of the mountains surrounding Auli but it was soon covered with clouds. The place is filled with apple trees and was laden with golden and red apples. After a morning stroll and some good breakfast, we left for Haridwar. The rains continued and roads were once again blocked due to landslides. At one point, we were quite worried about our safety as the driver was driving too fast, rain was coming down in torrents, we could see mud sliding down the hills and small rocks falling on the road which was a sign of more landslides and rockfalls happening. We had aimed reaching Rishikesh by 7pm to watch the aarti but finally reached managed reaching Haridwar late in the night. We checked in at the hotel, but directly headed to Haar Ki Pouri ghat for a view of the Ganga river before everything closed for the night. We spent some time on the cemented banks, then tried some local food and finally headed back to the hotel.
Day 8 - Morning, we took a train to Delhi. As we had some time at hand, we went to Dilli Haat, had some amazing Naga chicken and after a bit of shopping, took a late evening flight home.
Thus ended our supposedly easy trek, where nothing went as planned, we had surprises at every turn and we came back with a bagful of memories and many more misadventures but that story is for another day.