The Valley of Flowers- Third Time Unlucky?

 Frank Smythe was the man who identified a region that he named the "Valley of Flowers", now a protected park. He once said: “If everything we do in life is to be measured in terms of money, then life would be a very poor thing. The greater ambitions and desires of mankind are actuated by something deeper and finer than the desire to amass material wealth.”

This is so true of the Valley of Flowers.  This was the third time I went there, see my earlier blogs on the Valley of Flowers here and another here. So was I third time unlucky, read on to find out.

In the Valley of Flowers (VoF)

So I took a seat taxi from Rishikesh to Govindghat, and started walking up the nine kilometres from Pulna. I met a lot of interesting people along the way, a kathad sardar from Rohtak, we could hardly understand each other, a sardar railway employee from Indore and his two daughters, an IT professional from Delhi.

...my porter on the way up

There were a lot of Sikhs on the way, going up and down, because Hemkund Sahib at about 4000 metres, is one of the holiest Gurdwaras and many Sikhs do a pilgrimage here. There are young and old, boys and girls, many of them chanting aloud and many whispering a prayer in their hearts.

Clouds descend over Ghangariya helipad.

There is a helicopter service from Govindghat to about a kilometer short of Ghangariya. The flight takes about four minutes and there are 10-15 sorties in a day, depending on the weather. So a four or five hour trek is cut short to a few minutes if one were to take the helicopter. 

A board showing the main species of flowers put up at the forest chowkey at the entrance.  

Everyone gets a pass for three days at the VoF, but most people go up only once, (I went up twice).  At Ghangariya the path splits and one goes to Hemkund, a six kilometre vertical climb, and one goes to VoF, about four kilometres away.

Sunrise at the base of VoF

After crossing the forest chwkey, which opens for ticket sales at 7am, I walk along undulating terrain for about two kilometres.  It was here that I saw and photographed Pika last time, but this time there were probably too many people around.  I was walking along a valley and the rising sun played lovely light on the mountains around.

Gushing water in the Pushpawati River

Then I crossed a bridge across the Pushpawati River which had a lot of water due to the recent rains and snow melt. There was much more water in the river this time compared to the last two occasions I had to come here. The sound of the river is loud and the water moving fast.

The bottom of the gorge is in darkness as the sun illuminates the mountains higher up.

The contrast is wide, dark at the bottom of the gorge as the sun has yet to reach here and higher up the mountains are illuminated in sunlight. I have always been fascinated by this contrast and on every trip photograph the sunlit mountains through the dark valley.

Clouds drift across the mountain face 

The weather is totally unpredictable, bright sunshine one moment and cloudy the next. Though it was dry on the first day I went up. on the second day it was drizzling right through.

VoF, Tipra Khark and Mount Rataban in the distance.

This time there was an unusual phenomenon in that the clouds would descend up to a point on the mountain side and there they would remain. After the bridge and a steep climb of about a kilometer, one starts seeing VoF, and a sight to behold it is.

The colours in the valley change every week or so

The sight of  VoF is beautiful, it is a riot of colour, blues and purples and mauves dominate.

Pithoo at Shepherd's Rock

The sad thing is (selfish I know) that there are too many people now in the valley. The guard at the forest chowkey  told me that on an average 500-1500 people come to VoF each day. Compare this to the four or five I saw on my first visit here. I won't go into the reasons as they are controversial, selfies, pandemic, local income, tour companies all have a part to play.

Mist shrouds the mountainside outside my room.

On the second day it rained heavily the whole day, so I decided to stay in my room. I modified my plan and decided to go to the VoF after a day's break. I would go to Hemkund the day after subject to weather, but as it turned out it kept raining and I didn't go up to Hemkund Sahib having been there twice earlier. Please see my earlier blogs.

Pollen laden bee on Angelica flower

The flowers change every week or ten days, and with it the colours in the valley. I had earlier been up in June and the colours were very different.  This time the purples and mauves dominated with white and blue interspersed. 

Cyananthus Lobatus 

...and don't ask me the common name....

Morina Longifolia 

The flowers are beautiful and a rose by any name .....

Heracleum  with the mountains of VoF in the background

Geranium...

Ligularia  a common flower growing everywhere

Pedicularis Hoffmeisteri

Joan Margaret Legge's memorial

Joan Margaret Legge (Leggy as the locals call her), was a botanist who came to study the flowers of VoF.  She lost her life here and her sister set up this grave in the VoF. Having been to the Valley of Flowers for the first time in 2015 and again in 2018, I have been bitten by the bug, each time I think will my last, but I go there yet again.  Have I been unlucky? You decide....

To quote Frank Smythe again: “Nature is honest, there is no meanness in her composition, she has no time for fools, there is no place in her code for weaklings and degenerates. Out of her strength we gather our own strength. And it is good to be strong, to be able to endure, not as a brute beast, but as a thinking man imbued with the spirit of a great ideal."

Lidderwat - We never got there

 "The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot" said Werner Herzog...  

...This is particularly true of the mountains, where beyond every bend in the track there is a new vista to enjoy. 

A friend, Basav, and I went to the Kashmir Valley, where we meandered our way to the Aru Valley.  Down this Valley flows the Lidder River, not too wide, but very powerful especially since we had gone just after the monsoon. 

The gorgeous Lidder River

As we approached the source of the river, the sides of the valley got steeper, the gorge got deeper and the river flowed more purposefully. It may have seemed placid, but as we looked carefully we could see the strong current.   Seemingly little rivulets swept whole trees and boulders from the hillside.

Looking for the source of the Lidder River

So Basav and I set out for Lidderwat, the source of the Lidder River,  we had been told that it was about three hours each way, with an hour for lunch there made it about a seven hour return trip; given my slower pace, maybe about eight hours? We started walking at 8 am and expected to be back by 4 pm, we couldn't have been more wrong.

Smiling and admiring the view when it was dry..... pic courtesy Basav

It was sunny and dry when we started out, though slushy in patches; we were told that it was always slushy at these places and that we needed to take a detour no problem, we walked around the slush. I had switched to a fanny pack for this hike, staying as light as possible for the long walk.  Unfairly I shoved those 'last moment' things into Basav's rucksack.

The track was boggy at places, that's Basav laughing at the bog...

The start was boggy and steep uphill, very steep; but only for about a kilometre, after that the terrain was lightly undulating all through, certain stretches remained very slushy, and the slush was deep enough to cover boots. Every bend in the track showed a different scene and the terrain was varied.  The scenery changed from bald craggy mountains to mountainsides with pine trees right down to the river.

Ranks of pine trees marching....

There were alpine meadows interspersed with deep, dark forests.  Here the canopy was so dense that we couldn't see the sky and no light came down.  There were bakarwals (goat and sheep herding nomadic tribes) that were preparing to go to lower altitudes for winter. They made tents of plastic sheets or rudimentary huts of mud and grass.

The track was steep and the trees were large age and old with Basav standing in front, he is not old but very tough.

Two groups caught up to us, but then they would stop, so we overtook them again, then we would stop..... These groups stayed with us, leafrogging our way forward.  They were going to camp the night at Lidderwat and we were to return and ominous portent of events to come.

...and then it started raining.  Thats a Bakerwal camp covered in plastic sheets at the bottom left. pic courtesy Basav.

It rained heavily for a while, then it continued to drizzle intermittently. The drizzle made the complete track wet and muddy. Nothing (except Basav's shoes!) would keep us completely dry.  

...gooey mud soon made our shoes weigh twice as much. pic courtesy Basav

The path was mucky, our clothes and boots were muddy and so at after about six kilometres, at 1200 hours we (basav and I) took the decision to return.  We had been walking for about four hours by then and had just asked the guide of one of the groups as to the distance to Lidderwat, he replied that it was about 10 km one way, so we had about four kilometres to go and 10 to return. 

...the slushy parts now joined to become muddier and deeper.  That's Basav having crossed the mud and not smiling so much any more. 

Before it rained, we were careful not to get our boots dirty, but the rain and exhaustion soon rid us of this notion and on the way back we were sloshing merrily through all but the deepest parts. Our hiking boots soon weighed more than the boots themselves. We ate packed lunch by the side of the track, admired the scenery and then continued walking.

A Bakerwal hut

Mules and horses made the path muddier, often they would sink deep in the muck.  The Bakerwals  on the other hand found/made tracks on the hillside, often where none existed.  These tracks were much easier to walk on, less boggy and our boots stayed cleaner. So we climbed higher up the hillside and followed these paths, finally coming down at the end.

A welcome cup of noodles, maggi is the generic name for any noodles

Having walked about 12 km, we were ravenous so we asked this gentleman to make us maggi-omlette, staple food in the mountains.  To our surprise he didn't know what that was and served us maggi noodles and omlettes separately, hungry as were were we happily wolfed it down. And as always chasing this down with cups of  Kahwa,  the Kashmiri tea.

 I am glad we turned around when we did, another fourteen km would have had us thrashing about in the dark, though we both had head torches, the fun would have gone out of the hike. So it was a nice fun long walk. That we walked another couple of kilometres to the river on the other side.... but that is another tale.
"A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods" said an intrepid adventurer Rachel Carson. But the one that fits this situation the best is a quote by an unknown hiker "I'd rather be hiking in the rain, than sitting indoors at a desk on a sunny day"