Dehnasar Lake

Day 1

If you like real offbeat destinations with almost no crowd, and want to explore remote areas, people, and culture of Himachal Pradesh then this trek is for you.

THE LAKE

Dehnasar Lake is a high altitude alpine and glacial-fed lake situated deep inside the snowy mountains of Chota Bhangal valley in kangra district of HP.

It is situated at 4,280 metres (14,040 ft) above sea level.
The trail goes through charming mountains of Dhauladhar Wildlife Sanctuary (home to Himalayan Monal).

📍LOCATION

You need to reach Barot valley,(near Joginder Nagar).

There are many routes from there but shorter one is via Lohardi village (6 km from barot). Then from there we went to Polling village (2 km), which is the last village connected through road.
From Polling, there is 14km trek to reach the majestic lake.

The trail is moderate to climb and requires good level of fitness & health.
It generally takes 3 days and 2 night for normal trekkers, but if you've enough trekking experience and fitness then it'll take 2 days and 1 night.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFICULT?

Unlike other treks, you won't find any kind of commercial stays, food, and even water, except in first week of Sept., as people gather there for the holy bath.

You'll have to carry tent, stove, utensils, sleeping bags, water, etc.
In our case, we aslo carried wood to burn as above 4000 meters, there is generally no vegetation.
Further, nearly 9km of the total trail is steep uphill climb.

Day 2

THE TREK BEGINS…

We started trek from Lohardi because didn't found good spot to park car after Lohardi.
Started at 6 am and hiked through muddy and unmetalled road till Polling (last village). Then we walked along Uhl river, which is also home to the Himalayan Trout.

After crossing river we reached the end of village, and re-filled up all our water bottles from the river, as there is no water after that spot till the lake itself.
Now the steep uphill climb begun and we hiked up slowly, but with a momentum. It was really tiring and our legs were burning and aching, so we decided to take some rest and have lunch.

After hiking half an hour, we found a good spot surrounded by Alpin flowers,and the sunlight streamed in through sheer and snowy mountains to bless that place. We sat there on our insulation mat and had lunch.

After lunch, we climbed through dense forest for around 4 hours and then saw mind-blowing view of mountains covered with grass and mountain flowers. It was the end of forests and beginning of the rocky mountain terrain.

Again climed steep terrains and crossed three small hills in 1-2 hours. In between we met another group and hiked together for rest of the trek. It feels wonderful when we find people like us in such remote areas and share travel experiences, stories with each other.

When we were left with less than half litres of water, we saw a small stream of water and we started refilling our bottles,
It took nearly 15 minutes to fill nearly 3 litres of water.

Then we ate noodles and witnessed a foggy and tranquil sunset. But it was horrible at the same time because the sky was getting dark and we actually didn't knew that how much time it'll probably take to reach the top.
Cold glacial winds were blowing, we were completely exhausted and the wood we carried along had become wet due to moisturized weather.

We then immediately setup tent after hiking 50m as it was getting dark. We enjoyed cold Himalyan night, lighted campfire, ate food and gave rest to body.

Day 3

Dehnasar Lake

REACHING THE MAJESTIC LAKE…

Early morning at 5:30 am we started to climb uphill. After hiking over the rocks for an hour we saw majestic lake with sunrise.
There we were welcomed by another group, they gave us hot water to drink, we sat together and shared stories.
Then they offered us food but we were running out of time as we wanted to complete trek within two days, so we thanked them and started hiking downhill.

We filled our water bottles and started trekking a bit faster and at a steady pace to reach Polling village asap.

We reached down in just 5-6 hours. It took additional one hour to reach Lohardi where our car was parked. We then drove to Barot, took rest for sometime and ate food.

Also Barot valley is famous for Himalayan Trout, so do taste if you visit the valley as we did the same. Then we drove back to home.

Hope you liked reading it, and all these pictures were clicked by me. Do check my Insta for more (link @ my tripoto profile).