Parvati Valley: It's as natural as it gets ☘️

The year was 2019.
The month was May (May end).
Three wanderlust doctors finally agreed upon a destination to tickle the travel bug inside them.

So we basically started our journey from Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport towards Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. We boarded a late afternoon flight as our onward jounrey from New Delhi was at around 9pm.

On arrival at Delhi, we hopped on to the DMRC Airport Express line, which is a boon for travellers. With a changeover of metro at New Delhi railway station, we hopped onto the Yellow Line and got off at the Vidhan Sabha Metro station. A tuktuk then took us to our bus stand, Majnu-ka-tila.

We had a little roadside snack as we were waiting for our semi sleeper AC bus towards Bhuntar, Himachal Pradesh. We boarded the bus by around 8pm and our ride began at around 9pm, on schedule!

We were travelling northwards on NH44, the longest National Highway of the country extending from Srinagar in the north to Kanyakumari in the south, passing by some of the most iconic places related Indian history namely Panipat and Kurukshetra. We had our first stop at a food plaza at Kurukshetra for refreshments at around 11pm.
The next halt was going to be a direct breakfast halt.

We began our day with a breakfast halt at a cafeteria at Mandi. Mandi is sort of a major junction from where one can take a road towards Dharamsala via Bir Billing, towards parvati and Kullu valley and towards Shimla amongst many other offbeat places in Himachal Pradesh.
We then continued our journey.
Our destination was Bhuntar, where we arrived at about 9.30am in the morning. Bhuntar is the starting point of District Kullu and a diversion from here leads to Kasol i.e Parvati Valley.

We were greeted there by Mr Chirag, our local guide for the first half of the trip. We loaded our luggage into a sedan and proceeded towards Bijlali Mahadev temple and peak. This was on the road that lead to Manali from Bhuntar.

The ascend isn't too steep and easily doable by even kids. We probably took a little extra time for ascend owing to the fact that we had just travelled a lot in not the most comfortable way and were partially sleep deprived because of that.
The summit is an absolute stunner.
While on one side you'll get to see the snow clad parvati Ranges, the other side gives an amazing view of the Kullu valley with an aerial view of the Bhuntar Airport.
There is a cafe a few feet below the Summit which serves the trek favourite- Maggi and momos.
After spending about an hour at the summit and seeking blessings from the temple, we decided to descend. Our descend was indeed faster than the ascend. We got back into our sedan and proceeded towards Kasol. We had a halt midway on our journey for some tea and snacks which lasted about half an hour.
We finally reached Kasol by evening.

Kasol, the mini Israel of India, as it's so popularly known, was flocked by Indians and International travellers. We had anticipated this and had hence decided not to stay in Kasol proper, but rather in Chalal, a small group of guesthouses located about 2 to 3 km away from Kasol right on the river banks.
We hired a porter to carry our luggage and began our walk towards chalal, which is a flat surface terrain. In about half an hour, we made it to chalal. We spent the night there in rooms which were presented like a tent.
We all freshened up and later had dinner to finally call it a day!

Waking up in the morning to the sound of river flowing by was calming. We had our breakfast early and packed our stuff. We left Chalal and walked back the same path that got us here, back to Kasol. A car has been waiting there for us, wherein we loaded our luggage and the 3 of us with Mr Chirag left for our next destination, Kalga!

The journey was about 10 to 15 km passing by holy waters of Manikaran. We arrived at Kalga by early afternoon, little overdue our ETA. But our main journey was yet to begin. The taxi drop-off point was near a dam under construction, however Kalga was at a height from there. The distance of the ascend wasn't that much, but it was steep and we had to carry our backpack and our extra luggage with us during this climb. This climb which would have ideally taken just about 15 to 20 minutes, took almost 45 minutes due to extra baggages that we were carrying. We reached our guest house (I have forgotten the name, but most likely it was Holy Cow cafe and rest house).

Here we met Mr Khushagra, the person who actually gave us the plan as to what to do, how to go about, etc.
We unloaded most of our luggage here, had lunch and took a rest break.
We were still left with the main trekking of the day, Trek to Bhandak Thatch.
The weather had started changing. Grey clouds had started to make their way into our direction. With the commencement of a little drizzle, the visibility also started to take a toll.
However we were determined to go and hence put on all our rainwear and began our journey towards Bhandak.
We were accompanied by 2 more solo travellers from Kalga who just happened to join us.

We started the trek in not the most ideal weather conditions. But since it was just a drizzle, the ground hadn't become slippery as yet. The ascend was going to last for about 3 to 4 hours at average speed.
We passed by the village of Tulga and entered the so called famous Fairy Forest.
We were warned of the possibility of bear attacks and were hence told to not walk too fast or too slow thereby staying within the group.
We soon lost mobile network connectivity.
Bhandak is actually a penultimate campsite on the Sar Pass trek. Thus, we kept meeting a lot of trekkers who had Completed Sar Pass and were on their way to Kalga.
The trail was a rather straight forward and easy one with obvious steep inclines at instances, but nowhere was there a risk of falling off.
The trek was undoubtedly a little more tiring than what we had anticipated, probably due to the tiredness of the earlier climb we had, to reach Kalga and the added rain.
We made it to the top by evening with one main stop at a cafe(Hut).

The summit was serene.
One gets to witness a panaromic view of the snow topped Parvati Ranges all around.

There were other groups camped up there as wel, probably the ones who had completed Sar Pass and were on their descend journey. A bunch of people had found a vast flat land up there and had decided to make it into a cricket pitch.

We pitched our tents a little distance away from the others since we wanted silence.
We spent our entire evening just gazing at the mountains which in turn changed their colour as per the setting sun.

The night was chilly. We had a hot dinner and began stargazing. Our guide showed us a few points on the surrounding mountains where the locals would set up a fire deliberately to avoid bears from attacking their cattle.

It was an absolute coincidence, that our this night, was a clear night, cloudless which was a big surprise as we had ascended in overcast conditions all along and more importantly, a new moon night.

We made up our mind to stay up as long as possible, by the bonfire, to get a glimpse of the Milky way.
We saw innumerable shooting stars during our star gaze and also witnessed a few satellites going by.

Our wait was worth it by around 3am when we caught the Milky way! Its a sight that cannot be captured completely by any camera and one that will surely leave you awestruck! Having seen this we decided to sleep off the night as we had a descend still pending for the following day.

Waking up to the view of snow capped peaks is an experience which cannot be described in words.
The weather was absolutely perfect. Temperatures were pleasant and the cloud cover had also vanished. We took a short hike onto a frozen glacier, taking care not to slip.
We had our breakfast and filled our bottles with water running down the streams alongside our campsite.
We had lost mobile connectivity on our ascend itself, however, in the most unrealistic ways, one mobile of ours caught the Airtel Network just on one spot. By one spot, I mean a 1 sq. Foot spot, not an inch more. We all called up our respective families and ensured them of our safety and well-being. We packed all our tents and commenced our descend towards Kalga via Pulga.

The descend was undoubtedly easier as compared to the ascend and hence we covered off a lot of distance in a shorter duration of time. The two companions who had joined us at Kalga , decided to head back directly to Kalga and hence just the 4 of us took the detour to Pulga.

We were in search of a famous cafeteria serving mouth watering pizzas at Pulga. We also were in search of a general Store to purchase some feviquick to stick my "almost separated" show sole. We found both the places next to each other. The pizzas were out of the world! At a decent price as well.
Woodfired pizzas on the Himalayas was a dream come true!

Post our lunch, we quickly decided to leave for Kalga, keeping in mind that we have that last 30 minutes of steep ascend still waiting for us at the end. Our trail back to Kalga was pretty much uneventful and we all had a decent pace, including the last ascend, which we negotiated pretty well.

Once at Kalga, we came back to the cafe where we had offloaded our luggage a day earlier. We rested a bit and freshened up.
Khushagra then convinced us to go for another hike to witness the sunset at a height.
Although we were exhausted, we still went!

However, he told us that it'd be a short 15 minutes hike and hence a few of us went in slippers( Very bad idea). It was a good 45 min hike uphill with steep slopes at few points.
We somehow managed to reach the top compromised footwear.
The so called place where we went, was called Kalga Kutla. Its apparently a rest point for travellers on their way to Barsheini. We witnessed the sunset and then began our descend back to Kalga. On arrival at Kalga, we all took rest, freshened up and ate dinner by the bonfire.

The sky was indeed clear however due to the presence of a few cafes around, the possibility of witnessing the Milky way once again, seemed pretty bleak. Hence, we called it a night early that day.

We all woke up pretty much around the same time in the morning All of us had our breakfast which was prepared at the guesthouse itself. We bid adieu to Khushagra and Chirag and began our descend back from Kalga to the taxi pickup point on the dam. Our original plan was to then go for the Grahan trek, however due to tue uncertainty of the weather and damaged footwear, we canned that plan and istead went to another offbeat village in the vicinity of Kasol, called Choj.
Choj is located about a kilometre and a half away from Kasol towards Manikaran. We reached Choj by late morning and checked-in at an Oyo facility.

We freshened up and met our local guide for the day, Mr Suman.
He took us to Manikaran via a rather less explored trail alongside the river bank. Manikaran is a famous place in Parvati valley known for its hot water springs, Gurudwara and Shiva temple.

We decided to grab a quick lunch, before experiencing the hot water springs for about an hour. We visited the temple at Manikaran and then took a local bus to Kasol.
We strolled in the markets of Kasol in search of any souvenirs. Found a few and bought them after a decent bargaining attempt.
We decided to have an early dinner at Cafe Evergreen before walking back to Choj where we spent the rest of the evening just discussing our trip thus far, to eventually call it a day.

This was our last day in Parvati valley.
We woke up early, ate a light breakfast at the Oyo facility and then headed back to Kasol with all our luggage after checking out.
We were cafe hopping in Kasol in search of the perfect momos. Ironically, we found them with a roadside vendor!

Our bus back to New Delhi was due at 6pm, however due to some technical reasons, all public transport was suspended in and out of Kasol till 8.30m. Kasol having just the one route to travel by, we were stuck there for 2 and a half hours extra and decided to spend that time at Cafe Sunshine.

We finally boarded the bus at about 8.30pm and commenced our arrival back. Our bus driver was quite the experienced one, overtaking other buses on the ghats at a pretty good speed. Our first stop on the bus journey was for dinner at Mandi at the same cafeteria that we had stopped by on our way. Most of the people opted to skip dinner since they were just tired and had already grabbed a bite too many at Kasol.

Unarguably, the bus journey on the way back wasn't as smooth as the one we went by. But since we were tired, we didn't really care much.
Our breakfast halt was at a food plaza somewhere between Kurukshetra and Panipat. We had a light breakfast and continued our bus journey.

Our bus was due to arrive at its destination, viz. ISBT Kashmiri Gate by 8.30am.
However, due to a technical snag, the airconditioner of the bus stopped working soon after our breakfast halt and that was a disastrous experience. Coming from the chilly weather of Himachal, to the heat of New Delhi sans air-conditioning.
Most of the passengers onboard the bus decided to deboard at Majnu-ka-tila and continue their onward journey via a taxi.

We booked our Uber as well and proceeded back to Vidhan Sabha Metro station.
We caught the yellow metro line and changed onto the Airport Express line at New Delhi Railway station.

Our departure was from Indira Gandhi International Airport terminal 2 which was kind of midway between the two metro stations, Delhi aerocity and Terminal 3.
We reached our terminal well on time, checked-in our luggage and had a small meal post security check. Our flight was on time and we reached back Mumbai by late afternoon.

This is one trip that I can personally never forget.
It'll be stored in my memory forever!

As the title suggests the 'Grass" was available at every place growing wildly in nature.

Having said this, a majority of Parvati is still to be explored by my colleagues and me, namely Tosh, Malana, Kheerganga, Grahan etc.
All this is perhaps for another time.

Pictures shot on SGS7 and Canon Powershot SX420IS
Tweaked with Snapseed