Yesterday was a very long and tiring day, we reached the hotel at 7 pm. Believe me, when I had dinner after bathing in hot water, I felt as if I had found the most precious thing in the world. I finished dinner by 7:30 and after that, I went to bed 10 minutes later and slept like I had not slept for many weeks. I slept very deeply, woke up at 6 am in the morning. I freshened up after drinking water and started thinking about today's day...today we have to summit Kothi Top.
At 7:30 am, we three musketeers are ready to once again surrender ourselves to a long day. Today is our ninth day of hiking in Solang Valley and till now we, our body and stamina are in abundance. There are so many red blood cells in our blood that we will summit a 4000 meter mountain in a few hours. Anyway, I am getting overexcited, so today we will test our morale by summiting Kothi Top, whose height is 11161 feet.
We start walking from Solang, follow the road going to Rohtang Pass and reach Kothi village. The walking distance till here is 5.4 km. We have reached a height of 2418 meters by walking from 2450 meters. After reaching here in about one and a half hours, we will now start our real journey. We have reached a trail going through the apple orchard of Kothi village and above this wall-like mountain is the summit of Kothi, where all three of us are carrying the passion of reaching in our hearts.
Today we will hike 4 km climbing on a 24.7% gradient in which there will be an incredible elevation gain of 1015 meters. This climb will loosen all our nuts and bolts. We have gradually left the boundary of Kothi village and have reached that part of the mountain from where the area settled around the Beas river is visible. From here we can see Barua, Goshal, Palchan, Kothi, Khampri, Old Manali, Manali, Vashishtha temple and many hotels built in the valley shining in the morning sun.
The sun is about to rise above the head and sweat has started to creep down the neck to the waist. I was thinking that today's journey will not be so difficult but every mountain is different and every day is full of challenges, today I understood this. Now my ego has broken and I am quietly watching the natural views. In the valley, the Beas river can be seen flowing from Solang and going to Manali from where it will enter Kullu and then Punjab.
We take the first break after one km, this is a flowing stream which is flowing from the shoulder of Patalsu top and moving towards Beas. We sit here for 5 minutes, dry the sweat and drink fresh and cold water and refill our bottles and start walking again. Except for the trees around the stream, we are walking on a wall of grass. As there are no trees anywhere, the sun is directly heating our heads and we are getting more tired.
After walking for 2 km, the tree line starts again where we get some relief from the sun. There are Shepherds' huts here. Everyone has gone somewhere in the forest to graze their sheep and goats. We have completed half of the journey and our stamina is completely gone but reaching the top is our first and last aim today. When the cold wind blowing at 2800 meters touches our face, it feels very good. We feel like lying down on the grass and sleeping soundly.
After climbing for about 4:30 hours, we finally manage to reach the Kothi Top Summit. The height of the top is 11161 feet above sea level. From here, about 15 high snow-covered Himalayan peaks are visible. I have posted the names of all the peaks in a list. I hope you will get an idea of the height from the photos.
There is a round blue flower at the top which is waiting to bloom. We three lie down on the grass and control our deep breaths. We eat the dry fruits we have brought with us along with chocolate. The clouds are moving very fast. We refresh ourselves and have a lot of fun and click a lot of photos. Some photos of the mountains, some photos of the forest and some photos of the clouds. After making friends with the clouds, we three congratulate each other for the summit.
So this was today's journey where we start from Kothi village and reach Kothi Top Summit. I am surprised that we did not take a single selfie even though we have been roaming for so many days. I will try to remember it in the future. Well, that's all for today. Tomorrow I will come with another new place. Till then take care and keep smiling.
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to translate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from POCO F1 android smartphone and edited in deskstop software adobe lightroom. Thumbnail created in dekstop adobe photoshop.
