Today's post starts from yesterday's day. Talking about yesterday, I am with a running team and doing my volunteering work with full honesty. It is a different matter that I could not sleep the whole night yesterday but the road is still very long and we cannot sleep. We reached Manali from Delhi a few days ago, we covered a distance of about 632 km in 12 hours by car. The only aim of covering such a long mountainous road is the long distance race between Manali and Leh.
Yesterday till about 7 am today we were standing at Rohtang Pass whose height is 3950 meters. Strong wind and cold tested me a lot but as the sun started coming, my sleep also started disappearing along with the cold. Now I started feeling good and I started feeling many times better when we crossed Rohtang Pass and entered Lahaul Valley. Lahaul Valley which till a few years ago used to remain cut off from the world for a full 6 months.
Now that a tunnel has been built under Rohtang Pass, it has become very easy for the locals. Along with the locals, tourists are also taking advantage of this. Thousands of tourists going to visit Lahaul Valley were passing through the tunnel. Anyway, we are standing 10 km away from Rohtang Pass after setting up our hydration point. The name of this place is Gramphu and from here one route goes to Leh via Lahaul and the other route on our right goes to Spiti Valley via Kunjum Pass.
We do not want to go to Spiti, so we remain on the route going to Lahaul. The runners kept running throughout the night and are still running without stopping. I am amazed to see their courage. This morning a horseman asked me if I had seen a herd of horses in which all the horses were white. I said yes and also told him that I had seen them going behind the beas temple. You can enjoy the amazing photos of the horseman running to catch his horses.
When the sun comes out in this part of the valley, it turns golden, the snow on the mountains is shining like silver. The king of Lahaul valley is Ghepan which you can see in the photos. This mountain is 5870 meters high and protects this entire valley. There is also a temple in the name of the mountain in Sissu village which can be visited. There is also a small lake below Ghepan, to reach which one has to do a very tough trek of 14 km.
When the sun comes out, the birds in Lahaul valley are flying here and there as if singing songs of freedom. We are in Toyota Hilux, although I clicked a lot of photos of my truck but I cannot post them because all those photos were posted by my friends on their respective social media handles. The higher you go the smaller the flowers become. Today in the morning light I was able to see some flowers. You can also admire these purple flowers which are very rare.
It is morning time so the roads are completely empty. As soon as it is 8-9 o'clock, tourists will start appearing here like race horses. A very amazing incident happened in which a dog was running towards me from a distance. He came and stopped at some distance from me. Now such a great frame was being formed that I started praying that this dog should not move from here till I take out my camera from the car. And that is what happened, he did not move and I was able to take a great photo of the dog with Ghepan Peak. I have made this photo a thumbnail.
Chandra river flows in Lahaul valley and waterfalls are flowing here at many places when the snow melts. I was also able to capture a few waterfalls from the moving car. The waterfall you are seeing in the photo is formed by the melting of the snow of the Pir Panjal range. It is falling from a height of about a thousand meters. Isn't this waterfall and mountain amazing? This valley is so amazing that one feels like coming here again and again and feels like sitting here for hours and admiring the mountains.
If I talk only about Lahaul, I have been coming here every year since 2014 and sometimes I have come several times in a year. Sometimes by bicycle, sometimes by car, sometimes by taxi, sometimes on foot and sometimes by sitting in a government bus, I have enjoyed this valley. Hindu and Buddhist people live here, everyone lives together and there is never a crime report. So today we came from Rohtang Pass to Sissu village, the distance of which is only about 35 km but it took us 8 hours. The runners have crossed Sissu village, now we will catch up with Keylong village.
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 canon 77d (55-250mm) and edited on laptop lightroom app, post thumbnail created in adobe photoshop.
