Valley of the Flowers and Hem Kund

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So as I learned from the educational video I watched at the visitor centre in Ghangaria, the valley is famous for having over 500 species of flowers, creating great carpets of colour during the summer months. Sadly when I was there the weather was pretty misty, depriving me of the blue skies I had imagined and totally ruining my photos. The valley is surrounded by amazing 6000m peaks but you couldn't really see them for the mist, except at times when the tops of the mountains would break through like islands floating above the clouds. It was still gorgeous and the weather made for a very mysterious atmosphere, but it did not translate well to photography (not at my inexpert hands anyway).

There were no more than about a dozen other people in the valley that day, all of them Indian. I spent a lot of time playing with my new camera (but I will spare you the resulting collection of macro shots of various different flowers). After we had walked about half way along the trail, it started monsooning (different from raining, needs it's own verb) and so we quite literally crawled under a rock and hid there till it stopped. I was still totally determined that the clouds would clear and I would have blue sky. My Indian friend was not convinced, but humored me. After a while he had to leave because needed to make it down to Govenghat that same day, but I wanted to carry on to the end of the trail.

I wandered along for a few hours more and spent a fair bit of time chilling just watching the birds and the flowers, thinking 'so I'm in the Himalayas... this is pretty awesome'. When I eventually made it to the end of the final valley and turned back, the weather deteriorated rapidly. It got so misty my visibility dropped to about 5 meters (describing it using diving terminology feels appropriate, it reminded be of being underwater), and I was rapidly reminded of why it's a bad idea to go wandering around in the Himalayas, alone, during monsoon season. I had figured that since I was in a national park and there was only one path (which you must stick to, lest you crush the flowers) it really wasn't possible for me to get lost, but still, probably not the best idea. I'd also been told that the ranger guys at the hut where you pay your national park enterance fee count everyone in and out (to stop people camping over night, which is forbidden) so presumably should I have fallen and broken all my legs they would have noticed, but still, perhaps not the wisest decision to wander off on my own. Never mind, still alive. I eventually caught up with some of the Indian walkers and slithered back down the hill to Ghangaria with them (it had started monsooning again by this point. After all this I was fairly knackered and went to bed early, restoring my sleeping patterns to semi-normality.

The next day I decided hike up to Hem Kund (the Sikh pilgrimage place) before making my way back down to Joshimath. I only went because a random Indian family I met adopted me and insisted I come with them. I never quite figured out how the hell they were all related, but there were at least a dozen of them along with several adorable children, headed by a lovely talkative lady who was an English teacher by profession. I promised I'd meet them in the morning and walk up along with them, then went and slept through my alarm. I felt so guilty that when eventually woke up I skipped breakfast and basically legged it up the mountain to catch up with them. I managed to find them after about an hour, and spent the rest of the journey being treated to a long lecture on the history of the area and Sikh mythology. I was also taught the words to all the songs people were singing, a trick which earned me even more attention. The trek up to Hem Kund was much harder work than getting to Ghangaria or Valley of the Flowers. Many of the less robust pilgrims cheated by hiring horses or just paying a couple of locals to lug them up in a wicker chair... in fact people seemed to think me certifiably insane for wanting to carry my own backpack. It's only 7km away but the final elevation is 4400m, so that's a hefty 1.4km directly UP.

It was chilly at the top. The most devout pilgrims bathed the in freezing lake. My adopted family took a more practical approach, filling plastic bottles with holy water to carry back and bathe with at their convenience in the warmth and comfort of their own home. Clever, but is this not cheating? People were VERY keen for me to get involved in this holy water thing, so I got my legs and arms and face enthusiastically splashed by the girls of the family. Bracing. I refused to actually get IN the lake though. Sorry, but you're talking to a girl who managed to end up in A&E with frostbite in central London... I was clearly not designed for freezing glacial bathing at altitude. Sorry. To warm up after this little dip, we went to a giant wooden hut where food and lovely warm chai was given out free to pilgrims (and, apparently, to me). The food was a kind of salty yellow porridge which I ate out of politeness thinking I would probably regret it later, but actually it turned out to be magic porridge because I didn't have time to eat anything else all day and yet wasn't even hungry.

The actual temple itself is concrete and hella ugly (sorry, this undeniable), but it's saved by the fact that the setting is lovely. The lake is in a totally peaceful, gorgeous natural hollow surrounded by 6 peaks of Himalayan mountains, which of course you could only see intermittently through the clouds.

I'm going to take this opportunity to have a little rant. See this photo below? Holy shrine and stunning natural beauty of mountains, juxtaposed with MASSIVE PILES OF CRAP. The great nation of India, in general, seems to lack the concept that littering = bad. Even my friendly adopted Sikh family, despite being well educated and otherwise lovely, saw nothing wrong with just chucking plastic bottles into rivers. In the Himilayas! At their own sacred shrine! Seriously, India, what the hell? Such a beautiful country, don't you care? There is an NGO working out of Ghangaria trying to employ locals in refuse collection and encourage people not to dump stuff (hence the fact that the pictured litter is in bags rather than just strewn all over the scenery), but they're really fighting an uphill battle. I obeyed the imploring signs and took my bottles and wrappers all the way back down to Joshimath with me, behaviour everyone else I met found bizarre and hilarious.

So I spent a while chilling (quite literally, it was freezing) up at the lake with Adopted Sikh Family, having my photo taken by literally every single person there. I even went inside the temple and sat for a while listening to the music. I totally lost track of time, then realised I was really going to have to shift to make it all the way back down (7km to Ghangharia then another 14km to Govindghat) before it got dark.

I said goodbye to Adopted Sikh Family, set off and without stopping for food, make it back down to Govhindghat literally just as the sun was setting. That's 28km in one day, entirely either up or down hill. Was a bit knackered, and my legs were doing that thing legs do when you've been walking down a slope for ages and you feel like your knees are going to just give up. But it was a good day! If somewhat random. And the walk down was lovely, if a bit rushed, because the weather finally cleared up and the sky was blue and everything was pretty. That evening, as I was wandering around looking for a hotel, I was accosted by some random guy waving a photo. It was a shot of me and him standing in front of the lake, taken earlier that day when I was patiently posing for snapshots with various random pilgrims. He has somehow managed to print it off in those past few hours. He offered to let me keep it. I politely declined.

Adopted Sikh Family wanted me to come with them to Amritsar (the golden temple), and though I actually do want to see it and it sounds awesome, I did not want to go with them since I would have been entirely crashing their pilgrimage. I did promise I would call them though, then almost immediately after this I lost my Indian sim card and now have no way of contacting them or sending the photos I took. So sorry! I feel awful, and I hope they don't think that I just didn't bother to contact them. I live in hope that they will somehow see this blog.

The journey back to Rishikesh was a fairly uneventful 12 hours spent in the back of a Jeep with 6 Indian men who seemed quite startled by my presence. It turns out that two of them could actually speak perfectly good English, but it took them fully 8 hours to work up the courage to ask me my name. We did have one minor landslide incident to contend with. It wasn't so much a landslide as a bit of the overhanging cliff collapsing onto the road. Our car was first on the scene, but after a few minutes huge queues of traffic built up in either direction. Eventually enough annoyed motorists had massed to just shove the major bits of rubble out of the way (with much singing and chanting), then we (being a Jeep) just drove over / around whatever was left, leaving the trucks and buses to sort themselves out. We passed loads of other half cleared landslides being enthusiastically attacked by government road crews with diggers. It looks like keeping the road open requires a full time work force during the rainy season. Maybe this is why there are no other tourists here?

Back in Rishikesh I was quite happy to see other backpackers, having encountered non for six days. Bonding with the locals is fun, but it is also tiring having the same conversations over and over... and I just wanted a pancake. So I ate some terrible Western food, had an Ayurvedic massage, which was awesome except the woman did weird things to me with her feet, and tried to figure out what to do next...

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Photos

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See? This is the first thing you see at the top, after marching all that way.

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There is actually a very clever little hydroelectric generator providing power for the temple. Clearly SOMEONE is trying to be eco-friendly.

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The driver of our Jeep staring in confusion at the landslide, before anyone else arrived to help.

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Just crap everywhere! ARGH!

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One of the daughters of friendly English teacher lady, collecting holy water to be used at a later date.

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Under my rock, sheltering from the rain.

Comments

[deleted_172116]

Lovely description
Great description - very good observations. The frustrations of living a common man's life in India make recycling sound like over indulgence. But I completely agree with your sense of disgust at the state of things. Hopefully, things are improving with greater awareness and I will see a change when I visit Hem Kund next.

[Kit]

There´s that rain coat again. That is well travelled. Enjoying the blog. Keep writing. With the number of people who have taken your photo it is almost like you are a minor celebrity over there now. Pretty cool.

[anonymous]

super girl!
man youre fit! 28 kilometers up and downhill with a backpack! thats crazy. im 25 years old, male. and ive been working out for three years now but i know i cant endure that much walking in a day. sounds like you can do a triathlon

[Jenniferious]

HA thanks but no, I am totally unfit. The bag I was carrying was only a small one, this was a one off and I really nearly dropped dead.

[Sanju]

Amazing place of Valley of the Flowers
Awesome Collection of Pics and know some more information about Tourist Places in India Your blog is very beneficial for every reader including me. Keep doing the great work so that people like me can learn some nice places.