Buran Ghati
The Grand Buffet of Indian Treks
A Trail Diary
Day 1 — May 10, 2026
Shimla (7,470 ft) to Janglik (9,200 ft)
150 km by road
Some journeys begin the moment you step
out of the door. This one began the moment Shimla disappeared in the rearview
mirror.
Five of us in the vehicle — myself,
Sagar, Dr. Deepali, Veena and Jyoti. Five people who had packed their bags,
said their goodbyes, and agreed, without quite saying it aloud, to enjoy the next eight days entirely into the mountains. The air outside was cool
and unhurried, carrying that particular freshness that the hills keep for early
mornings, as though the world has just been washed clean.
We stopped for breakfast somewhere along
the way. Aloo paratha, piping hot, with coffee that steamed in the cool air.
There is something about eating well on the road to a trek — it feels like
ceremony, like the body already knows what is coming and is quietly storing up
warmth and memory in equal measure. We ate without rush. The road was long. The
mountains were patient.
The Pabbar valley drew us deeper with every passing
kilometre — the landscape shedding its familiar, civilised look and growing
wilder, more deliberate, as though it had been waiting for us to notice it
properly. Rohru came first, and with it, the cart road — the tarmac quietly
giving up its ambitions. We stopped for lunch here, hot and freshly made,
served with the unhurried generosity of a small-town restaurant that has no
reason to rush. It felt like a threshold meal — perhaps the last proper restaurant
food for a while. We ate knowing that.
An hour later, we were transferred to Bolero pick-up
vans , a perfect match for the road ahead. The trail into the Pabbar valley is
a narrow, relentless thing — tight U-bends, steep descents, the hillside
pressing close on one side and falling away sharply on the other. The river
appeared far below, glinting between the trees, and we wound our way down
toward it in lurches and turns until, at 3 in the afternoon, Janglik appeared.
He was standing there as we pulled in —
Sumeet, our guide for the week. Young, handsome, with the easy confidence of
someone who has walked these mountains so many times they have become part of
his breathing. . We checked into the
homestay, freshened up, and stepped into the village.
Janglik is the kind of place that makes
you slow down without asking you to. Traditional stone houses, unhurried
people, a temple standing at the village heart with the calm authority of
something that has always been there and always will be. From my window that
evening, I stood longer than I planned — mountains and valleys rolling away in
every direction, apple orchards on the slopes below catching the last of the
afternoon light in gold and green. It was the kind of view that asks nothing of
you except your attention.
We strolled down to the temple as
evening settled in. Some rituals were underway — quiet, devoted, ancient in the
way that mountain worship always feels ancient, as though the prayers here have
worn grooves into the air itself. We watched from a respectful distance, five
city people at the edge of something they could not fully enter but were glad
to have witnessed.
Back at the homestay, we repacked our
bags with the careful deliberateness of people who understand that every
unnecessary gram is a conversation you will regret having at 13,000 feet.
Dinner was warm and filling. And then — custard. My favourite. I ate it slowly,
knowing with complete certainty that this was the last such softness for a
week. A proper bed beneath me. A hot bath already behind me.
Tomorrow, the mountains begin in earnest.
Day 2 — May 11 ,2026 Janglik (9,200 ft) to Dayara Thatch (11,150
ft)
The rain had its own ideas about when we
should leave.
We woke to it drumming steadily on the
roof — not a drizzle, not a suggestion, but a full-throated mountain rain
saying, with some authority: not yet. The cold came with it, the kind that sits
in the corners of rooms and along the backs of your hands. We drank tea. We had
breakfast. We waited. The snow-clad peaks and apple orchards that had glowed in
the afternoon light yesterday, were gone now, wrapped in mist and clouds, the
mountains retreating into themselves like a thought half-remembered.
There is a particular companionship that
comes from waiting together in the mountains. Sagar stretched out his legs and
stared at the ceiling. Dr. Deepali checked her pack for the third time. Veena
and Jyoti sat with their cups and talked quietly, the way you talk when there
is nowhere to be except where you already are. We had barely begun, and already
the trek was teaching us its first lesson — patience is not wasted time.
Patience is how the mountains ask you to arrive.
By 10 am, the clouds relented. Laces
tightened. Packs lifted. The real trek began.
We headed East, climbing moderately
through the village — past houses with carved wooden windows, past a woman
carrying firewood uphill without seeming to notice the weight, past children
who watched us with frank curiosity. On our right, a deep valley opened like a
held breath, green and vast, and far below, invisible but audible, a river
moved through it. The sound rose up through the trees — steady, indifferent,
older than any of us.
An hour and a half of walking brought us
to a small viewpoint perched above the treeline. Last calls home before the
signal disappeared entirely — those brief, necessary conversations where you
say I am fine, the weather is fine, don't worry, and both sides know that the
real message is simply: I wanted to hear your voice one more time before I go
in. A few photographs. Then the pine forest swallowed us whole.
Deep forest has its own silence — not
empty, but full, layered with bird calls and the creak of old wood and the soft
compression of needles underfoot. The trail climbed gently, then grew demanding
through a boulder section where hands found rock almost without thinking. A tea
stall appeared in a clearing, utterly unexpected and completely welcome. .
Two hours of walking had settled
into our legs and our lungs by the time the tea point appeared — a simple hut,
a woodfire for cooking and cups of tea that tasted, as tea always does at
altitude, like the best thing in the world.
Beyond it, through the thinning trees,
glaciers appeared — white and sovereign against a sky still bruised from
morning's rain. We kept walking.
A descent to a bridge over cold, loud
water. A traverse. One more climb. And then the forest fell away entirely, and
Dayara Thatch opened before us like an exhale — vast meadows, green beyond
green, the kind of green that only exists at altitude where the air is clean
and the soil is fed by snowmelt. About hundred trekkers in camp site, their
tents scattered across the enormous ground like coloured punctuation marks in a
very long sentence.
Dal rice at 4 pm, steaming and generous.
We ate the way you eat when your legs have done honest work — deeply,
gratefully, without conversation. Acclimatisation walk around camp as the light
turned orange on the peaks. Then: tea with pakodas at 6 pm, kheer and bhendi
sabzi and phulka at 8 pm, and the mountain dark coming down over everything
like a curtain being drawn from the other side of the sky.
A few slow steps after dinner. Sleeping
bags. The first of many mountain nights.
Day 3 — May 12 ,
2026 Dayara Thatch to Litham (11,600 ft)
The mountain gave us a gentle day, and
we accepted it gratefully.
Pancakes and poha for breakfast — the
camp kitchen performing small miracles at altitude. We left at 8.45 am into a
morning that had decided to be kind: clear sky, light breeze, the kind of air
that makes your lungs feel capacious and your legs feel capable. . Headed East
again, and the pine forest received us without ceremony. The trail descended
gradually, the trees thickening on either side, the light filtering down in
long, dusty shafts through the canopy. And then — without warning — a stream
appeared below us, bright and quick, cutting across the path as though it had
somewhere more important to be. We crossed, boots finding the stepping stones,
and the trail turned and began to climb.
And then the forest simply ended, and
the world opened.
Vast meadows rolled ahead in great green
sweeps, unhurried and enormous. On our right, a valley fell away into depth,
and beyond it, framed with the casual perfection of a landscape that has had
centuries to arrange itself — snow-clad peaks, white and absolute against the
sky. Behind us, the pine forest stood like a curtain we had just stepped
through, dark and fragrant, already belonging to somewhere else.
We stopped. There was nothing else to
do. We took rest. Clicked photos and absorbed that silence.
A tea point in the middle of nowhere
that felt, as all mountain tea points do, like it had been placed there
specifically for you.
We reached Litham at 1 pm with time and
energy to spare — a gift the mountains don't always give.
Litham is quieter than Dayara Thatch,
more intimate, as though it is meant for people who have already proven
themselves willing. The campsite divides itself around a stream — tents on a
first hillock, then the water running cold and clear between mossy stones, then
more tents on the far bank. The stream comes down from Chandranahan lake high
above, fed by a waterfall we could hear and see at a distance, its voice
carrying through the afternoon air like a distant promise. We would be here two
nights. Tomorrow we would go to
Chandranahan lake situated above the waterfall.
After lunch, the afternoon opened
itself. Yellow wildflowers along the stream banks — small, precise,
astonishingly vivid at this height. Snow peaks framed in every gap between the
ridges. Jyoti found a flat rock by the water and simply sat on it for an hour.
There are moments on a trek when doing nothing is the most perfect thing
available, and this was one of them.
But as the sun began its descent behind
the Western ridge, the mountain reminded us where we were. The temperature
dropped with a decisiveness that left no room for argument. One by one, we
began the ritual that would become our evening ceremony for the rest of the
trek — layering. Undershirt first. Then the woollen thermal, pulled on in the
particular way that means business. Two tee shirts over that for good measure.
And finally the down jacket, zipped to the chin. Head cap. Hand gloves. Woollen
socks. Standing there in camp, bundled and slightly ungainly, we looked less
like trekkers and more like people preparing for something — which, of course,
we were. The mountain had made its terms clear, and we dressed accordingly.
Then came the evening's finest
absurdity. Pani puri. At 11,600 feet. With popcorn as the filling.
I cannot explain it. I will not try.
Only say that standing at that altitude, cold pressing in from every direction,
biting into something warm and tangy and completely unexpected, we all laughed
— the sudden, uncomplicated laughter of people who are genuinely happy to be
exactly where they are. . Hot
pasta for dinner — eaten fast, warmth swallowed before it could escape followed
by Jalebi. Sleeping bags pulled to the chin, zipped and tucked, every gap
sealed against the night. Outside, the cold was deepening with a patience that
felt almost deliberate — methodical, unhurried, as though it were saving its
best for the days ahead. We could feel it through the tent walls, pressing in,
taking the measure of us. Sleep came slowly, and on its edges, the cold waited.
Day 4 — May 13
Litham — Chandranahan Lake (13,500 ft) and Back
Some places earn their names from what
they are. Chandranahan — the Moon Lake — earns its name from what it feels like
to stand beside it: as though you have climbed out of the ordinary world
entirely and arrived somewhere that belongs to another order of things.
We left at 8.45 am, turning West before
the stream and then North, following the waterfall's voice upward. The climb
began as most Himalayan climbs do — deceptively gentlee, giving you just enough
confidence before the gradient finds its true intention. Through a boulder
section where the trail became a conversation between hands and feet and rock,
with the waterfall-fed stream rushing alongside us as if to say: keep up, keep
up. Sip water. Rest a moment. Look up. Keep going.
At noon, we arrived.
The lake lay before us, mostly frozen,
holding its silence like something sacred. Around it, the world was white and
still — great peaks standing in a ring as though they had gathered here for a
reason, snowfields descending to the water's edge in smooth, unhurried curves.
The stream at the lake's outlet ran clear and impossibly cold over stones that
had been smoothed by ten thousand years of the same water. We stood without
speaking for a while. Some places require that.
Then we took snow slides down the open
slopes like children who had briefly, joyfully forgotten their ages. Even Dr.
Deepali, the most measured of us, surrendered to the hill with a laugh that
echoed off the far ridge.
Sumeet gathered us and told us what this
place holds.
Chandranahan, he said quietly, is the
sacred abode of Devta Shikhru Maharaj — the local deity of Rohru — who descends
here to take a ritual bath once every five years. The lake is also the home of
Goddess Kali, caretaker and protector of every soul in the Rohru valley below.
Then came the legend of the shoes. The goddess, he explained, is angered by the
impurity of leather near her waters. Should anyone approach with shoes on, she
signals her displeasure immediately — rain begins, or hail, cleansing the offence
from the air. He asked us, gently, not to venture near the lake boundry. We
did. It wasn’t possible to stand in our socks at 13,500 feet beside a goddess's
lake, we felt.
The descent was hard on the knees but
generous to the eyes. Across the valley, on the opposing slopes, clouds moved
in slow procession, their shadows sliding across snow in long, dark shapes —
light and darkness taking turns, the mountains breathing in and out. We stopped
more than once just to be inside that sight.
Back in camp by 2.45 pm, pleasantly undone — the good
kind of tired that settles into the legs and shoulders like a quiet
achievement. Dal rice for lunch, eaten without ceremony, the body accepting
every grain gratefully. Then rest — proper rest, horizontal and unhurried, the
tent warm enough, the sound of the stream close enough.
Evening came in cool and clear. Soup arrived — hot,
simple, held in both hands the way you hold something you are genuinely
thankful for, the warmth travelling from palms to chest like a small kindness.
Dinner followed: mixed sabji, roti, dal rice. The mountains had fed us well all
week, and tonight was no exception.
We retired early, sleeping bags drawn close, the peaks
standing silent in the last of the light outside. Tomorrow — Dhunda camp. And
beyond Dhunda, visible now, inevitable, the pass.
Day 5 — May 14
Litham to Dhunda Camp (13,100 ft)
A short day. A necessary one. The
mountain was saving us for tomorrow.
Tea at 6.30 am, breakfast at 7.30 am,
boots on by 8.30 am. We headed East through meadows still holding the cold of
the night, the grass silver-tipped with dew or frost — hard to say which, at
this height. Streams crossed the path every few hundred metres, each one clear
and quick and cold as memory. We lingered at them more than we needed to,
sitting on boulders, trailing fingers in the water, doing the quiet arithmetic
of people who know that tomorrow will ask for everything they have saved today.
Waterfalls fell on our left, white threads against
dark rock, catching the light as they came down. And then the snow began.
Not the distant snow of peaks and ridgelines we had
been admiring for days — but snow underfoot, real and immediate, the first of
the trek. The boulder section arrived wrapped in it, and everything changed.
Each step became a small negotiation — test the surface, trust it or don't,
shift the weight, move on. Where the snow was soft, your boot sank with a
satisfying crunch and held. Where it had hardened overnight and caught the
angle of the sun, it turned glassy and treacherous, the foot sliding before the
mind had quite registered the danger. We slowed to the pace the mountain
required — deliberate, unhurried, each placement considered. There was no
embarrassment in this slowness. The snow demanded it of everyone equally.
But slowness has its gifts. Moving carefully through
that white boulder field, we had no choice but to look up — and what was around
us was extraordinary. A full 360 degrees of snow-covered terrain, peaks rising
in every direction, the air thin and crystalline and completely still. The
world at this height has a silence that is different from ordinary silence —
fuller, older, as though sound itself has decided that altitude is not its
territory. We stopped more than once, not from tiredness but from the simple
need to stand inside that view for a moment longer.
The gradient climbed gradually, patiently. Breath came
in careful portions. And then, rounding a shoulder of hillside, Dhunda camp
appeared below us — a cluster of tents beside a stream, glaciers arranged in a
quiet semicircle ahead, and rising above it all, framed between two ridgelines
like a painting someone had been working on for centuries — Buran Ghati Pass.
There it was. A notch in the sky at
15,000 feet. A gap between worlds.
We all stopped walking at the same
moment, without anyone saying anything. Sometimes a sight asks for silence and
the body knows it.
Back in camp by 2.45 pm, pleasantly
undone — the good kind of tired that has earned its name. Dal rice for lunch,
eaten slowly, the body receiving every grain like a small act of restoration.
Rest? At 13,500 feet, rest is not as
straightforward as it sounds. The body left horizontal at altitude begins its
own quiet mischief — a dull headache gathering at the temples, the blood making
its sluggish case, an afternoon sleep that steals the night and returns
nothing. The mountain has its own prescription for this hour, and it is not the
sleeping bag. It is movement.
So we walked — without destination,
without urgency, the best kind of walking there is. Down to the stream, where
the water came off the glacier above in a rush of cold purpose, arguing loudly
with every boulder in its path. We found flat rocks and sat on them, feet close
to the current, and let the stream's melody do what mountain water always does
— fill the mind until there is no room left for anything else. It is not a
gentle sound. It is alive, insistent, certain of itself in the way that only
wild things are. We sat inside it and felt, gradually, the day's exertion
loosen its hold.
Around 4 pm, Sumeet called us together
for a quiet but important lesson. Tomorrow was the pass, and the pass demanded
preparation. One by one, he showed us how to strap on the gaiters — those
unglamorous but essential guards that keep snow and debris from entering the
shoes — and then the micro spikes, fitted snugly over the boot sole, their
small metal teeth designed to find grip where smooth snow offers none. We
practiced on the snow patch beside camp, walking back and forth with the
slightly self-conscious air of people learning something they would very
shortly need in earnest. It felt like a rehearsal. It was.
Then the light began its evening work on
the peaks. The sun, angling low toward the western ridge, found the snow faces
around us and set them alight — a deep, slow gold spreading across the summits
one by one, the kind of colour that exists nowhere in ordinary life and appears
here only in this one hour of the day. The mountains, which had been white and
austere all afternoon, became briefly, breathtakingly warm. We watched until
the colour faded and the peaks returned to their cold selves, and the stars began
to appear in the darkening sky above Buran Ghati.
Hot soup at dusk, held in both hands —
warmth travelling from palms to chest, simple and sufficient. Dinner at 7 pm:
mixed sabji, roti, dal rice. And then, at 8, into sleeping bags — earlier than
any of us would sleep at home, and more necessary than we could explain to
anyone who hadn't been here.
Then, before sleep, the oximeter came
out. Tomorrow was the pass, and the pass demanded honesty about where our
bodies stood. I placed the device on my index finger and watched the number
settle: 75. The number sat in the air between me and the device like a verdict.
Dangerously low. No symptoms — no headache, no breathlessness beyond the
ordinary — but 75 is a number that does not leave room for reassurance.
I tried the middle finger. The device
considered. Then: 85.
The relief was physical — a loosening
across the shoulders, a breath let out properly for the first time in a minute.
85. Acceptable. Enough.
Tomorrow's wake-up call: 2.15 am. Above
us in the dark, patient and absolute, the Buran ghati pass waited.
Somewhere in the dark above us, the pass waited. Patient.
Indifferent. Absolute.
Day 6 — May 15 ,2026 | Dhunda (13,100 ft) to Munirang
(11,100 ft) via Buran Ghati Pass 15,000 ft
The day the mountain asks for everything.
Wake up call at 2 am. Tea in the dark at
2.15 am. The world reduced to the small warmth of a cup and the sound of five
people breathing and preparing in silence. A little breakfast at 2.45 am — food
eaten not from hunger but from duty, fuel for the machine. Pack lunch
assembled. Gaiters strapped. Micro-spikes clicked into place. Head torches on.
At 3.15 am in the morning, we stepped
out into a darkness so complete it felt solid.
The snow crunched underfoot with a sound
that carried in the still night air — six pairs of feet marking a path up
through upper Dhunda, past tents still getting ready. Past the last tent, we
turned right, and the mountain showed us what it had been waiting to show us.
Sixty degrees. Snow. Darkness pressing
in from every direction except the small moving circles of our head torches.
The world contracted to that light, to the next footfall, to the breath before
it and the breath after. Nothing else existed or mattered or was required of
you except this: one more step. One more breath. One more step.
The altitude worked its quiet cruelty.
It does not shout. It does not announce itself. It simply makes every breath
slightly less than enough — a constant, nagging deficit that the lungs cannot
quite close. We moved in baby steps, genuine ones, a few inches at a time,
pausing between each to gather what the air was willing to give. Sagar found
his rhythm and held it, steady as a metronome. Veena moved with a focused
determination that made me proud to be walking beside her. At one point,
without a word, Sumeet appeared at my shoulder and took my backpack. I did not
refuse. At 14,000 feet on a 60-degree slope at 5 am in the morning, gratitude
comes without ego.
Then, around 5.15 am, the darkness began
to change.
Not sunrise — not yet — but the first
rumour of it, a grey softening at the edges of the sky, and then a blush of
gold along the ridgeline to the East. And with the light came something the
darkness had been hiding: the sheer scale of where we were. Snow terrain
extending in every direction, peak after peak unfolding in the growing light,
the valley below lost in shadow, and above us — just above us now — the pass.
The sight hit us like a second wind, and for a while, the altitude seemed to
matter less.
But the top of the world does not give itself easily.
The final stretch to the pass was the climb distilled to its purest, most
unforgiving form — sixty degrees on patches of soft and hard-packed snow rising
into the sky, no room for doubt, no margin for a misplaced foot. The micro
spikes bit into the surface with each step, that small metallic grip the only
thing standing between you and a very long slide back down everything you had
just climbed. We moved in absolute silence, each person sealed inside their own
negotiation with the mountain — the burning in the thighs, the tightening
across the chest, the breath that arrived a fraction too late for the effort
that had summoned it. There was no looking around here, no pausing to admire
the view. Eyes down. Next step. Breathe. Next step.
The snow changed texture as we climbed — soft in the
shadowed hollows where the morning sun had not yet reached, then suddenly hard
and glassy where it had, the foot skidding without warning before the spike
found purchase again. Each such moment sent a quiet shock through the system, a
reminder of where you were and what the consequences of inattention were. We
pressed our axes into the slope for balance, leaned into the mountain as though
asking its permission to continue, and continued.
VC Salil Varma
And then, without ceremony, the gradient eased. The
ridgeline appeared above us — sky beyond it, blue and absolute. One more step.
One more. And then no more mountain above us at all.
At 9 am, we stood on the top of the world.
15,000 feet. Wind like a sentence that
will not be finished. And below, on the other side — Sangla valley, green and
remote and wholly beautiful, cradled between glaciated peaks that stretched
away endlessly. We had crossed from one world into another, over the roof of
both.
I am turning 60 now. I thought of that
number standing there at the top, and felt it differently than I ever had
before — not as a weight or a qualification, but as a gift. Sixty years to
arrive at this place, at this hour, in this company. We prayed, all of us, in
our own private ways. I called home. The network had found me at 15,000 feet,
which felt like a small miracle in itself. Photographs. Embraces. A long look
at Sumeet, who returned it with a smile that said more than words at that
altitude would have managed.
Then the rappel.
The descent begins with an act of faith
— strapping into a harness, clipping onto a rope, and leaning backwards over a
70-degree snow wall into empty air. The mind objects to this. The body, if it
has been properly instructed, does it anyway.
VC Jyoti
The snow was soft, treacherous
underfoot, offering none of the grip that hard snow gives. My legs were
carrying six hours of altitude and angle in them. My lungs were still
negotiating. And the man managing the rope from above had his own rhythm, which
did not always match mine. There were moments on that wall — I will not pretend
otherwise — where I sat down on the snow, simply sat down, looked at the sky
above me and the mountain around,
breathed until the breathing felt real again, and then stood up with some
effort and kept going. Not because it was easy. Because stopping was not the
alternative. There is a particular kind of stubbornness that the mountains
teach — not bravado, not performance, but something quieter: I will not be done
yet.
200 feet of rope. And then, at the
bottom, the mountain offered a gift — a long, open snow slope, and nothing left
to hold me back. I let go and slid. 200 feet of pure, exhilarating descent,
speed and cold air and the extraordinary relief of forward motion without
effort. Every gram of tension from the rappel dissolved in those seconds. I
arrived at the base laughing.
We all did. Five people at the foot of a
snow wall, grinning at each other in the late morning light, snacking and
resting and saying nothing very coherent. What was there to say? We had crossed
Buran Ghati.
The descent continued — alternating
between walking and taking long snow slides whenever the slope allowed, which
was often and always welcome. Breathing eased with every hundred feet of
altitude shed. Around 11.30 am, the sky darkened without warning and snowfall
began — soft, silent, almost contemplative, lasting 30 minutes while we walked
through it, snowflakes settling on jacket shoulders and outstretched palms.
Reached Tea point at 2 pm. Packed lunch
came out. Hot tea and egg omelette well deserved for the occasion , was ordered.
Feet propped on a boulder. The pass already felt like it had happened in a
different chapter of one's life.
As we moved on post lunch ,round 3.30
pm, it started raining. As though the mountain wanted to offer every variety of
weather in a single day. We walked into it through a boulder section and then
into a forest unlike any we had seen — trees with silver-grey bark peeling in
thin sheets, the ancient Bhurjapatra, whose skin was once pressed into service
as paper for sacred texts. We walked through history, soaking wet and entirely
uncomplaining.
We reached Camp Munirang at 4.30 pm.
Into tents, out of wet clothes, into dry ones. Tea and Maggie appearing as if
summoned by the precise quality of our need. The warmth of a hot cup held in
both hands after cold and rain is one of the body's oldest, most reliable
pleasures — a pleasure that requires nothing except having been cold first.
The best part was dinner: paneer bhurji,
rotis, rajma curry, rice. Eaten in grateful silence.
By 9 pm. we retired into sleeping bags.
The most honest rest of the entire trek, and one of the finest sleeps of my
life.
Day 7 — May 16
Munirang to Barua (8,235 ft)
The Last Walking Day
The morning came in gold.
We let it. Slept until 7.30 am, a luxury
that felt proportionate to what yesterday had taken from us. The sunlight was
warm on the tent fabric, and there was not a single good reason in the world to
hurry. Tea arrived. Then hot puris and chole — the camp kitchen's generous
farewell — eaten in the kind of companionable quiet that only comes to people
who have been through something together.
The forest was transformed from the
night before — the rain-soaked dark of yesterday afternoon now replaced by a
morning world of extraordinary light and texture. Spruce pine and golden oak.
Maple with its wide, generous leaves. The occasional rhododendron, past its
peak bloom but still holding on, the last light pink flowers among the green
like embers refusing to go out. On the hillside above, shepherds moved their
flocks between the trees, the bells of the sheep carrying down through the air
— a sound so old it seemed to belong to the landscape itself, as though the
mountains had always made this particular music.
A gushing stream to cross, cold and
joyful over the stones. Then the trail levelling, the descent becoming gradual,
the trees beginning to thin. And then — the first houses. Stone and wood,
flat-roofed, built with the compact dignity of architecture that has long since
made peace with altitude and weather. We had come down from the world above
into the world below, and the world below was welcoming us back.
At one house, we stopped without
planning to. A family offered apricot juice — cool, slightly tart, the taste of
the valley — and siddu, a local bread, soft inside its steamed shell, eaten
warm from someone's kitchen. We sat in the sun and ate and drank and let the
morning be exactly what it was: unhurried, generous, complete.
Reached road head at 1 pm. Brief
farewells to trekkers from other groups — the particular warmth of people who
have shared a mountain without sharing a word, who recognise in each other a
common experience that needs no explanation. Then into the vehicle, down the
valley road, and to the Barua homestay.
The house was draped in flowers. A small
field of green peas grew beside the gate with cheerful domesticity. The host
lady welcomed us with the matter-of-fact warmth of someone to whom hospitality
is not an event but a condition of living. Her daughter — five years old,
precise in her opinions, completely unintimidated by five dusty strangers
arriving at her door — regarded us with the frank curiosity of someone who has
always known she is the most interesting person in any room. We loved her
immediately.
Dal rice and kadhi for lunch. A room. A
rest that the body accepted like water accepts a dry riverbed — completely,
immediately, without ceremony.
Then, in the late afternoon — a hot
water bath.
After a week. Seven days of cold wipes
and mountain streams and dressing in layers just to stay warm enough to sit
still. The hot water came down and the week came off — the trail dust, , the
particular tiredness that lives in the shoulder muscles and the arches of the
feet. I stood under it for longer than was strictly necessary.
That evening, the five of us sat
together in the lamplight, going back over the week the way you go over a dream
while it is still fresh — needing to say it aloud before it recedes. The 3 am
start in pitch darkness. The snow wall and the soft rope and sitting down on
the slope to breathe. The snow slides that turned fear into laughter. The pani
puri with popcorn filling. The goddess's lake and snowslides. Sumeet, quietly
present through all of it — taking a backpack without being asked, knowing when
to push and when to wait, telling ancient stories at 13,500 feet beside a
frozen lake as though they were as natural as weather.
We had arrived in Shimla a week ago as
strangers who happened to be making the same journey. We sat here now as
something else. Not friends exactly — something more specific than that, forged
by cold and altitude and the particular intimacy of watching each other be
afraid and keep going anyway.
Saying goodbye to Sumeet the sometime
back was harder than any of us expected. It always is, when the guide has been
genuinely good — when they have not merely shown you the path but quietly
carried some of the weight of it.
Dinner. A little extra, because we
could. More kadhi, more roti, because tomorrow was the road home and the body
deserved one last mountain meal.
Goodnight, Buran Ghati.
Day 8 — May 17,2026
Barua to Shimla
The Road Home
The mountains gave us one last gentle
morning.
We woke up at 7 am to sunlight already
warm in the windows, the Sangla valley spread out below in its full, unhurried
beauty — green terraces, the silver thread of a river, peaks holding their snow
like something they had been entrusted with. Egg bhurji and rotis for breakfast,
hot and simple, eaten at a table with that view. As if the mountains were
sitting with us one last time before letting us go.
Goodbyes to our hosts — the lady of the
house who had made a homestay feel like a home, whose quiet care had been the
right ending to a hard week. Her daughter waved from the doorway with regal
confidence, untroubled by departure, certain that the world would keep sending
her interesting visitors.
We boarded the vehicles and the road
began to unwind in the other direction.
There is a particular quality to the
journey home after a trek. The body is satisfied in a way that ordinary rest
cannot produce — muscles that ache with meaning, lungs that carry the memory of
thin air, legs that know what they have done and are quietly proud of it. The
Baspa river ran alongside the road for a long while, turquoise and unhurried.
Apple orchards passed in dappled light. The valley narrowed as we descended
toward the Sutlej gorge, the mountains receding behind us with that gradual,
indifferent slowness that all great things have when they are done with you.
Lunch somewhere in the middle of the
day. In the vehicle, the conversation wandered back without effort — to the
oximeter reading that had stopped my heart for a moment, to the pani puri and
its popcorn secret, to Veena's quiet determination on the slope before dawn, to
the rituals at the temple in Janglik on the very first evening, which now felt
like it had happened to people we used to be. Eight days that had rearranged
something. You could feel it in how everyone spoke — slower, softer, with the
particular clarity of people who have recently been reminded of what matters.
Shimla arrived at 6 pm in the evening.
The town came up to meet us — traffic, voices, chai stalls, the dense,
purposeful noise of a place that had been going about its business all week
without noticing our absence. The mountains had vanished behind us into the
distance, invisible now, as though they had decided the transaction was
complete.
But something had changed and would stay
changed. You cannot stand at 15,000 feet in the dark at 3 am in the morning,
moving in baby steps toward a pass you cannot see, and come back to ordinary
life entirely unaltered. The mountains do something to the scale by which you
measure things. Problems that once seemed large have a new context. The body,
which we mostly take for granted, has proven itself quietly extraordinary.
Buran Ghati had kept every promise its
name implies. Meadows and streams, snow and sun, a frozen lake with a goddess
living in it, a pass at 15,000 feet crossed before dawn, a 70-degree snow wall
rappelled on legs that had nothing left and did it anyway. A forest of ancient
paper trees walked through in the rain. Apricot juice from a stranger's hands.
Kheer at 11,000 feet. Custard on the first night. And Sumeet — young, steady,
quietly remarkable — holding the whole expedition together from Janglik to Barua
with the effortless competence of someone doing exactly what he was made to do.
A Grand buffet of Indian treks, as they
call it.
Stand at the top of Buran Ghati in the strong cold wind at
15,000 feet, with the Sangla valley opening below you and the mountains
arranged in their ancient silence all around, and you will understand why that
word — buffet — does not even begin to cover it.
Route: Janglik → Dayara Thatch → Litham → Chandranahan Lake →
Dhunda → Buran Ghati Pass → Munirang → Barua → Shimla
Maximum Altitude: 15,000 ft
| Duration: 8 Days |
Month/year : May 2026
Team: Prasanna, Sagar, Dr. Deepali, Veena, Jyoti |
Guide: Sumeet
A big thank you to Giripremi Adventure Foundation, Pune who had
organized this trek.
Buran Ghati - Gallery
A break enroute near Barua
Shephard's hut @ Munirang
Rhododenron , end of the season
Litham to Dhunda camp
Munirang Camp site
A view from tent @ Litham camp site
Litham with a view of Chandranahan & waterfall at back
