About
the Book
This is a book on high-altitude trekking in the
magnificent Himalayan range in Himachal Pradesh, India, and the flora and fauna
that inhabit it. It is also much more. The treks described in such detail are
pegs on which the author has draped the entire tapestry of the mountains-the
life of local communities, their unique customs, mythology, the challenges of
"development" in ecologically fragile landscapes, the politics of
environmental conservation, the rapid transformation overtaking these remote
regions which, unfortunately, are not exempt from the effects of progress (as
we define it in its limited way). The book covers four enthralling treks
through the Great Himalayan National Park in Kullu
district, inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in July 2014-perhaps the
first time that this unique nature reserve has been depicted in such faithful
and loving detail. Eight other treks in the districts of Chamba,
Kullu, Kangra, Lahaul and Spiti, Shimla, and Kinnaur complete a
fascinating account spread over 20 years.
The Trails Less Travelled
is, in essence,
both a celebration of wild Nature and documentation of a valuable legacy that
may not survive the next 20 years. It needs to be treasured for both these
reasons.
About
the Author
Avay Shukla belong to the Indian
Administrative Service and has served in Himachal Pradesh for 30 years. He is
president of the Himachal Pradesh Trekking Association, and a founder member of
the Ecotourism Society of India. He is an unapologetic conservationist and has
quite often found this clashing with his role as a government servant, a trait
portrayed honestly in this book. His passion for nature has seen him tramping
up and down the remotest areas of this mountain state for the last 20 years.
His detailed account of some of the major and more difficult treks is unique in
that he brings to bear on these journeys his administrative insights and
experience, which adds depth and perspective to his observations and narrative.
The author is now retired and
settled in a small village (pop.225;224 when his wife
dumps him for Delhi, which is quite often) 20 km above Shimla.
He is a relentless blogger and spends his remaining time tending to his apples
plants and looking for golf balls that he unerringly drives into the forests
every time.
Introduction
Himachal offers the nature-traveller and trekker the entire
gamut of the Himalayas-from the Shivalik foothills to
the mid-Himalayas, to the trans-Himalayas, to the Greater Himalayas in the
northernmost districts of Lahaul-Spiti, Chamba, and Kinnaur. In keeping with this variety of
terrain, it has the most variegated trekking portfolio for the
adventurous-minded: cold deserts, high mountains, alpine pastures, dense
forests, and windblown passes. Embedded in this God-sculpted terrain are the
most beautiful lakes and water bodies imaginable, majestic glaciers that dare
Man to approach them, and rivers and streams gushing with the sheer joy of life
as they flow down to the distant plains to sustain hundreds of millions of
lives. Adding to this richness is the abundance of wildlife at high
altitudes-Himachal has 12 per cent of its geographical area (almost 7,000 sq.
km) under the Protected Area Network comprising 2 national parks and 32
wildlife sanctuaries. Almost all of the high-altitude trekking routes pass
through these protected areas and offer the traveller the unique opportunity of
sighting the rare wildlife of these temperate forests and alpine pastures,
including the highly endangered snow leopard, Spiti
wolf, musk deer, and western tragopan pheasant. There
are also the black bear, brown bear, ghoral, bharal, common leopard, and moral pheasant.
The state has a very strong and distinctive cultural
D A, which becomes immediately evident to persons who travel off the beaten
track and into the interiors where the linkage to tradition is still valued.
Himachal is known as "Dev Bhoomi"
or the land of gods, and every little village and valley has its own devta or deity, imbuing each trek with its own mythological
aura and adding a unique facet to one's travels in the more remote areas. Every
local devta has his list of
"dos" and "don'ts" and these have to be scrupulously
respected. The Pandavas of Mahabharata fame are believed to have spent some period of
their exile in the mountains of Himachal; the interiors are replete with
stories (and landmarks and features) of their travels.
The ubiquitous tentacles of development, however, are
taking a massive toll on the state's natural assets and it is almost certain
that most of the landscapes (and the lives, culture, and myths they contain)
described in these pages would be altered beyond recognition within the next 10
years, or would simply cease to exist. The rapacious quest for ever-higher GDP
figures and rent-seeking by successive governments are ensuring that an
increasing number of cement plants, hydel projects,
road construction, and unregulated proliferation of the internal combustion
engine have crept into the most interior and pristine areas of the state and
are now eating into its innards like some unstoppable cancer. Dense forests are
being devastated (more than 100 sq. km of forestland and 7,00,000 trees have
been sacrificed for the purpose in the last 20 years), rivers and streams are
being recklessly dammed, diverted and dried up, valleys are being filled up
with the debris of road and other construction activities. The beautiful, once
untouched natural landscape of the state is witnessing the ever-enlarging
footprint of modern man. There is, therefore, a certain
poignancy in the actual writing of the pages that follow for what they describe
may not exist in a few years-the gods would be remembered by no one, the
caveman would have been relocated to a new concrete building, and the tragopan would have vanished into the mists of time.
Contents
Introduction |
9 |
Treks in Shimla
District |
15 |
Treks in Kinnaur
District |
35 |
Treks in Kullu
District |
|
Dhela Thatch-The Heart of the Great Himalayan National Park |
53 |
Tirath-The Glacier and the Blue Sheep |
67 |
Rakti-Sar-The Glacial Womb |
85 |
Jivanal |
101 |
Hamta Pass |
119 |
Chandrakhani Pass to Malana |
133 |
Treks in Lahaul
and Spiti District |
149 |
Pin
Parbat-A Tale of Two Rivers and a Pass |
149 |
Chandratal to Baralacha Pass |
185 |
Treks in Kangra
District |
210 |
Chhota Bhangal |
210 |
Bara Bhangal-The Forgotten Valley |
226 |
Acknowledgements |
249 |
Index |
251 |
About
the Book
This is a book on high-altitude trekking in the
magnificent Himalayan range in Himachal Pradesh, India, and the flora and fauna
that inhabit it. It is also much more. The treks described in such detail are
pegs on which the author has draped the entire tapestry of the mountains-the
life of local communities, their unique customs, mythology, the challenges of
"development" in ecologically fragile landscapes, the politics of
environmental conservation, the rapid transformation overtaking these remote
regions which, unfortunately, are not exempt from the effects of progress (as
we define it in its limited way). The book covers four enthralling treks
through the Great Himalayan National Park in Kullu
district, inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in July 2014-perhaps the
first time that this unique nature reserve has been depicted in such faithful
and loving detail. Eight other treks in the districts of Chamba,
Kullu, Kangra, Lahaul and Spiti, Shimla, and Kinnaur complete a
fascinating account spread over 20 years.
The Trails Less Travelled
is, in essence,
both a celebration of wild Nature and documentation of a valuable legacy that
may not survive the next 20 years. It needs to be treasured for both these
reasons.
About
the Author
Avay Shukla belong to the Indian
Administrative Service and has served in Himachal Pradesh for 30 years. He is
president of the Himachal Pradesh Trekking Association, and a founder member of
the Ecotourism Society of India. He is an unapologetic conservationist and has
quite often found this clashing with his role as a government servant, a trait
portrayed honestly in this book. His passion for nature has seen him tramping
up and down the remotest areas of this mountain state for the last 20 years.
His detailed account of some of the major and more difficult treks is unique in
that he brings to bear on these journeys his administrative insights and
experience, which adds depth and perspective to his observations and narrative.
The author is now retired and
settled in a small village (pop.225;224 when his wife
dumps him for Delhi, which is quite often) 20 km above Shimla.
He is a relentless blogger and spends his remaining time tending to his apples
plants and looking for golf balls that he unerringly drives into the forests
every time.
Introduction
Himachal offers the nature-traveller and trekker the entire
gamut of the Himalayas-from the Shivalik foothills to
the mid-Himalayas, to the trans-Himalayas, to the Greater Himalayas in the
northernmost districts of Lahaul-Spiti, Chamba, and Kinnaur. In keeping with this variety of
terrain, it has the most variegated trekking portfolio for the
adventurous-minded: cold deserts, high mountains, alpine pastures, dense
forests, and windblown passes. Embedded in this God-sculpted terrain are the
most beautiful lakes and water bodies imaginable, majestic glaciers that dare
Man to approach them, and rivers and streams gushing with the sheer joy of life
as they flow down to the distant plains to sustain hundreds of millions of
lives. Adding to this richness is the abundance of wildlife at high
altitudes-Himachal has 12 per cent of its geographical area (almost 7,000 sq.
km) under the Protected Area Network comprising 2 national parks and 32
wildlife sanctuaries. Almost all of the high-altitude trekking routes pass
through these protected areas and offer the traveller the unique opportunity of
sighting the rare wildlife of these temperate forests and alpine pastures,
including the highly endangered snow leopard, Spiti
wolf, musk deer, and western tragopan pheasant. There
are also the black bear, brown bear, ghoral, bharal, common leopard, and moral pheasant.
The state has a very strong and distinctive cultural
D A, which becomes immediately evident to persons who travel off the beaten
track and into the interiors where the linkage to tradition is still valued.
Himachal is known as "Dev Bhoomi"
or the land of gods, and every little village and valley has its own devta or deity, imbuing each trek with its own mythological
aura and adding a unique facet to one's travels in the more remote areas. Every
local devta has his list of
"dos" and "don'ts" and these have to be scrupulously
respected. The Pandavas of Mahabharata fame are believed to have spent some period of
their exile in the mountains of Himachal; the interiors are replete with
stories (and landmarks and features) of their travels.
The ubiquitous tentacles of development, however, are
taking a massive toll on the state's natural assets and it is almost certain
that most of the landscapes (and the lives, culture, and myths they contain)
described in these pages would be altered beyond recognition within the next 10
years, or would simply cease to exist. The rapacious quest for ever-higher GDP
figures and rent-seeking by successive governments are ensuring that an
increasing number of cement plants, hydel projects,
road construction, and unregulated proliferation of the internal combustion
engine have crept into the most interior and pristine areas of the state and
are now eating into its innards like some unstoppable cancer. Dense forests are
being devastated (more than 100 sq. km of forestland and 7,00,000 trees have
been sacrificed for the purpose in the last 20 years), rivers and streams are
being recklessly dammed, diverted and dried up, valleys are being filled up
with the debris of road and other construction activities. The beautiful, once
untouched natural landscape of the state is witnessing the ever-enlarging
footprint of modern man. There is, therefore, a certain
poignancy in the actual writing of the pages that follow for what they describe
may not exist in a few years-the gods would be remembered by no one, the
caveman would have been relocated to a new concrete building, and the tragopan would have vanished into the mists of time.
Contents
Introduction |
9 |
Treks in Shimla
District |
15 |
Treks in Kinnaur
District |
35 |
Treks in Kullu
District |
|
Dhela Thatch-The Heart of the Great Himalayan National Park |
53 |
Tirath-The Glacier and the Blue Sheep |
67 |
Rakti-Sar-The Glacial Womb |
85 |
Jivanal |
101 |
Hamta Pass |
119 |
Chandrakhani Pass to Malana |
133 |
Treks in Lahaul
and Spiti District |
149 |
Pin
Parbat-A Tale of Two Rivers and a Pass |
149 |
Chandratal to Baralacha Pass |
185 |
Treks in Kangra
District |
210 |
Chhota Bhangal |
210 |
Bara Bhangal-The Forgotten Valley |
226 |
Acknowledgements |
249 |
Index |
251 |