My visit to “The Valley of Flowers”
Himalayas are the other name of heaven. They look very beautiful. It has high mountains with flowers and natural beauty. So it’s a wonderful place and it is also known as “The Valley of flowers”.
I and my family members reached Delhi from Hyderabad. The travel agency who took the contract of our tour has received us. It became evening to reach Haridwar from Delhi. At high we made darshan of Ganga harathi and took shelter in a friend’s house which near to it.
Meeting of rivers
Our journey has starts from the next day. The river Alakananda was running with us. We stop at Devprayaga. This is the meeting spot of the Alakananda River with Bhaghiradi River. Bhagiradi rivers come from Gangotri river. Later Rudraprayag comes. This is 165 km away from Haridwar. At Rudraprayag, Alakananda River meets Mandakini River. The meeting of these 2 rivers will look beautiful. We stayed in a guest house in Rudraprayag. We start to govindaghat at early morning 6’oclock in a car and within 2 hours we reached govindaghat. It’s a small place. We took breakfast there and continued our journey by horses. Ghangaria is 13 km away from govindaghat. At that time it started raining and very cold. The way is so narrow and completely filled with rocks. As horses are much habituated with that way so they were continuously moving forward. It was really amazing as those horses are responding when we are them with their names. The horse which I am travelling name is Bhadsha. Though I felt scared of travelling by horse, but due to the beauty of hills and rocks around the way made me forget about all that scariness. After the 6 hours journey we stopped the journey for half an hour to give some rest to the horse. There we have some tiffin paratha and tea. These are available whole way. The river called Lakshmana Ganga runs in the valley. As it is running down and we are travelling up. So while traveling we came across a buendhargir waterfall. Therefore, we reached Ghangaria at afternoon 2.30pm. The people who live in Ghangaria are very good natured people. Their lives are dependent on the tourists. They maintain this place very neat and clean. The People of this place have formed as an NGO group for plastic. The plastic covers and bottles brought by the tourist and thrown were being collected by this group and sent to daharandhun. For every 2km 2 people are cleaning that narrow road though the climate is so cold. By seeing their effort I felt to stop using plastic.
People will be in this place from June to October. Later in winter season the climate becomes cooler. So at that time they shift to a place name Chameli.
We reached the guest house in gangaria. It is very neat and clean. They showed us a short film of “The valley of Flowers”. They served us warm paratha for dinner.
The saptha Srungi Mountains
Our journey starts the next day at morning 5’oclock to hemkund, lokpal tour. This 6km from Ghangaria and it is situated at the height 15,500 feet. The holy place Gurudwar of Sikhs is at there. They believe gurugovind Singh did meditation in previous birth at this place. The atmosphere here is very peaceful. There is a pond named hemkund situated opposite to this gurudwara. The devotees who come here will take bath in hemakund and visit gurudwara. We also took bath and visited gurudwara and prayed there. Then they served warm kichidi and tea to all the devotees. A person is giving hot water to every devote to wash their hands. The toilets in gurudwara are very neat and clean. We even visited lokpal temple and lord Siva temple which are situated beside it. Hindus believe that lord lakhman has performed meditation by carrying lord Vishnu. Lokpal is another name of Lord Vishnu. So Hindus and Sikhs consider this place as mediation land.
There is a Sapthasrungi Mountain on hemkund pond and the mountain is full of lotus flowers. Clouds are floating on the water of this pond. So that place looks very wonderful and beautiful. Our journey started the next morning 8’clock to valley of flowers. Frank S Smith, R.L. Holdsworth is britishers who found this valley and made it popular. While finding the highest mountains people found Kamat Mountain in 1931. So while they are coming down from the mountains they got stuck in the rain. They need to reach the place gangasati. But they reach bhyundar valley. At that time, the clouds were going away and there they saw wonderful scenery which is known as valley of flowers. That place is completely filled with flowers. These britishers were shocked. Till then no person knows about this it seems and only the people who live over there only know about it. Those people thought it was a garden of goddess Parvathi devi. So they used to call it as Deva Bhoomi. That’s why those people never used to enter that garden. They used to believe, if human enters that garden then God will curse them. This valley is 3,658 meters height from the earth. In 1982 government has recognized this valley as ‘National Park of India’. Now this is one of the properties of the world.
Flower valley
We reached near to the beautiful park (the valley of flowers) in a beautiful climate. We purchase tickets and entered into the park. We need to go by foot in the park. After walking 4km we will reach the valley of flowers. By enjoying the beauty of the flowers in the way and by listening to the birds we walked. Then we crossed the river Pushpavathi and reached the valley of flowers. At that time, slight rain started. We found a big rock at one side and 3300m Baminidoor is written on the rock. It is the first step for the valley. How much we walk inside we can see different colors of flowers wherever you see. This flower garden will be up to 8km long and in the middle of these 8km we come across waterfalls and mountains. It looks wonderful with a shining Pushpa river. The flowers orchids, Diacel, Coralville, marry gold, Papillion etc. are in the garden and the butterflies on those flowers. All these make us feel as we are in some dream land. June to October is a good time to visit this flower valley. We enjoyed all those natural beauty and reached our hotel at 4’oclock. They already announced that every day rain falls over there. So we stayed there in the hotel and the next day we started to Godavarighat by horses and reached. There is a facility of going traveling through helicopter to reach Gangaria and this facility is mostly preferred by the people who could not travel through horses. There are many hotels in Gangaria. This valley is present at North side and it is 500 km away from Delhi. We can travel through train or road to reach Haridwar to Delhi. There will be cold climate and rain on the journey of flower valley. So it is good to carry sunscreen lotion, raincoat, umbrella and woolen cloths. The Journey is really a wonderful experience like a beautiful dream.
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