Namaste 🙏
Hope you all are doing great!!!
It was a beautiful morning at the Chikka Campsite after spending experiencing one of the most spectacular phenomena nature has to offer.
Refer to the link below if you haven’t read my last blog about watching the meteor showers here at Chikka Campsite.
We woke up as soon as the daylight fell upon our camps. We slept comfortably last night thanks to our warm sleeping bags and soft mattress that we bought with us. We still had burning coals in our fire pit from last night and so starting the fire again was easy. We all got busy with our morning routines and our plan for the morning was to witness sunrise from the meadows towards the centre of the valley that could be seen from the campsite.
Waking up at Chikka Campsite—
This is the first photograph that I took once I woke up. It was a tranquil and fresh morning with no sign of clouds in the sky. The first thing that I noticed was this beautiful place in the centre of the valley just below the huge mountains from where the river took a right turn towards the deeper parts of the valley. It looked like a place where all elements including mountains, river and the jungle met. I made up my mind to witness today’s sunrise from there and after mutual discussion with my team, we all agreed to do so.
When I looked at the other direction, I saw the sky turning a little red as sun was slowly rising. It looked like everything in the valley was waiting for the sun to rise and make everything more colourful again after a long cold night.
After waking up at around 6:00-6:30 AM, around 7:00 AM, we all were ready to do our first adventure of the day. Most of us had done their morning business after finding a good shit spot in the jungle and we were now ready to go. We kept all our important stuff inside our tents especially eatables to save them from animals while we were away.
The first ray of the sun had already fallen on the mountain and it was slowly reaching towards the meadow where we were planning to visit. We wanted to reach there before the sun. It was a drag race of us against sun now!!!
Start of our journey—
We started from the campsite with only a water bottle and hiking sticks in our hands. It looked like a short 15-20 minutes walk from the campsite. I knew it was going to take a lot longer than that as we needed to make our way through the rockey river bed.
We needed to cross the river first and get on the other bank of the river to continue our journey. Luckily the wooden bridge was still intact and looked strong enough to carry our weight on it.
I kept my camera with me this time while crossing the bridge unlike the last time and I was able to get a couple of good photos. The water in the river felt super cool and the idea of falling into the river was going to be deadly.
Reaching at the bank of Hampta River—
After crossing the river, we were now in the bank of the river. This riverbed looks a lot bigger and you might expect it to be. This is because of a huge cloud burst that happened here last year. This place indeed is very prone to cloudbursts as there is no place for air currents to move from here because of the huge mountains in the front and the sudden turn in the valley.
It felt completely different to walk on the sand now after hiking for so long. It felt like we’re walking for the first time. It was a long way until the end of the riverbed. What we previously thought was a quick 15-20 minute journey was now slowly turning into a short hike of 45-50 minutes.
It felt like forever when we were walking on the riverbed. Luckily we had our hiking sticks with us that made our journey a bit easier. The sun was slowly coming down but we were losing the drag race we were in against the sun so we hurried up.
We were now about to reach towards the end of the riverbed it took us about half an hour to reach here and still our journey was incomplete. No we had to start climbing onto the meadow that connects to the centre of the valley.
Looked like the sun was also rushing and was trying to win. We were confident that we would reach there before the first ray of the sun reached there so we started running.
Climbing up to reach a meadow in the centre of the valley—
We crossed the riverbed and now we needed to hike up this lush green meadow to reach to our destination. We were at about 3000m elevation now and we were in middle of last trees of this valley. The autumn was in its full glory here when we looked at the trees on the other side of the river.
We were stunned to see so many shades of yellow, red and orange there on the other side of the river. The other bank was full of flora and it doesn’t look like a human or any animal could penetrate into it. There were tightly packed bushes with so many trees there all covered in hues of autumn. It was a remarkable sight. The photos are not at all paying justice to what we were seeing from there as there was no sun on that side of the river yet but let me tell you it was mesmerising!!!
Every one of us stopped there to enjoy this amazing autumn wonderland and take photos. Sun was slowly coming downwards and we were able to see the deeper part of the Hampta valley now. It was indeed a big valley and we were not even halfway through it. What I saw from here was barren mountains covered in dry grass and Hampta river coming through it.
After climbing onto this little meadow, the trail now almost led us back to the riverbank. Sun was also about to shed its first rays on the meadow where we were headed to.
I looked back to see how much I’ve traveled. To be very honest it doesn’t looked much when I looked back. Our camp was still visible but we only knew how long it took us to reach here. It usually happens in high altitude areas when there are less trees, we loose sense of scale.
Experiencing the first rays of sunlight—
There were we!!!
The sun and us, we reached at our destination at the same time. We witnessed this beautiful sunrise from there. The sun was shining so bright that we almost got blinded. It felt like the sun is making everything alive again after the night made it dead.
The sun rays were falling only on one side of the river and the other side was still dark. You can see the contrast in the photo below. The sun shined so bright that it immediately warmed us from within and made us happy.
We decided to sit there for a few minutes and enjoy the mesmerising views that this place had to offer. We were alone there in the nature and experiencing sunrise like this made me forget all my worries. I was super happy from within.
I thought of taking a little sunbath there as everything was so perfect. We were not at all feeling cold and everything was at perfect temperature. The rays of morning sun was making every cell of body alive!!! I never felt so alive in a long time.
We sat there for a while before heading back to our camp. Our plan for today was to pack our breakfast and head to Jobra Campsite about which I’m gonna write in another blog.
That’s all for today.
Thanks for passing by.
Peace ☮️
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Wow, the place is extraordinarily beautiful.
Looks like a very beautiful mountain
Hiya, @lauramica here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Honorable Mentions in Travel Digest #2379.
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