Flashback: September 2016

I do not have any leave left with me. I still wanted to go on a trek this year some how. I almost became restless for not being able to trek in the lush green woods.

Only way was to use weekend or long weekend. I hit upon https://indiahikes.com/ portal, which offered weekend treks. One of them was "Prashar Lake"

It is actually Parashar Lake I learnt. It is named after Great sage Parashara.

The pictures of the lake looked great. Hurray - I decided to go. I booked it online. Booked the bus tickets too, to Delhi - Mandi (in Himachal Pradesh) and Mandi - Delhi.

There were total 22 trekkers. I was wiser by 20 - 25 years to many of them :)

It was a two day trek. 2nd Sept evening start from Delhi, reach Mandi on 3rd early morning. Indiahikes to collect us from mandi, reach a place called Baggi by mini bus and start the trek. Reach Parashar Lake by afternoon, after trekking about 8 km. Next day morning trek back after breakfast and reach pick up point near Baggi and get dropped at Mandi bus stand and leave for Delhi by night bus. Very simple sweet and short.

So, I backpacked, took my camera bag and landed in Mandi on 3rd early morning. Just created watsapp group by a gentleman, of our trekking group, had already started making "ting, ting" time to time.

Met our guide and the trek lead - Surya and Rajkiran at the defined breakfast spot. Had the break fast. Fellow trekkers started joining in.

A small deviation in the itinerary was that the actual trek started little farther from Baggi.

Rest of the trek was fantastic and went on as per plan. Weather was wonderful.

I as usual, started looking for tiny wonders of the nature and started capturing them as we progressed along. A quite steep but not so long trek route - Lush green - Rodhedendron tress (no flowers, we were late for flowers, it flowers in April may I think) then pine trees as we climbed up and more or less bald hill tops.

Then finally the lake !.

Beautiful view of the lake from south side. The lake has a floating island. It keeps moving time to time it seems. The whole area receives lot of snow in winter and the lake gets frozen completely, it is said.

The temple is dedicated to great sage Parashara. He did "tapasya" here, it is believed. The temple was built some time in 12th century, I understand.

The view of the lake from north side.

Another view of the lake and temple, closer view of the floating island.

We stayed a night in the tent. Small tent but quite good (compared to my other previous trek experience) and relatively good sleeping bags. First day evening was cloudy and then it rained a bit later.

There is a small shop where one can buy some eatables,water bottles and some basic needs. Next to it was our kitchen and dining hall - blue tent.

Now I present my favorite pictures. Lovely, tiny , colorful wonders of nature. Enjoy............

Some of them I could identify, many not. I surf on net and try find the name. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.I am not an expert in botany. I just love them.

I some times wonder - why we call them wild ! ?. They are actually nice, sweet little flowers, soothing. We are wild in fact, we go and trample upon. aren't we ? I leave it you to ponder.