The Prologue

Today I am going to share the story of my snow trek to Prashar Lake and some pictures from this beautiful trek. I am not that fond of trekking but my friends insisted to have some adventure done, so I said yes. By the way, my usual trips are also full of adventure as I always happen to get caught in wrong place at wrong time and this was no different 😁

Prashar Lake, located about 50 KMs from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, is one of the best offbeat places in Himachal. It offers solitude and peace to anyone traveling to the place, especially in winters. In summers, the bus reaches the top so you will find many people up there, especially the groups of budding travel/trekking agencies. In particular, you will find Prashar Lake beautiful when it is lush green in monsoon time OR when it is partially/fully frozen surrounded by white gold I call snow. Anyways, my family has banned my travel in the month of monsoons to the Himalayas, so wish to see lush green surroundings of Prashar Lake is out of the question for me 😁 😁 . Hence, I decided to go ahead with this winter trek to Prashar Lake with some friends.

Day 1 | Delhi – Mandi – Prashar Lake

I could not believe as I was making this trip in just three weeks apart from my family trip to Mukteshwar - Sattal for which also I will write the travel tale soon. At around 12.30 AM, my friends Saurabh and Aashish came to my house and son we were cruising on NH-1. However, after a couple of hours, the sleep took over and we decided to park the car at Karnal and take a power nap. By 4.30 AM we woke up and had a round of tea at the Dhabha before headed to pick up Bikramjeet from Chandigarh.

We picked up Bikramjeet around 7.30 AM but then welcomed by dense fog on sections of Kharar – Khurali to Ropar – Kiratpur. Once we crossed Kiratpur, well the hell broke loose on the highway 😀 … The famous potholes and truck traffic on road from Kiratpur to Bilaspur treated our car in a hard way. After the struggle up to almost Sundernagar, we found fine roads all the way up to Baggi Village, which is the base of Prashar Lake trek in winters.

We reached Baggi Village at 2.30 PM and weather was very gloomy. Prashar Lake was still 20 KMs out of which one about 11-12 KM was motorable. This meant we had to trek in the snow for last 8-9 KMs and I said the adventure begins 😀 … The chances of snowfall seemed inevitable and now the biggest question was how do we trek in snowfall with only a few hours left for dark. We talked to few locals and they recommended against trekking but then there was no place to stay in Baggi Village. We decided to park the car in Baggi Village and hire a local pickup truck to drop us to last motorable spot on the road.

The driver charged us about Rs 800 and shared his number so that we can call him to pick us back the next day. Now, we were on the road and really the snow trek to Prashar Lake was a reality. After about half an hour I was huffing and puffing. Well, then we realized how smart were we. We carried Milk, Maggie, Chocolates, Rum, etc.. BUT NO WATER to DRINK 😛 😛 😯 😯 … I was a little worried but then had to accept the hard fact to keep myself motivated. By the way, you lose more water in snow treks and does not actually realize. After about an hour and a half without water, finally, a group of locals was coming down who offered the water from the holy lake to us. I thought what else do you want 🙂 …

After few gulps, the morale was super high now and everything around including the sunset views looked more beautiful. Slowly and steadily, we marched towards the PWD Rest House and when it was about a KM left, I saw Ram Singh who was the caretaker was coming down with a water bottle for us. Thanks to the dhabha uncle whom we requested to give him a call is possible when he reaches down as our phones had no signals in between the jungle. When people ask me why do I love the Himalayas so much, well, this is one perfect example of simple living locals ready to offer help to anyone. There was nothing but thanks from the bottom of my heart to Ram Singh.

Finally, we reached the PWD Rest House and Ram Singh went in to prepare the tea for us. The toilets were closed as pipes freeze in winters so toilet meant the all open grounds of the jungle. But, then there are bears too so no one wanted to go for it in dark 😉 😉

Ram Singh gave a room heater to us to get some heat but well, here comes the best part, "Bikram put the gloves on it to dry them and they caught fire". Very soon the room was filled with toxic fumes that left us with no choice than to open the windows and sleep with the cold wind coming inside 😯 😯 ... Saurabh and I had to sleep in this room and we were worried because there is no medical help around in miles in case we slept inhaling the smoke. However, with windows open, we were optimistic and dozed off after this tiring & eventful day for us.

Have you ever been to Prashar Lake? How was your experience or are you looking forward to visiting it in winters? Do share you experiences or questions in comments section. 🙂 🙂

Stay tuned for the next day story in coming week.

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About Me

A travel blogger by heart, a lover of the Himalayas by soul and a software engineer by profession. Here, on Steemit, you can get to know more about me by reading my introduction post at the link An intro of a twisted DEVIL :-) ... You can find me spreading smiles in the Himalayas through my travel blog & community forums where I write about traveling and promoting responsible travel in the Himalayas.

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