Trekking over the Jalori Jot - Sept 2012

I will start with a little geography before I launch into my account. The Beas and Sutluj watersheds are separated by a range crossed by a motor able road at the 3300m high Jalori pass connecting Kulu with Shimla. The region on either side of the pass is known as the Seraj. Weaving through picturesque countryside and with sparse traffic, the roads in the Seraj are quite suitable for trekking. One can walk all the way from Banjar to Jalori and then on to Khanag and Aut utilizing short cuts where available and staying in village homes and this can be a pleasant trek. However, besides the roads, there are also numerous walking trails connecting the remote villages and these certainly make for more interesting treks. After spending a few days in the region I came to know of one such trail, relatively unknown to outsiders, that leads from the village of Gada Gussain to the Jalori pass and I decided to walk this trail.

Getting to Gada Gussain

The road to Gada Gussain branches off to the west from the main Banjar – Jalori road at Jibi village. I spent the night in a guest house at Ghyagi, just a half hour walk from Jibi so getting there in the morning was not a problem. At Jibi I found out that there are only two busses daily for Gada Gussain. With an hour left for the first bus, it made sense to continue walking and catch the bus when it passed by.

PWD guest house at Gada Gussain

Past the village of Bharti Dhar a few km from Jibi, the road climbs up in a series of switchbacks through a forest of Pine and Deodhar. Attempting short cuts, I stupidly missed noticing that the switchbacks had ended. Hopelessly lost, I eventually retraced my path to find that the bus had passed by; my only option was to keep walking. Late afternoon, while still an hour away from Gada Gussain, my luck turned. My walking companion, a local villager, flagged down a pickup truck and we jumped in. The short ride standing in the rear of the open truck will remain etched in memory. The truck hurtled over the rough gravel road at great speed, throwing us in random directions, getting us airborne repeatedly, testing arms and sockets to their limits. Was I happy to get out without injury!

Gada Gussain is located in a beautiful valley with a stream. The PWD guest house occupies the pride of place, set in the midst of a green carpeted field at one edge of the valley. One look and my heart was set on staying there. The chowkidar readily agreed to give me a room. He also helped me find a guide, Roshan Lal, a small farmer, who was willing to interrupt his current store painting job to accompany me to Jalori.

My plans for a quiet evening chatting up the chowkidar were spoilt with the arrival of two brothers, wholesale merchants from Mandi, who had come to procure vegetables. A call from their PWD engineer contact in Mandi had got them the best room at the guest house. (I escaped unceremonious eviction as there was luckily a second, less attractive, room.) They were well prepared for the evening and promptly commissioned the chowkidar to cook mutton procured locally. As the evening progressed, they become increasingly drunk and boisterous. However my attempts over several hours to get them to reveal the secrets of the wholesale vegetable trade proved futile. The dinner which they greatly enjoyed was a disaster as far as I was concerned - the mutton of the pahadi goat was too tough for my city bred jaws.

View from above Alwa village

Gada Gussain (2285m) to Jalori (3045m)

Roshan Lal arrived bright and early at 6 am. After a short walk to the edge of the field, we launched into a steep climb. Soon we were getting a bird’s eye view of Gada Gussain with its pretty grey slate roofed houses. An hour later, we walked through the village of Alwa past families already at work, preparing fodder for storage for the approaching winter. The striking view from the trail was now of row upon row of mountains each taller than the previous, the colors ranging from dark green of the coniferous trees in the foreground to the bleak white of  the jagged snow peaks in the background.  I could not identify the individual snow peaks, but the broad sweep ranged from Rohtang jot and other peaks of the Pir Panjal in the north to those of the Shrikhand Mahadev range in the east.

At 8.30 am, we stopped for breakfast at a clearing. We had climbed over 500m without a break, something I could do only because Roshan Lal lifted my backpack. Regaining my breath, I absorbed the landmarks on view - Madhupur Garh (fort), sitting on a ridge to the South-West and Ragupur Garh , visible as a speck on a practically treeless hill rising across a deep valley. Raghupur Garh lay on our route to Jalori. We would be able to get there without descending into the valley separating us along the line of sight, simply by staying on the ridge we were on which circled around to the fort.

Kunala thatch

 When we resumed, the climb became more gradual. Just above 3000m, we entered a beautiful forest of Kharsu (Oak). The going from here on was more or less level with gradual ascents and descents. After a half hour walk into the forest, we started getting glimpses of meadows – natural grasslands seasonally used for grazing, called bugyals in Uttarakhand and thatch locally. Emerging from the forest, we passed a beautiful meadow in a depression below us surrounded on all sides by Oak, the Kunala thatch. It was an idyllic setting to camp or just spend a day but we had to be content with clicking a few pictures.

Further on, at a place called Sukhsar, we stopped at the edge of a long rectangular field with standing water and sporting a paddy like grass. Roshan Lal identified it as the ‘Pandavo ka khet’ and proceeded to tell me the local legend associated with it. 

Pandavo ka khet

The pandavas during their vanvas camped here one night and planted the rice. Before they were quite done, people at a nearby village woke up to the sound of barking dogs and the pandavas had to leave in a hurry. It was the magic of the pandavas presence that could make paddy grow at these heights, but the paddy will never yield rice because of their abrupt departure.

We were now not far from the fort; one could get a glimpse of it on the hill top right behind the khet. But it still entailed a climb of 200m. The top of the hill was a giant meadow bereft of any trees. Normally, it would be an easy walk up the 45 degree slope. But after walking for nearly 6 hours and climbing over 700m, my legs were ready to buckle under. Half way up, the slope was broken by a depression hosting a lovely little pond, its waters reflecting hill and cloud. A couple of young boys, barely in their teens, were keeping an eye on their cows grazing below – the first humans we saw after leaving Alwa. We reached the fort – consisting of the ruins of a boundary wall of stones and a small temple, not counting an ugly pilgrim shelter of recent date – just after noon. At 3200m, this was the highest point in the trek to Jalori.

Approaching Ragupur Garh

 It was indeed a great location for a fort, commanding its approaches from all directions. I stopped to absorb the grand panorama, the green carpeted mountains playing with the clouds and the road snaking up from Shoja far below past the structures at Jalori pass. The descent to Jalori took us just 45 minutes and we were there before 2pm.

Over lunch, the thanedar at Jalori evinced keen interest in my trek thus far and volunteered advice on how to go about the rest of it. I learnt that I could stay at a tented camp at Jalori and then find someone to guide me to Khanag and beyond. For reasons that I cringe to disclose – actually the anticipation of a tasty home cooked meal at the Ghyagi guesthouse – I ignored his advice and took a lift with the Kulu SP (again arranged by the helpful thanedar) back to Ghyagi, and returned to Jalori by bus the next morning, loosing valuable time.

View from the fort

Jalori to Khanag via Saryolsar

My first target this morning was Saryolsar Lake and I got off to a brisk start with a backpacker couple from Israel. The level trail lead in the opposite direction to Raghupur Garh and we shortly passed the tented camp mentioned by the thanedar. A pleasant couple of hours walk through the woods got us to lake.  

It was a small lake in very beautiful surroundings but with excessive human intervention around it for my liking. The lake was fenced all around and a concrete walkway paralleled the fence. A pretty little temple stood at a height to one side. The walkway was stained with oil and the strong smell of ghee was ever present. It was only later that I found out that the temple and lake were dedicated to Budhi Naagin, the local goddess of ghee! A practice associated with worship here was walking around the lake pouring ghee in an unbroken line.

Saryolsar Lake

 Drinking chai at a dhaba above the temple, I met my guides for the next stretch – a young local couple who had come to pray at the temple. Khanag was just a small detour for them and graciously agreed to the extra walk to help me out. The walk down was for the first part through forest and then entered cultivated areas. During the descent, a vast panorama opened before us with hills and valleys and far flung settlements seen from high up. We negotiated many trails going off in different directions – I would have certainly been lost without my guides. An hour and a half later, we reached Khanag and said our goodbyes.                       

My trek ended at Khanag rather abruptly. Khanag has a well located and comfortably furnished PWD guest house – the only place with a toilet facility - and that was where I was headed, confident of getting a room. As luck would have it, a landslide blocking the road to the south of Jalori had brought a PWD repair team to the area. The engineer who was present at the guesthouse flatly refused to entertain my request, though I was convinced from the caretaker’s demeanor that rooms were available. A bus to Ani followed by another to Sainj allowed me to spend the night in a decent budget hotel looking out on the Sutluj.