A Regular Adventure in Solang Valley with the Toyota Hilux

Every year, whenever 'Solang Skyultra' is organized in Solang Valley, I enjoy it a lot because I get to do a lot of trekking in Solang Valley. In the last few years, due to this event, I have visited many places located around Solang Valley such as Beas Lake, Patalsu Peak, Friendship Peak, Bhrigu Lake, Kothi Top, Anjani Mahadev and British Bridge. All the places here are above 2450 meters and if one walks straight for even 2 km, then one reaches above the tree line.

Anyway, today's post is also related to roaming around Solang. I and my friend who has a Toyota Hilex truck, roamed around a lot on 11 October. There was no place in Solang Valley where there was a road and we could not go. Solang Valley is located at 2450 meters and is located in the state of Himachal Pradesh. It is difficult to find such a place in the Himalayan mountain range because it is difficult to find a valley so close to the road in the Himalayas.

So our day starts at 5 am, as per the order we have to go to Goshal from where we have to send the runners towards Jogini waterfall while showing them the way ahead. Runners came one by one on a wooden bridge built on the Beas river, whom we diverted to the right path. Here we stood till about 07:30 am, if I talk about early morning, there are clouds right now and it seems that it will rain but who knows when the weather changes in such valleys.

And that is what happened, at about 8 am the sun rises in the valley, the reign of pink rays is seen establishing on the Friendship Peak, all the mountains are behaving like small children while I am enjoying this wonderful view from a distance. The Beas river is flowing at its speed which comes flowing from the Pir Panjal and Dhauladhar range and goes down to the state of Punjab. This bridge was broken in the disaster last year and it took about 2 months to build it.

We finish our work here and move ahead, now we have to go towards British Bridge. The runner will come here running from Mori Dug and will climb the difficult and steep climb of Bhrigu Lake at 4250 meters after passing through 14 turns. I bow down to the spirit of the runners who run 100 km. By now the sun has come out and the whole landscape is blooming in the sunlight. We have parked the hilex under a walnut tree.

We sit near the British Bridge till the last runner crosses from here. The last runner crosses at 12 o'clock for which we had to wait for a long time. After taking all the runners towards the right path, we start descending. The road is broken on the way which the JCB is trying to repair. With the fast flow of water coming from the top of the mountain, big boulders come flowing into this drain every time and block this kutcha road.

On the way, we find the forest department guest house, it is located above Kothi village and I like its location very much because a very beautiful view of the valley is visible from here. The height here is 2850 meters and this guest house is also about 3 km away from the main road, so there is no road noise here. Going a little further from here, we see the view of the valley and spend about 15 minutes feeling the peace present here.

In the afternoon, we go straight to Solang Valley, where after lunch we get the order to go to Palchani Nala from where the runners will go towards Beas Lake. At this point, the runners will be sent ahead only after checking their mandatory gears, so we have been sent to do this work. It is good that we have come by hilex otherwise no other small vehicle would have been able to reach such broken mountain roads because we had to use 4x4 at some places.

Palchani is situated at an altitude of about 2900 meters, we park the vehicle here near the newly built hydro project and walk a little further where there were hydration points for the runners. There are Shepherd's sheep and goats here who are screaming and eating grass. The flow of Beas is faster here because Beas Lake is very close from here. Moreover, this is a high area from where the river is falling down rapidly and its water is hitting the stones situated on the river bank.

We stay here till about 7 o'clock, when our work is done, as per the order, we go back to Solang Valley. Solang was 9 km from here which did not take much time to cover. We reach Solang at around 07:30 and drink hot tea and talk about the day and get to know about the runners who performed well in the smaller categories and meet them and congratulate them for winning. So this was our day in which we visited different places of Solang Valley while fulfilling all our responsibilities.

Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to translate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from canon 77D, Sony a7iii and edited in lightroom, post thumbnail created in adobe photoshop.