Hiking Through Kothi Forest and Caught in the Rain

After travelling 600 kms by bus, I reached Solang Valley which is situated at 2450 meters and here I have to volunteer in a running event. My work right now is that I have to mark the route so that the runners do not get lost in the forest. I am staying at Hotel Adventure Valley in Solang which is a very beautiful hotel built on the banks of the Beas River. The weather outside is clear and taking advantage of this, I set out to mark the route.

I walk 5 kms from the hotel to Kothi from where I have to mark the route up to the 14th turn, I start marking the trail by walking slowly. It has not been long since I started walking and grey and black clouds have started hovering over my head. Looking at them, it seems that it can rain very heavily anytime. Now I am thinking that I should have brought an umbrella while leaving the hotel so that I could avoid getting wet.

While walking, I meet an uncle and when he asks me, I tell him that the markings are being done because a 100 km long trail run is going to be held on 5 October. Uncle looks at me with surprise and says that it is very difficult to run in these mountains… I nod my head in affirmative after listening to him and get back to my work.

It has started raining and I have barely been able to mark 2 km of the route. I stand under a pine tree and wait for the rain to stop but my wait goes in vain. Now along with the rain, lightning is also striking and there is thunder in the clouds. It seems that the lightning will fall directly on me, everyone is afraid for their lives.

I stop and do not go further and think it is better to go back, tomorrow the weather will be fine and tomorrow I will do the remaining marking. I start walking back soaking wet. I reach the kothi in 30 minutes from where I had started marking and it takes me 1.5 hours to reach the hotel after walking 5 kms from here. I am completely soaked on reaching the hotel and shivering with cold.

Without wasting time, I quickly take a bath in hot water, drink hot tea and have lunch. So this was my day today which did not go as well as I had thought. I will do the remaining marking tomorrow if the weather is good. See you in the next post, till then keep walking.

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 one plus phone and thumbnail photo edited in adobe photoshop.