Off beaten track

Valley of Flowers and Hemkund -a Trek to Paradise The Valley of Flowers     Climbing the last kilometer is strenuous, I sweat despite the mild cold, the thin drizzle permeates my clothing with dampness and the wet mud is slippery.  As I round a bend in the mountain side rapt in my misery, almost theatrically a wide vista unfolds showing a wide lush green valley with patches of colour and Mount Rataban proudly at its head.  It is magical, the tiredness of the climb falls away and the spellbinding view makes the arduous climb of two hours so very worthwhile.  Angelica with cloud veiled mountains in the background My trek to the Valley of Flowers (VoF) has been a dream for many years, a dream that I was determined to turn to reality for a week in August 2015.  There are many travelogues of �how to and where to� on a trek to VoF so it is not my intention to replicate these. I will put together a kaleidoscope of thoughts and suggestions giving more of a flavor than a guide. The trip started

While trekking to the Valley of Flowers a few weeks ago, I met a mountain guide and we got chatting about matters outdoors.  When I commented on a trekker in his group, ill-equipped and ill-shod, slipping in the wet mud, his reply was so apt �trekking was earlier a passion, but now it has become a fashion�.  Here is my advice to the �fashionate� trekker. It is great to see many youngsters taking to the great outdoors, most of them truly enjoying nature and the �get-away-from-it-all� feeling that a trek to a remote area offers. However there are many who are there just to say �been there, done that�, they waft through the experience, shrouded in their social cocoons, immune to the joys of smelling the roses on the way. It is this category of trekker who is careless of the environment, who with a mindless flick will throw an empty bottle by the way, who will leave the detritus of his lunch amidst the flowers, who will trample over delicate terrain to take a selfie, who will play loud mus