Namaste 🙏
Hope you all are doing great!
Now after crossing the Shegli village, we were riding through the regions in between Shegli and Jalsa village. Jalsa is not a proper village, but a name of a region on the other side of the mountain. He already started turning towards the front of The Mountain now and getting towards the front of the mountain before it gets dark was our main target.
As you can see in the photographs, it was slowly getting darker every minute, and we still were far away from our destination. The only thing that we were worried about now was the remote region that was between Jalsa and Nayalag village. This was because that little part of The Mountain is directly beside the sun covered area and that area doesn’t get sun at all, and because of that the snow was still present there, and if we got late, it was possible that the snow start freezing, and that could be dangerous for our motorbike.
The road was quite straight and well built here in this region, so we were riding quite fast as compare to the road on which we were riding a few hours ago. This reason was also dangerous because of the little patch of forest that crosses through the end of the mountain and the road passes through that forest. So there could be chances of us encountering wild animals in that forest patch.
We could feel the cool air coming from the mountain tops, and the cool air was carrying freezing temperatures within it that was striking straight on our faces as we were riding on a motorbike in decent speed.
We were relieved to see Apple orchards around us, and we knew that people come here often to keep check on their orchids and maintain their orchids, but at that particular time, no one was present there apart from us. We knew that we just have to cross this page of about 300 to 500 m and after that will be in front of The Mountain from where we are totally safe.
So we kept on moving at a steady pace as we didn’t wanna lose the momentum that we had gained. It was getting colder with each passing second, and we could also feel the tall pine trees around us, emphasising the coldness as we entered the forest area.
It was not that this area was completely deserted like the place we visited on the top of the Ksheri village. Unlike that place this place had some evidence of human interference and this place often witnessed human interactions like the place we visited near the Ksheri village. If you want to check that blog out, I’ll be posting link for that below.
@parvkhuller/snow-hike-to-the-middle-of-the-woods-near-ksheri-village-inner-himalayas
You can also check out some of the blogs ahead and before it to get the full glimpse of the area and also my story.
We were also relieved to see this shed, which was made for storing the grass that was dried out for the cows that people in the nearby village owned. The only thing that was worrying us was that we were there at the evening time and it was soon turning to be dark. We wanted to get past the forest as soon as possible to avoid unpleasant encounters with wild animals and also falling on the road because of slippery snowy road conditions.
That was it we were there. We reached the Jalsa region of the forest where snow was present, and this area was completely dark from all sides as the sunlight didn’t get to this area. The snow was still present in spite of this area being in low elevation.
Because of this accumulation of snow and water, here, we don’t get evaporated soon because of lack of sunlight, the road here was also broken. We needed to drive through the muddy road and also there was patches of snow all around us as you can see in the photograph below.
We somehow crossed that path, and it was not as difficult as it seemed before. We were lucky that the mud wasn’t frozen yet, and it was still soft, so we crossed over it quite easily. But if we got a little late, then we were, the mud could have been frozen, and it could have been really difficult for us to move past the muddy area.
This was the last patch of snow. We knew we would see on this mountain. As after crossing this area, we would reach near to the front of the mountain, which was the side which faced towards South East towards South East, the sun is always present.
That’s all for today.
Thanks for passing by.
Peace ☮️