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Garhwal

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A Trip to Lakhamandal

Travel India Guides - Mountain Destinations - Garhwal

Pilgrimage
Garhwal is known as “Dev Bhoomi”,
‘the land of Gods’. It has four
major Hindu shrines

Adventure
Garhwal offers lofty peaks, swift rivers, some of the finest ski slopes and marvellous treks for adventure

Mussoorie
A popular hill station -
offers a commanding
view of the Himalayas...

Mountain Meadows
Bugyals, allow one to view nature at its best...
Himalayan Flowers

Selective Writing
The Road to Badrinath - Ruskin Bond
A Village in Garhwal - Ruskin Bond
The Valley of Flowers - Frank Smythe
River journey on the Bhagirathi and Ganga - Vaibhav Kala
A Trip to Lakhamandal - Ganesh Saili
Chipko Movement
Voluntary work

"The bus takes a sharp bend, the lecherous ticket collector next to me flicks back his Shahrukh Khan hairstyle and smiles lasciviously. A little dizzy from the high altitude corkscrew road, I look away with what I hope is disdain and contempt. Didn't pull it off, I think dismally. I sigh out of the mottled window. And am content to stare alone, mesmerised. Before me is pure magic. The bus is straining up a semi dirt track through what has to be paradise. A timeless oak forest, small but old gnarled trees, hung with golden moss through which filters kokin sunlight. Sky of sheerest blue and overlooking the Mandal valley on my left, the translucent whiteness of the Himalayas. Up ahead a catatonic ..."

These are just the rough scribbled notes of a wanderlust-ridden traveller. I lived and worked in Garhwal for some years and still reel from bouts of Garhwal intoxication. It's in my blood. Garhwal means many things to many people. Thousands travel to Garhwal every year, worshippers on pilgrimage come to here to realise their God, climbers with mountaineering and trekking on their minds, mavericks with river Running in their blood, skiers to get the adrenaline pumping and academicians to propound new theories on mankind! You can find your own interpretation, your own Garhwal head space to retreat into when you need some soul food.

To travel in the middle Himalayas, with all the lack of infrastructure, you have to be a little crazy. But nothing beats this part of the world in the summertime and even in the spring or autumn. DON'T come here if you have Switzerlandesque visions of steamy windows and steaming cocoa and warm beds and cable TV. This is roughing-it-out zone and well worth the effort. Indians from some months old to almost a century old, from even thousands of miles away visit every year on spiritual quests and go away enriched.

- Khila Bisht