The valley of flowers This is the story of four happy months spent amidst some of the noblest and most beautiful mountains of the world. Its inception dates back to 1931. In that year Kamet, a mountain 25,447 feet high, situated in the Garhwal Himalayas, was climbed by a small expedition of six British mountaineers of whom I was one. After the climb we descended to the village of Gamsali in the Dhauli Valley, then crossed the Zanskar Range, which separates the upper Dhauli and Alaknanda Valleys by the Bhyundar Pass, 16,688 feet, with the intention of exploring the mountainous region at the sources of the two principal tributaries of the Ganges, the Alaknanda and Gangotri rivers.

The monsoon had broken and the day we crossed the pass was wet, cold and miserable. Below 16,000 feet rain was falling, but above that height there was sleet or snow. A bitter wind drove at us, sheeting our clothing with wet snow and chilling us to the bone and as quickly as possible we descended into the Bhyundar valley, which bifurcates with the Alaknanda Valley.

Within a few minutes we were out of the wind and in rain which became gradually warmer as we lost height. Dense mist shrouded the mountainside and we had paused, uncertain as to the route when I heard L. Holdsworth, who was a botanist as well as a climbing member of the expedition, exclaim: `Look!' I followed the direction of his outstretched hand. At first I could see nothing but rocks, then suddenly my wandering gaze was arrested by a little splash of blue, and beyond it were other splashes of blue, a blue so intense it seemed to light the hillside. As Holdsworth wrote: `All of a sudden I realized that I was simply surrounded by primulas. Primula or primrose At once the day seemed to brighten perceptibly. Forgotten were all pains and cold and lost porters. And what a primula it was! Its leek-like habit proclaimed it a member of the nivalis section. All over the little shelves and terraces it grew, often with its roots in running water. At the most it stood six inches high, but its flowers were enormous for its stature and ample in number-sometimes as many as thirty to the beautifully proportioned umbel and in colour of the most heavenly French blue, sweetly scented.'

In all my mountain wanderings I had not seen a more beautiful flower than this primula; the fine raindrops clung to its soft petals like galaxies of seed pearls and frosted its leaves with silver. Lower, where we camped near a moraine, were androsaces, saxifrages, sedums, yellow and red potentillas, geums, geraniums, asters, gentians, to mention but a few plants and it was impossible to take a step without crushing a flower. Aster Next day we descended to lush meadows. Here our camp was embowered amidst flowers: snow-white drifts of anemones, golden, lily-like nomocharis, , marigolds, globe flowers, delphiniums, violets, eritrichiums, blue corydalis, wild roses, flowering shrubs and rhododendrons, many of them flowers with homely sounding English names. The Bhyundar Valley was the most beautiful valley that any of us had seen. We camped in it for two days and we remembered it afterwards as the Valley of Flowers.
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