Rana’s Guest House is a cozy place about 20 minutes walk uphill from Dharamkot in a very rural setting, with a room overlooking the valley. The climb up is steep and narrow and I share the walk with goats, and donkeys carrying supplies, and sidestep mounds of cow poo. I stay for three nights with the friendly family. One afternoon in their tea shop, I see the youngest daughter painting after school. I say “Hello, Namaste”, and she says “Sit! Sit!” We chat for a while about her school and her friends while she paints flowers on some pottery she made in class. Her name is Monika, or Monu to her friends. Each night I fall asleep to the sound of cows, goats, and roosters who don’t seem to notice it’s nighttime. In the middle of the night I hear monkeys pounding on the roof, jumping from one to another.

One day I decide to walk up to the saddle where there’s a guest house I’m curious to check out. It takes less time to hike than I had thought, and there’s an amazing view of the valley on the other side with many little villages on the hills. I want to keep walking to visit all the remote places. (I had no idea then that I’d be there in a couple of days!) I see some hikers walking further up the winding path on the Triund hike, so I decide to keep walking and see how far I get. I’m happy to be out in nature and completely in my element. In my head I make a “vroom” noise every time I pass a hiker walking slower than me. There are all kinds of people hiking, especially many Indian tourists from bigger cities, and many travelers from Israel and China. So many people from so many cultures and it seems everyone has a music amplifier and blare music as they walk. There are a few tea huts along the path, with seats made of stone or concrete and a tarp roof held up with tree branches and string. Prayer flags flutter in trees along the path. It’s a nice sunny day with butterflies and golden eagles keep and paragliders in the sky. I’m so stoked to arrive at the top and see some of the bigger mountains in the Himalayan range, one of my dreams coming true. And they’re huge!! There is barely any snow on the ones that are visible, it’s still early.

At 6:30 pm the dinner bell rings at Rana’s and his wife serves me part of the meal that is made for the family – spicy dal with rice and garlic butter naan for about $1.50 CAD. Despite the cozy, friendly atmosphere, the room is musty and I feel it’s time to move on. I find it difficult to chose between visiting a bigger city before training or joining a trek. It’s late in the season and difficult to find a trek, but when I hear there’s one leaving for Indrahara Pass at 4,320 mt., I join right away!

The next day I meet the trekking team, an outdoorsy couple from Switzerland, about my age, with tons of camping gear, Osola and Ollie. And our guide, Sanjay from Kareri Village who loves stray dogs and picks up garbage along the path to put in the bin. Our first stop is Dal Lake. Up and up another steep pathway through the trees we pass a Tibetan school with a massive track and field event happening and being announced through the loud speakers. Adorable little kids are running around and yelling in their school uniforms – pleated pants with vests and collared shirts. The huge brick stadium seating is packed.

Further along the path we pass women working the soil planting barley that will begin to sprout in the spring. Women in brightly coloured saris and salwar kameez meet us along with path with huge bales of corn stalks on their backs, much bigger than my backpack, bringing it back to their home to feed the cows over the winter. There are men as well in dress pants and vests with big loads of fire wood on their backs. We pass a woman feeding a tiny baby goat with some leaves from a branch and has her arm around her baby son. As we pass she waves and says “Namaste! Namaste!” Saying the words slowly and looking at her kid, trying to get him to learn the greeting. “Naa-say”, he says quietly and we all laugh. He’s so cute!! Each time I think we’ve been walking for hours and we’re in the middle of nowhere, suddenly there is a tea shop and sign painted with chalk on the rocks that say “Café and Swimming Pool”. The pool is a gathering of water from the waterfall, chilly snow melt water, very refreshing. We hike to Guna Temple and have an amazing view of the Dhauladhar mountain range. The hike leads us through the jungle as well with lush green plants and tons more monkeys. When we reach the top of the ridge, I realize we’d been hiking through the little villages I viewed from the saddle the other day! I was happy I got the chance to see some of rural northern India. We drop our things at a guest house near the Galu Temple, and set off for Bhagsu waterfall. We hike through more jungle leaves as the sun sets, casting hazy light on the huge trees. We clean our feet in the freezing waterfall and it feels amazing after the long hike. Dinner is amazing but simple Indian food.

Day two we get a new addition to our group, a cheerful, young Australian named Jacque joins the hike and chats with Sanjay about cricket for half the day. Another nice sunny day of hiking. We stop for chai and some lunch at Triund and continue up to the Snowline Café as our base camp for the trek up to Indrahara Pass.

Sanjay says, “So, maybe we’ll get snow. Maybe not make it to the pass”.

I say “Oh man, I hope we make it. I’m so excited to see what’s over that ridge!”

Sanjay shrugs and says “Just more mountains”.

The four of us tourists smile at each other. That’s why we’re here!

We wander around our new campsite, set up the tent and have chai at the Snowline Café, which is a stretch of stone floor with a couple of tarps held up with branches and rope, with a cooking area in the far back. We meet our neighbours, another trekking group of two good-natured, middle aged men from Delhi who joke around and tease each other constantly. As the sun starts to set Sanjay hauls some wood and we build a fire. The two men from Delhi have a music playing device linked to their iPod and put on a playlist of songs from North America, hoping we recognize the songs. Each time a new song starts they look at us with happy expectation to see if we recognize the song, and we quickly determine they are much hipper than all of us young people, and they’re pretty proud. For dinner we reluctantly remove our warm shoes to enter the café to eat delicious simple dal with rice. We sing more hits around the campfire and dance on the spot to keep warm, until we decide the tent is warmer and we head to bed.

I realize quickly that the sleeping bag is warm, but the sleeping mat provided is very thin and not enough insulation from the cold ground. I try to sleep but I keep shivering, and catch small stretches of sleep at a time. At some point in the night an intense thunder and lightning storm shakes our tent with strong whipping winds, raging on for most of the night. Heavy rain falls for many hours, and every few seconds a loud crash and bright flash fills the sky, which seems directly above our heads at this elevation. Later on in the night I wake up with the tent almost on my face and realized there was heavy snow weighing down the sides. I push at the fabric to clear the snow. Many times during the night one of us would wake up to push away the snow piling up on the sides of the tent. It snows for hours and hours, and by the time we poke our heads out of the tent in the morning there was at least a foot of fresh snow everywhere around us. Everything was white and the mountains looked even more spectacular! The white towering peaks of the Himalayas look very mighty against our tiny blue tents.

We realize there’s no way Sanjay will let us attempt the pass in the snow, even though we’re all pretty keen and persuasive, but instead we hike to the temple overlooking the valley, where a man from Belarus slept the previous night. The shelter near the temple has a sheet metal roof and on the exposed ridge it was pounded by the storm. The man says he was worried the wind would destroy the roof. At one point he we looked out of the door to check for any weather damage and he saw a massive bolt of lightning strike the metal rod extending from the temple right next to him. He didn’t get much sleep after that. So we didn’t get to see over the Pass, but definitely had some adventure! And still I got to see one of my life dreams to look over the Himalaya mountains, so epic to see the huge peaked towers!! So stunning and huge!

My group decides to hike down that day rather than spending another chilly evening at snowline or in the busy, touristy Triund. A couple of hours later we’re back at Galu Temple, where Sanjay quickly drops his gear says goodbye to start his two hour walk home to Kareri Village. Back the hotel in Dharamkot where I’d left part of my luggage, I’m happy to find there’s an available room, and overjoyed to find it has the first hot shower I’ve had since coming to India!! Back in town I’m excited to find a bus to Manali leaving the following evening, which is lucky since most have shut down for the winter. I meet up for supper with Jacque, Osola and Ollie in the main square and as we decide where to go for dinner, a bull comes along who thinks we’re in his way, and he picks up Jacque with his horn through his belt loop and Jacque narrowly escapes getting thrown. It was a real near miss.