If green is your colour of choice, Baraadsar Lake trek is where you want to be. Lush green fields as you start to lush green mountain faces with thick forests as you advance to lush green meadows for as far as your eye can see – the trail to Baraadsar Lake is where even the air is delicious.
What we like most about this high-altitude lake which straddles the borders of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, is that it is barely explored and hence extremely pristine. The lack of a proper route for being an unmapped territory only adds to the thrill of the trek, also lending to raise its overall level of difficulty. What’s fascinating is that you don’t see it, not till you are only 200M away from it. It’s so well hidden, it might just be the rabbit the mountain pulled out of a hat to make an already good show even better, just for you!
The lake itself is a surprise, but the path has a lot in store for you too. The trail to this electric blue lake which turns to a solid shade of white in the pre-monsoon season provides some of the best views of the historically relevant Swargarohini peak – the peak climbed by the mighty Pandavs (of the Mahabharat fame!) to get to heaven. But that’s only one of the half dozen reasons why you should consider this as your next adventure!
Checkout - Highlights of Baraadsar Lake Trek
The beauty and the challenge of the terrain along with the company of reverential peaks such as Swargarohini (6,252M), Bandarpoonch (6,316M) and Black Peak (6,387M) are enough to refresh one’s love for the outdoors – we know it did ours for sure! Don’t be surprised if you find yourself planning your next trek while you're already in the middle of this one!
This trek is a suave magician whose act is best witnessed firsthand. The photos don’t do justice to the tricks it has up its sleeves but here they are anyway!
1) The Never-ending Landscape
The fact that you have one eye to Uttarakhand and the other to Himachal Pradesh is only one of the many fascinating things about the trail to Baraadsar Lake. Its insurmountable beauty will have you swooning in no time - the long, no, very long ridge walk, the raw wilderness stretched out for as far as you can see and if you visit in the right season, the forests full of rhododendrons in full bloom. Because it is so quiet and virgin, it is also a birder’s paradise.
2) The Many Tunes of the Campsites
Baraadsar Lake hands down wins the campsite contest – it chooses some of the best corners of the Himalayas to rent them out to its trekkers each night. It is not only the carpet of thick green, the richest spread of wildflowers, the wide and open landscape looking down into the depths of two different valleys or walking the line between Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh or the many surprises it pulls out of its hat at every turn of the way. But it is also waking up to the song of a thousand birds – some familiar, some unfamiliar but each soothing sound an addition to the cookie jar of feasts this trek holds up for each good person who comes into its folds.
3) The One Ridge to Rule Them All
The best part about Baraadsar Lake is the ridge walk with unobstructed views of both the valleys, Rupin and Supin, a seemingly never-ending walk which you will find yourself wishing would never end!
Checkout - Baraadsar Lake Trek - Who is it meant for?
The view from the ridge is so open, it is limited only by our own senses – not an obstruction in sight for miles and hundred miles on both sides. If the sky didn’t bend into a curve at the horizon, we can only imagine what and how far we could then see.
4) Mountain Living
The villages along the way, the high-mountain culture and to witness life in its everyday mundanity up at this altitude in and of itself makes this trek a very satisfying experience.
5) The Enchanted Path
This one warrants no words but images alone!
6) A Sudden Shift
Going from lush green to all rock and ice into the world of the whites – the landscape between Devbasa and Baraadsar changes so suddenly going from completely alive to extremely cold. Post-monsoon the snow might be close to none but the landscape is still barren with the signs of life thinning out with every step forward.
7) Baraadsar Lake
We would love to show this to you but we choose not to. We think the rabbit best come out of the hat in your presence because if you are not here to see it, does it even exist?
