Sunday hike

Namaste Hivers!
I hope you all are doing well .
Today I’m writing after a hiatus of 3-4 months , was a bit caught up in the hustle but now I assure you that you would see a blog from my end every week.
So today I’ll be talking about my recent hike to “Jhumba ki dhar” along with my younger cousin .
“Jhumba” is the name of the place and the word “dhar” in dogri means “the top” .
At the top of the hill there is a temple of diety named “Jogni” .
The top is visible from my home ,however, I had never been there and neither had my cousin (Himanshu) .

So it was a super spontaneous plan and hardly did we make any preparations.
It was our first time visiting this place so we were super excited .
We decided to start at the wee hours , something I was not much confident about because I knew that Himanshu wouldn’t wake up early yet the young lad was full of gusto and assured me the day before that he would be ready by 3:55 am and that we would leave for the temple by 4 o’ clock on the button .
Seeing the confidence I believed him and then the next morning to nobody’s shock and surprise I had to wake him up , I called him around 5 times and then finally he answered blaming his phone for not ringing the alarm .
After waiting 20 minutes for him to get ready we finally started for Jhumba ki dhar at 4:35 am .

It wasn’t much cold outside but the moment we sat on the scooter we could feel the cold brutal wind hitting our legs and faces .

After riding for around an hour we finally reached the starting point of the hill , parked the scooter at a safe spot and then started our hike, by this time it wasn’t dark anymore and the moment we started the hike a fox ran into the bushes seeing us (something that definitely spooked us)

In the beginning it was a tiring climb and then after walking for 25 minutes even our stomachs started making sounds , so we sat for 5 minutes to have the apples we were carrying.

By this time the sun had started colouring the horizon without being visible.

After an hour’s hike we finally reached the top and now even the sun was up warming our souls and bodies .
The top was all serene and tranquil and surprisingly there was a “pujari ji “ (priest) at the temple.
We had not expected any humans up there considering how remote the place was from the civilisation.
Even the “pujari ji” was surprised seeing us there at 6:35 am .

The view from the top was incredible with clouds below us and the fog being chased away by the warm sunlight.

We had brought a flask of tea (chai) along so after praying at the temple we started sipping the tea and trust me when I say “ chai tastes better on the top of a mountain.”

Initially we had planned that we would sit at the top for around 15-20 minutes and start back home ,however, we ended up spending an hour at the top .
The view kept us glued to the place and then finally after an hour we reached the place where we had parked the scooter and headed home with calmness and love in our hearts.

All these pictures were clicked by me using my iphone 13 .