Exploring the colours of fall above Sethan village. Trek to Chikka campsite part-1.

Namaste 🙏

Hope you all are doing great!!!

It’s autumn here in Himalayas nowadays and it’s the perfect time to explore the inner parts of Himalayas as there is no rainfall these days. Crystal clear sky, temperature slightly on the colder side and so many colours everywhere that you’ll get mesmerised. That’s how Himalayan fall looks like.

It was a perfect opportunity to plan a trip to one of the place that was on my bucket list for a long time. ‘Sethan’ is a small Himalayan village that was almost unrecognised by mainstream tourists until a few years back. It was only when few glamping resorts opened there and attracted a lot of people.

You need to take a left turn at Prini while driving down from Manali to Kullu via left bank to reach here. This is a hydro electric project reserved area and also an area that’s conserved by H.P. state government. Therefore, you need a permit to get here. You can apply for a permit beforehand by filling it online on state government website or you can even attain it on the spot at a checkpost that is a kilometre away from the Highway. Sethan is 15-17 kms from Prini and the road is completely broken.

I was not able to take any photos while coming up to Sethan as I was driving and unluckily we had my sedan 😂 which was certainly not the best car to drive on broken mountain roads.

The start of an unknown adventure—

It was festive season here in India and everyone was home including my cousins. I wanted to do this adventure with my cousins and my brother as it was a long time we’ve done something together. They agreed to come. My Airbnb guest also wanted to join us after hearing about our trip and so we were five people in total. My brother, me, two cousins and my guest.

My sedan which drove us all to the starting point luckily 😂

We parked our car near a temporary shop about 4 kms from Sethan village. There was no road beyond this point and we got to know that Chikka campground trek also starts from here. This looked like a perfect spot to park our car considering the safety of our car and also the proximity of the trail from here.

This time we planned on staying there for a couple days. We didn’t plan anything beyond going to the Chikka campsite. There were a lot of options to explore in daytime and coming back to our campsite in the evening like going all the way to Hampta Pass or summiting an unknown mountain peak (as there are countless mountain peaks here) or going to Bhrigu Lake via Chikka. We didn’t plan anything beforehand and focused just on staying at Chikka campsite for a couple days.

We had all the stuff we needed. Food, shelter and a good company. Everything was covered. We had our bags full of stuff each one weighing around 15-20 kilograms.

Chikka is a campsite where people hiking to Hampta Pass stay on day one. As Hampta Pass trek was officially closed by all the adventure companies, there is no one there on the trail nowadays. One concerning thing was that there is no cellular signal beyond Sethan. There was no signal even at the spot where we parked our cars. We needed to stick to each other for safety of everyone as the wild animals come to lower elevation during this time of the year.

It took us a long time to reach to the starting point as we were waiting for everyone to come to my house first. We started our hike around 3 PM and that was not a good time considering the short length of daylight nowadays.

We needed to reach to the campsite, collect firewood and pitch our tents before sunset. Chikka campsite was about 3 kms from the starting point and with such heavy loads on our backs, those 3 kms were feeling like 30kms.

There is a small stream of water that flows all the way from Balu Ghera campsite which is the camp three of Hampta Pass trek. We needed to follow that stream all the time and that stream is the only source of water there.

We were looking for that stream of water when we found bones of dead animals all around us. It was a caution for us about the wild animals that were roaming all around the jungle these days. We were also prepared as we had some weapons with us!!

Bones of animals killed by bears or leopards

We started looking for the stream of water and found it after moving a little further. We saw the stream and also the dam that was constructed over it for hydroelectric power plant.

Dam built on the stream of water

As we were already late, we had a discussion regarding the duties that everyone needed to do once we were there. We decided that two of my cousins will pitch the tents and remaining three of us will collect firewood. We needed to have a lot of firewood to keep the fire going all night so instead of going towards the stream, we decided to go inside the jungle first to get some firewood on our way to save time.

We saw a camp just before entering the jungle. There were two people camping there. We got to know from them that there were no camps beyond their camp. There are countless little streams of water like one in the photo below that gets merged with the main bigger one. We crossed this little stream to get inside the jungle.

Collecting firewood from the jungle—

We entered the jungle to find out abundance of firewood ready to be sourced. Everyone took a log of wood to kickstart the fire in our camp. Campsite was sill two kms away and now we had another load of weight on our backs including already heavy bags.

The jungle was full of many varieties of trees including evergreen pine and deodar and also some varieties with falling leaves like maple. There were fallen leaves everywhere in the forest bed it it looked amazing. We could see all shades of autumn colours there.

We saw some rotten wood on the forest bed and collected it in a rain cover of a bag as this kind of wood is good to start fire.

Collecting firewood in the rain cover of the bag

This place looked like a place from an animated movie. Everything was unreal. We felt so alive being there and loved every moment of being there. We could not wait to reach to the campsite and pitch tents there.

We bought a lot of food items that we could reheat on fire and enjoy. I was feeling hungry and couldn’t wait to enjoy the food that we bought with us over bonfire in between the mountains with the view of stars!!!

We got out of the forest and were now near the stream on the original trail. Everyone of us had a log of wood with us and going to the forest beforehand was a good idea. Now we could start a fire first and then go in search of bigger logs that will last us all night.

I’m gonna write about my journey from here in part-2. A lot of good photos and experiences are coming in next blogs.

Peace ☮️