Trip to Parvati Valley, should you consider it?
Parvati valley is very well known spot among travel enthusiasts, foreigners and among the youth of India. It is very well known for its serene beauty of the nature that reflects off the mountains that form the valley. Parvati valley has had a reputation from a long time for its mild psychoactive substance ‘hash’ which is an extract of cannabis plant marijuana. After the recent surge in the use of the substance among the youth and also a lot of nations around the world are also reconsidering to legalizing marijuana, as a result it has been gaining popularity day by day. Recently I visited the place for a span of five days and never have I ever felt the strong urge to not leave the place. The people, the weather, the mountains, the dogs got me encaptivated to such an extent that describing the experience in words seems nugatory.
Onto — how do you get there — Closest you can get by travelling through air is to kullu, from where the distance to kasol is 40 km approx, which you can cover by taxi in about 1.5 hour, or if you are travelling through train the closest easily accessible place would be chandigargh from where you can get a bus directly to kasol or you will have to switch bus from Bhunter as most of the buses are bound for kullu or manali. Once you reach there you can choose to stay in a hotel or hostel, and personally I would suggest if you are solo traveler or bachelor try staying in hostel, it is cheap but that at the same time more importantly, the vibe of the place is very friendly. Personally I would suggest cozy beds hostel or woofers, as I found them quite amazing and great locational value. But there are also other hotels and hostel if you wanna consider. If you are on a stringent budget, home stay is for sure a great option.
Once you reach kasol and have decided where to stay, the most important thing after that would be to plan your trip accordingly as not every body has the leisure of time to invest in vacations. If you are 420 friendly then I would suggest that on the 1st day of your visit you must go to malana village for very obvious reasons. But, be careful as police checking is real stuff there. You can find more info on 420 related queries once you reach there. Moving on to tripping on nature, and mate the serene beauty of the place once you go out for any trek is absolutely breath taking. The encapsulating experience of the valley will engulf the chaos inside of you and will leave you at peace.
Treks are must do part of the kasol trip or for any trip to mountainous regions. Now treks can vary in difficulty and choosing wisely on how physically sound you are, is really necessary. I would suggest going on easy trek where the crowd usually goes, but once you understand how much strain you can handle you can consider going for a little harder trek. And if you are physically fit going for harder trek is an option for you, and it goes without saying harder the trek lesser the crowd. You can find a list of treks available near kasol on the site travel triangle with classification as to which trek are for expert and which trek are for beginners.
I would personally suggest three treks starting from kasol which are Rasol trek, Grahan trek, Kheerganga trek. These trek are a little on the difficult side but I still think managable for beginners (i.e. if you do not have any physical condition) but very much worth it at the end. Try if you spend a night at finish point of the above trek as I believe that is the minimum time required to appreciate such beauty of nature. And finding your way on these trek are a lot easy and also dogs help very much on the trek. For me once you reach the trek finish point you do enjoy the view, but boy-o-boy when you reach back home, you’ll miss the hell out of that place (Cant say that for everybody).
A simple request for people who have never visited the place, stay very humble towards the local people of the villages as they also are very polite and very welcoming towards tourist. And if you are a dog person, I suggest you buy dog biscuits for your trek, trust me you’ll thank me later.