Note: All images are available in the gallery. Sorry, could not add links to the thumbnails.
More than a month ago, from Aug 5th to Aug 13th, I went on a trek to Deo-Tibba base. The trek was good and it was the first time I went into the wild, away from the civilization. This is a small travelogue on the trek and hope it would be of some use to the future trekkers 
The medhas gallery has a more complete dump of the images that we took during the trek. All the images below have also been linked to their higher resolution versions from the gallery. Feel free to use the images that don’t have people in them for your own purposes. A link to our gallery would ofcourse be appreciated
On Saturday, the 5th of August 2006, me and Bala started at Hyderabad and reached Delhi the same day by afternoon. We were joined by Metta and Gupta in Delhi and all four of us boarded the Himachal Pradesh Tourism operated bus to Manali the same day. We reached Manali on Sunday well before the lunch time, checked-in to the guest house and visited a few places in Manali. The photo above in which all of us are seen holding hands was taken when coming down from Hidimba temple in Manali. We met our trek operator Surinder (Alpine Tours) the same day.
Hidimba Temple
Gupta, Metta and Bala at the Hidimba temple. Hidimba is a demon from Mahabharat, one of the epic stories of hindu religion. She is believed to be the mother of Ghototkachha and wife of Bhima.
We started our trek on Monday, with us were five porters, a guide and a cook (That’s right, seven people were with us and we were only four!). The itenary for the first day was to trek from Jagarsukh to Kannol. The govt of Himachal Pradesh is constructing a dam on Jagatsukh Nala and most of the work is currently at Kannol. A road is being constructed and the half done road is horrible to walk on - the mud was slippery and made it difficult to trek too! Kannol was the last place where we could find any significant human numbers. By the time we reached Kannol, it started raining too!
First look at Kannol
Posing beside the Jagatsukh Nala. In the background are the labour tents at Kannol. Till this place we were only walking on a half finished, slippery road which was full of mud.
Kannol
Our tents at Kannol. Rain and worker camps made it difficult to find a proper place for camping here.
Tuesday we started at Kannol to Chikka. Due to all the construction that is going, the old trek route was closed and a new path was taken… this new path again had less grass and lose soil. The rain made it muddy and slippery too. Halfway through our journey on Tuesday we crossed the stream to join the old trek route, which made it feel like heaven. The first half of the way between Kannol and Chikka was slippery and a few slips could throw us into a stream 100 meters below.
Crossing to old route
This bridge marks the saperation between the new trekking route and the old. The real trek started here… we leave all the civilization behind at this place.
Chikka was a beautiful place located on the banks of Jagatsukh Nala. There is a small temple accompanied by a couple of small buildings. I will talk more about these buildings when I describe our journey back.
Our camp at Chikka
Bala and I had to use a different tent here because the tent we used in Kannol let some water seep in! And with this one I had a shock next morning when I saw a small creepy, caterpillar kind of an insect on my sleeping bag… eeks.
We started back early next day… it was raining and we put our umbrellas to use. The trek from Chikka to Seri was tiresome and we had to take many breaks for water and snacks before we reached Seri. Bala and I were a lot ahead of others and my research about Seri said that it was a huge plain land which would be of a great interest to flora enthusiasts - I was just walking and walking with a hope to find the huge plain land.
On our way to Seri
The trek from Chikka to Seri was at a much greater altitude, climate was cold and a significant part of the trek was through mist.
The huge plain at Seri
This plain was long time back a glacier which has now dissapeared. Going to the album you will find photos of the nearby glacier and snaps of the Deo Tibba peak as seen from the plains.
Waterfall at Seri
The water fall is one big source of Jagatsukh nala, while the glacier pictured in other photos is the other source. Water from many peaks comes together just before falling down here. In the background is the Deo-Tibba peak.
The next day it was a looong trek. We were supposed to go till the Chota Chandertal and come back directly to Chikka, which was expected to take about 9 hours — yeah right, nine hours of trek in the mountains! We started fine, walking through the marchy football sized plain of Seri, but soon we reached a point where we had to cross the Jagatsukh Nala. I changed my definition of cold water after crossing the stream - we had to walk though a stream flowing at zero degrees! What more, we had to cross it twice in our route to Chota Chandertal and twice when returning!
Formation of the Jagatsukh Nala
The trek wonderfully well, till we found that we lost our way and instead of going to the Chota Chandertal lake, ended up going close to the Deo-Tibba base camp. We had to return due to lack of time. The photo here shows the joining of many small streams to form the Jagatsukh nala.
On our way back, we decided that we will not go by the same route. This time we had to go to Manali via Baraha, a small village close to Jagatsukh. We could find some accomodation at the temple buildings in Chikka. Our guide told us that the buildings here were constructed by the villagers of Jagatsukh for use by visitors to Chikka. It had all the required “comforts” like a room heater, food grain enough for about 200 people, bedding enough for about 30 people etc - and all this put in here by the villagers for the comfort of visitors, trekkers etc!
Next day, we trekked directly from Chikka to Jagatsukh, from where we went to our accomodation. One day more in Manali and started back to Hyderabad!
I am Prasad Sunkari,
co-founder of