c u on top - satyabrata dam

  Add caption As October was coming to its conclusion, I decided to do one more Dhauladhar Pass before the festive month of November set in. This time we opted for Toral Pass, as my friend Ravinder had requested. This pass had been crossed by his shepherd forefathers and he had never been there so he wanted to visit the footsteps of his ancestors. Nearly 10 years back I had gone to Toral Pass from Kangra side and had returned back to Kangra therefore I presumed that I at least knew the first half of our journey. Once again we decided to do this pass unguided, just the two of us. And this subsequently proved to be an immense tactical error much to our chagrin. Despite our combined experience of over 50 years, we got stuck at one place, totally lost, which I completely attribute to our own errors of judgment and perhaps a good amount of complacency on my part. I will elaborate upon this as a lesson learnt not only for myself (even after a climbing career spanning 45 years and pretty ...

  Chamba side view from Talang Pass, Mani Mahesh Kailash in the center At 4667m Talang is touted as the highest pass that local shepherds use to cross the Dhauladhar Mountain Range from Kangra to Chamba and back during their annual migration with their herds. This pass had been on my radar for several years and this year since the pandemic put a hold to my international trips, I finally crossed it. In this post I won’t talk much about the pass history itself rather give a factual account of how we crossed it. Suffice to say that till now Talang Pass has very little mention or details online. And I wish to fill up this void through this article. I will also give our exact itinerary that we followed. You would be able to follow the details in this post in case you wish to do this pass unguided by yourself. A word of caution before I begin, that this indeed is a very difficult pass and unless you are an expert hiker with very steady head for heights, in good physical condition and p...