September 5, 2016:

The Mountain Walker team is busy these days, assigning responsibilities, segregating office and on-the-road responsibilities, and generally thinking and preparing for the road.

This will be the longest of our Mountain Walking experiences yet, and it’ll cover different mountain ranges, villages, towns, and districts.  The highlight of the Mountain Walker September-October 2016 trip will be the Pin-Parvati trek. A very popular trek in the trekking community of India, it is considered to be one of the most beautiful treks in the country. It can be classified as ‘moderate to difficult’ because of the high attitude and duration and also factors like the time of the year and the situation of snow at the Pin Parvati pass.

The Pin Parvati trek became a part of the Mountain Walker September itinerary in March 2016. Along the way in June, we were on the verge of dropping it from our itinerary but eventually after the July trip, we finally confirmed this trek. We appreciate the interest from our readers and well-wishers, and would like to thank all of you for the enquiries.

The team on the road will comprise Abhishek Kaushal, Ameen Shaikh, Abhinav Kaushal, and Kamal Kailash Thakur. The preparations have already started, and since there was less snowfall the past winter, we don’t expect much snow during the trek, which minimises some of the risks and reduces the need for technical equipment that we will be carrying.

At this moment, the plan is to do the trek on our own without any porter or guide, but we will take a call closer to D-Day and start point. We have planned to carry most of the stuff from Shimla (tents, sleeping bags, mats, ropes, stove, fuel and the like), while we will buy food and ingredients from Kasol just before leaving for the trek.

We’ll keep you posted on developments.