people and life in Har Ki dun valley

There are four villages (each housing different community)in Har ki dun valley: Osla the last villages from road head comprising 'Rana/rajput' community ; Pauni (panwars); Gangad (chauhans) and Datmir (rawat community);

The villages are perched on the mountain slopes and they cultivate potatoes, wheat and rajma pulses mainly on the field cut/formed on the mountain slopes. These villages mostly comprises of 5-10 families with all the fmily tree.

The source of income for these people is mostly tourism and the yield from crops is sufficient to sustain their consumption.
On record each of these villages have schools for their children But school teacher is out of station for about 6 months under the pretext of meetings to be attend and the other six months are anyway inhospitable beause of climatic conditions. So the children end up mostly spending time going for collecting firewood in the nearby forest.
Firewood is thier only source of "fuel" to prepare their food.
The men mostly employ themselves as porters and often use the wages to consume alcohol while the ladies put in more hard work cultivating the fields and as well maintaining the day to today activities of the family.
Some elderly people (men and women) indulge in preparing winter clothes for the anticipated winter months. They weave about two jackets per the entire year.

I stayed in one of the houses of the village. The day I got onion and chilli I felt as though I was enoying my feast! Such is the reach of basic required commodities to these villages. They take part in teh democratic election process of our country. They had also exersiced their voting rights. The ballot boxes have come intime to make them participate in our system of Democracy. But such is the state of these people.

The children from these villages are very cheerful inspite of their limitation in availability of resources and amenities. innocence oozing out of their fresh faces invokes soem kind of soothing to all the visitors to this valley. They earnestly plead the tourists for "toffee" from distant running towards you same as in most of the himalayan tourist belt.

Beauty as I saw in this valley

Har Ki Dun Valley

Beautiful Har ki dun after the snow fall:

(photo credit: Malli)

Har kid un Trek
Difficuty grade: Easy; Duration: 4days; Max Altitude/Min Temp: 3560m/ 5-7 degree centigrade;
Peaks in vicinity: Kala nag(Black peak); Bander punch, Swarga rohini massif
High passes: Boransu, Khimloga, Shinga ghati towards Himachal & Bali pass, Dhumdhar kandi towards south and east.
Rivers: Har ki dun nala + Ruinsara nala -> Supin + Rupin (from Rupin pass) = Tons -> Yamuna River (Originating from Saptarishi kund).

Har ki dun valley is in the north west frontier of Gahwal Himalaya (Uttarakhand). It is just below the Dhauladhar range dividing Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Several interesting high altitude passes lie on this range leading treks from Har ki dun valley to Baspa valley (south of Kinnaur region)in Himachal pradesh. Some of these passes are Boransu, Shinga ghati, Khimloga and rupin pass.

One can enjoy the views of Kalanag, Bander punch main and west as one treks from Osla to Har ki dun. Swarga rohini peaks are another set of significant peaks here. The glacier above Har ki dun is "Jaundhar glacier". The villagers tell that the glacier used to expand until outer limits of Osla village but now it has receded by more than 10kms. There was not much snowfall this year and it impacted the yield of the crops in these regions (Global warming!)

I had the opportunity to sight several alpine flowers such as Iris Kumaonensis, primula denticulata, Corydalis (yellow variety), Caultha family, Primula involucrata, Rhododendrons (bright red and whitish), wild roses and couple of varieties which I didn't know the names.

While traveling from Sankri to Taluka on top of the zeep, I saw some interesting wild cocks/chicken as the villagers spotted them. The road between Sankri and Taluka is a bit rough but sitting on the top would be some fun.


Rough sketch Map of Har ki dun (source: Internet):