Tomorrow is Christmas and I have reached Narkanda to see the fresh snowfall of winter at my friend @naveen.jogta's house. Naveen lives in a small hill village named 'Firnu' situated in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. This village is situated at an altitude of 2450 meters and due to its altitude, this place sees a lot of snowfall every year. I had come to Narkanda last year too but there was no snowfall during my stay here.
But this time I did not let the opportunity go, I had already told jogta to call me as soon as there is a forecast of snowfall and I will come by direct bus, this is what happened yesterday Naveen called me and without thinking much I packed my bags and reached Dehradun bus stand in the evening from where I took a bus to Shimla which dropped me at Shimla bus stand after about 12 hours.
Today at 5 am I am shivering at Shimla bus stand and waiting for the bus to Narkanda. After a long road journey, I did not feel like getting on the bus again but it is important to reach today because the snowfall will get out of my hands. And I have to share today's fresh snowfall with my #hive friends. This post will be posted in @worldmappin where #winterchallenge is going on these days. These days I have only three tasks, first write hive post, then wait for the leaderboard to check if my name is there in #traveldigest or not and then check my position in the leaderboard where I am at the fifth position today.
I get the bus after about 30 minutes, due to snowfall, the number of buses towards Narkanda is less because there is snow on the road but thankfully I got a bus which was running very slow and the bus took 4 hours to cover the 70 km journey. After getting down at Firnu turn, I got down 1.5 km where Jogta's house is and on this side I reach Naveen's house at around 11 am. After 17 hours, I felt like lying down but my heart was restless to enjoy the fresh snowfall here.
We go to Naveen's house where we sit inside the house and drink hot tea. I wear two layers on the bottom and three layers on the top and come out. Since there is no electricity here since last night and my phone and camera are not charged, I click some photos with Naveen's camera. Of course, there was a whole mountain to click here but the camera card gets full and our photography is limited to 12 photos.
The snowfall was 5 inches and by afternoon it was reduced to 2 inches. There are apple orchards in the valley below where the fallen snow looks as if someone has scattered it in the fields with their hands. Seeing these wonderful views, I am thinking that if snow falls again today, it will be fun and my #Christmas will be celebrated here. The deodar forests are bathing in bright sunlight somewhere, while the snow lying below them is attracting me.
I am walking in the forest and I see my cheeks turning red in the intense cold. At a distance, I can see the Narkanda market which is buried in snow. The snow in the apple fields near Naveen's house has melted and has reduced considerably. The snow on the ball flowers near the house looks as if nature has crowned all the flowers. A hen that Naveen has reared is playing in the snow. It seems that she was also waiting for snowfall like me.
By evening, the weather changes, dark clouds have come in the sky and it seems as if snow will fall any time. Now I am waiting for tomorrow. By the way, I am not going to stay there for long because I also plan to visit the Kartik temple located in Uttarakhand from where, if I get time, I would like to visit the Tungnath temple. So, I reached Narkanda by #traveling by bus from Dehradun where it was a very good experience to meet my friend Naveen and it was wonderful to get a chance to enjoy Christmas #evening in fresh snowfall.
merry christmas friends (wishes from Himalayas)
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to translate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from canon 77d and edited in lightroom, post thumbnail created in adobe photoshop.
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Is this a real chicken? It looks like it is shock frozen - poor thing haha
I love how you are so spontaneous traveling out of intuition free enough to decide fast! That's the dream of many of us. Awesome also how you manage to stay up in the top 5. It is well deserved with content like that <3
Haha...this is a real chicken and it belongs to my friend Naveen after which there are 17 chickens and all live in Narkanda where the altitude is 2850 meters.
I am travelling continuously since 5 December this month, till now I have travelled more than 5000 km by road. Since the internet service is very poor during the travel, I am facing a lot of problem in posting my blog. Traveldigest has become a very distant goal which is out of my reach now.
Wow. Those chicken must be very special then, if they can survive up there. Maybe they get even older because of being half frozen haha. Wow really? I remember back then when I was traveling for so long, even with good internet it was very hard to find the time for posting.. of course, you have breaks, but you also need some time to process, without doing anything else. - I think you have been very productive @himalayanwomb. You are in the top ten of the challenge even! You can be very proud 👍🐝
Thank you for your kind words. All these chickens are 3 years old and are living safely at this location, maybe they have adapted themselves.
For the last 2 days, it has been snowing from 1700 meters and I am enjoying traveling in the Himalayas. Happy Winter
You are welcome @himalayanwomb🐝. Happy winter! - 😱 looking forward to seeing more of it.