391 Susan Jagannath ~ Hiking the Valley of Flowers in the Himalayas

Transcript

Holly:  Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 391. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another guest for the first time this year.

Today I am speaking with Susan Jagannath. I first discovered her early last year when I read her book on the Camino Inglés, because remember, before Covid hit, I was planning to walk the Camino Portuguese and the Camino Inglés last year and that didn’t happen. There are very few books on the Camino Inglés and Susan’s was one of them. I really, really, enjoyed it and reading her book kind of cemented the idea in my mind of walking that trail later last year, which of course didn’t happen. So once lockdown hit the UK, I ended up participating in a book promotion with other outdoors walking authors, and Susan was one of them. It was actually really funny because I downloaded her book on the Valley of Flowers and kind of didn’t realise that she was this same author. I had already read this other book by her, so it was a really nice coincidence.

So the Valley of Flowers is this really magical place above the clouds in the Himalayas and it is totally unlike any adventure I have ever had, or any of the walks I have ever done, and so I really wanted to get her on the show to tell her story. This is a totally doable adventure—of course you have got to plan for it, you have got to prepare for it, you have got to plan in advance to prevent altitude sickness which can really mess up your trip.

So in this episode we are going to talk about: what is the Valley of Flowers? And why you might want to go there. What is a typical day on the trail? Because it is this very protected place where you have got to kind of have a base camp and go up in the day and then come back down in the afternoon, so you can make several trips to the Valley of Flowers from your base camp but you have got to get up and down in a day – you can’t camp there, you can’t stay overnight there, you have got to really know how to plan this, and that is one of the things we are going to talk about. And we also talk about how to plan to prevent altitude sickness, because that can really kind of bring an end to things and it can be fatal if it is bad enough.

So hope you enjoy today’s episode, I really enjoyed it, this is such a beautiful adventure and I will link in the show notes to Susan’s books so that you can learn more about the Valley of Flowers and read about her adventures.

So without further ado, here is our conversation.

Holly: Hello Susan!

Susan: Hi Holly!

Holly: I am so looking forward to speaking with you today about the Valley of Flowers.

Susan: And yes, I was just reading your book on the South Downs and I was just thinking of the strange way in which all walkers have the same experience in completely different lands.

Holly: {laughing} I look forward to exploring what those common themes are! What is your outdoor adventure of choice?

Susan: The Himalayas.

Holly: Yes. How did you get into walking in the Himalayas?

Susan: I grew up there, my father was in the army, and we had several postings in the north of India, particularly in Kashmir, when I was very small and that is how I got used to wandering in Kashmir. In those days as a child, I would just run about in the valleys and along the streams and take long walks by myself at age eight!

Holly: Wow, that sounds amazing! And so, your parents would just let you run free alone or with friends and you just explored?

Susan: Yes, I guess we weren’t exploring a lot, it was far enough… now that I think about it, I may have explored a maximum of one or two miles away from home, but for an eight year old that is a lot.

Holly: Especially in that kind of terrain, I think that is quite a bit.

Susan: No at that time it was absolutely beautiful and there was no trouble. Kashmir is a valley – we weren’t really in the high Himalayas we were in a valley, it is really like paradise, it is… no traffic, nothing!

Holly: Ah it sounds amazing. So how did you first find out about the Valley of Flowers? Was that something that you were aware of when you were growing up in the Himalayas, or did you find out about that as an adult?

Susan: I found out about that as an adult, because the Valley of Flowers is a fairly recent walk, an area of the Himalayas which is a heavy pilgrimage route. So the Valley of Flowers was actually discovered by a British mountaineer called Frank Smythe (a very English name (!) so he founded it in the 1930s, I think. He kind of stumbled into this valley from a snow storm and just was amazed at this beautiful valley up there coming out of the harsh glaciers and blizzards. Then it became kind of… it is difficult to get to, you have to walk there; so for many years it was only for people who were really dedicated trekkers.

And I think, about 30 years ago, it opened up again, they built a track there because there is a Gurdwara nearby (a Sikh temple). So it opened up about 30 years ago and it was a new track and we wanted to go there but, by that time, I was in Bangalore as part of the IT takeover of the world (Bangalore’s IT takeover of the world!) {Holly: laughing} and we were a group of friends and we just never had time: so you have kids they are small, you are building your career, we never did it! This was kind of a dream simmering at the back of my mind for many years and kind of just happened last year, all of us were in a stage where, I had stopped working, a few of my other friends had changed career, and just said: we are at an age where we will get too old if we leave it and we are also in a position where we can go, we don’t have to answer to anyone! Because, I think when you are a woman, that age comes, it comes quite suddenly on you that suddenly you don’t have any family responsibilities and that is how we went. Really, I think we went with one month’s planning, it was ridiculous!

Holly: Wow!

Susan: But we are very good planners! And one of my friends, they were in India, and they were very good planners and it was one of those decisions which we just made, they just called me and said, ‘shall we go?’, and I said, ‘absolutely yes’, and bought my ticket and flew out. I think I bought my ticket a week before I left, and we had done the planning in two or three weeks. So literally I was shopping almost until I went to the airport! {laughing}  

Holly: Wow!

Susan: Because we did need wet weather gear because it is the monsoon.

Holly: Now you live in Australia, correct?

Susan: That’s right.

Holly: So did you do any training in that month between deciding to go and actually going, or did you do any kind of physical preparation?

Susan: Well Holly, as you know, I walk every day, walking is part of my [routine] that’s the only thing I do because I am really, really, lazy; I won’t do the gym, and I won’t do yoga and Pilates, and none of that. The only thing I like to do, I like to walk and I like to walk in the forest and in nature. We were, at that time still walking, five to ten kilometres every day and sometimes 15km at the weekend, just for fun as it were! But in the last few weeks before we went to the Valley of Flowers, we did those walks but we brought them down to 5km because we had so much else to do, but there is a hill behind my house with a set of stairs which we started calling ‘the stairs of death’, and I ran up and down those stairs, five to six times a day. So that was really… but you know Holly, nothing prepares you for the Himalayas.

Holly: This is one thing that I want to talk to you about, because I have never been in a place of such altitude. All the walks I have been doing in recent years have been in England, which is barely above sea level, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to walk in such high altitude.

Susan: It is like being in heaven!

Holly: {laughing} Because you have so little oxygen!

Susan: Exactly, but you know when I went on my previous Himalayan trek, I wrote a book on that also, that was in the Eastern Himalayas, Chasing Himalayan Dreams, that was another dream of mine, but I know that once I crossed about 3,000 metres, or even less than 3,000 metres, I was not in any fit state, I was very tired, despite being really fit. So altitude sickness has got nothing to do with your fitness at all, you can be young, old, fit, it doesn’t matter, the lack of oxygen is going to get to you.

So this time I took altitude sickness – I took medication for it, prescription medication – and I am happy to report that I was quite well with it, still a bit tired sometimes, but I didn’t have the fatigue and the lack of appetite and the inability to sleep, which I had on previous treks. So I was thinking after my Darjeeling and Sandakphu trek I said: okay, I have had my high Himalayan dream, I am never doing that again. I really thought I was going to die! And of course, you forget about all that.  

Holly: Yes you do. You forget about all the pain during your walks and are left with only the beautiful memories. {laughing}

Susan: A bit like childbirth isn’t it?

Holly: I wouldn’t know about that, but that’s what I hear. {laughing}

Susan: Yeah, every time you hit the labour table you think: I can’t believe I forgot this! And then you forget it again…

Holly: {laughing} There is probably a biological reason for that… This medication that you took, I found that really interesting, I actually didn’t know that there was medication that you could take to prevent altitude sickness. So were you able to get that because you knew you were susceptible to altitude sickness or can you get that just in case?

Susan: No, I actually did a fair bit of research online, as the internet is there and read up about it and from reading about it and tallying it up with my own symptoms when I had gone up 4000 metres at Sandakphu, I said, ‘okay I definitely need it’. It is a prescription drug. So I went to the doctor and she sort of asked me a whole lot of questions and then prescribed it for me and so I had it and so you had to start it 24 hours before you hit altitudes.

So I actually started it at the minute we landed in Delhi, because we landed in Delhi at about midnight, and we were going to catch the morning flight to Dehradun and head up from Dehradun into the mountains, so that was the time when I started. So you start it 24 hours before and then you take it every 12 hours, or 24 hours, she said it didn’t matter, so I took it every 24 hours.

Holly: Well that sounds like it is kind of the magic ticket to be able to have an outdoors adventure and exert yourself on those trails in high altitudes.

Susan: Well you have to be fit as well, but definitely. In my book I talk about it, I say you have you to have it because if you don’t have it, and I could see on both trails so many people who weren’t expecting altitude sickness, their whole trek that they had trained for, and they had paid so much money for, was just sort of ruined because they had no idea that his was going to hit them. You think that you were not enjoying yourself and you start thinking that you are unfit and you are an idiot and all that talk starts in the back of your head, you know that self-talk defeating you.

But if you know it is altitude sickness you can say: this is rubbish, this is just a physiological reaction, it is not anything to do with my mindset or my attitude. I saw people who were almost crying because they were so exhausted and they just could not walk more and they just could not do it. I felt so sad and they said, ‘oh no we are fit we can do it’.

One of the reasons I wrote the book was because there is no book about this hike and there is a lot of documentation on the web, but that is all written by tourist companies or trek companies who want to take you there and they say, ‘anybody can do it’, ‘it is very easy’. That’s not true, anybody can’t do it, you have to be extraordinarily fit and you have to be ready for altitude sickness and you have to take precautions against it and then you can do it, but this question of ‘anyone can do it’, it is wrong.

Holly: From reading your book it did not sound like anyone could do it! It sounded quite challenging.

Susan: Yes but anyone can do it if you are prepared Holly. Most things if you know it is coming and you are prepared you can do it. When you can’t do it is when you are not prepared and you just blunder into something and you ruin your expectations and have a terrible time and then come back saying, I had a terrible time, I am never going to hike again! Cutting yourself off from the most beautiful experience in the world.

Holly: Yeah. So in one month you and your friends organised this trip. How did you organise it? Did you work with a travel agency? You had a tour guide. How did you put this all together?

Susan: We did a bit of research, we talked to about four companies, including people who all of us had hiked with before, but we finally went with one person whose only area of operations was the Valley of the Flowers, they did nothing else. All the other people we talked to said, ‘yeah we can arrange it for you, but we have never taken anyone to the Valley of Flowers’, and we thought: oh we don’t want that.

So this group were actually well known as the Valley of Flowers people and they were well organised and so they booked all the accommodation for us, they booked taxis – we took our own individual taxis, there is a kind of bus which you can go in with other groups, but we said, ‘no, us girls, we want to be in our own group, really, we don’t wish to be sociable!’. We had so much to talk about… I don’t know I think there comes a stage when you have an opportunity like this, to meet after so many years, you just want to talk to each other and you are living in such close quarters with people, you want to be sure that you know and like them and that’s what it was.

So that was all arranged so we just arrived at Dehradun airport, which is called the ‘jolly grant’ airport (very jolly haha!). And so they picked us up, our taxi driver was again contracted, he was really good and he picked us up and took us up all the way at all the stops. So it was all arranged for us except a few annoyances, in the most part it was okay, but don’t expect western style customer service over there.

Holly: Also it is not even a major Indian city, it is small villages in the middle of the mountains, you have got so…the resources are not what you would have in a city anyway, so I think anyone who expects the comforts of home, or things that they are used to has probably gone on the wrong trip.   

Susan: Absolutely, we were very particular, this particular tour group assured us that they used local guides and used everything local, so. We were keen on that because we did not just want to give our money to someone from Delhi, we wanted our money to go into the area and it did. We were quite happy, because they were all local people and even in Ghangaria, which is the base camp, we got our own guide in addition to this guide, we got our own guide who was a local girl and we were very pleased with her. When I say local she was from that village but she had educated herself and become a tour guide, so she was about 19 years old and she was amazing.

She knew everything because she had been born there. She was able to show us flowers and take us further and deeper into the Valley, which other people don’t take you because it is quite far, and you think okay you have reached the top, actually you haven’t seen anything until you have gone at least 5km deep into the Valley. Most people just climb up and they walk about 1km deep into the Valley of Flowers and that’s it, but you have to walk further and you have to be willing to push the envelope, because the envelope for the Valley of Flowers is very narrow: you have a day pass to get in, you have to get into the gate by seven o’clock, if you start walking then pretty fast, because it is a very steep climb, you are only going to reach the Valley of Flowers by about 10, then you have to be out of the gate by about five o’clock. So it means that you have to leave the Valley of Flowers by two or three o’clock maximum, because even walking downhill you can’t run, it is very deep and it is very dangerous – so you just have that bit of time.

Holly: I think that is what makes this so unique and so unlike any other trekking destination because you have got that narrow window of time and there is such a long journey to get to that point, so by the time you arrived at the jolly grant airport to the time you got to Ghangaria, can you tell us about all the different places you visited along the way, because you made a bunch of different stops and you stayed several nights in different villages to acclimatise but also to see different things. So what were all the different places you visited along the way?

Susan: From Dehradun you have to go right up to the base camp, which is actually where you take the turning to the Valley of the Flowers, but it took us three days to get there because we were wanting to acclimatise, also we had got off the plane, we were still jet lagged. So we went up all the Ganges, and we went up all the tributaries of the Ganges, crossing what are known as the five Panch Prayags, or  the five confluences, of all the tributaries that make up the Ganges.

And this was important to us because we a group of four Indian women and we were almost like the first generation of, I would say, ‘free’ women, that means that we had careers, we had our own money, and pretty much could do what our mothers and grandmothers could not do. One of the important things is that the Ganges is a very feminise, life-giving, force in the Indian culture, and in Hinduism, and we wanted to dance of the banks of the Ganges literally and we wanted to dip our feet into the Ganges and spray the water on us. Because one of the ancient Indian beliefs, because if you spray yourself with the water of the Ganges, or you dip yourself in the water of the Ganges, you are kind of freed of all your sins – and you are assured of rebirth as a nice person!

Holly: {laughing} That’s good!

Susan: Not that any of us were fanatics about that but I think anyone who has lived in India culturally can’t get away from the fact that the Himalayas and the Ganges are kind of core to your culture and core to almost every belief. So we went through the first stop, which we did literally was at a place called [] it is a stop, a smallish stop. Before that we stopped at the place where the two rivers Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda meet and actually become the Ganges. It is an amazing spot where I also met a cow on a swing bridge! I was reading about your encounter with a herd of cattle and I was thinking: oh my God I am so scared, I am not going on that South Downs Way.

Holly: There are a lot of cows! {laughing}

Susan: There were so many cows, this cow was walking/lumbering over this suspension bridge (can you imagine?) at Devprayag where the rivers become the Ganges. Literally at this spot the Alaknanda at this time was quite brown and violent and churning; and the Bhagirathi was this cool blue (literally blue – when I say blue it was blue), and the two join. Because it was monsoon the Ganges then becomes brown, but when we had gone there in the winter, some years ago when we went on another trip, the Bhagirathi was blue and the Alaknanda was green, and they both become the Ganges until it leads to the mountains, it is amazing.

So we followed this up and from there we went up to Auli which is a bit off track, but Auli is a ski resort almost, amazingly high in the sky and very steep slopes and absolutely stunning views from there of these massive mountains, there are these plunging valleys and actually looking at these mountains, they have got these particular names including Nanda Devi (one of the female shaped mountains, Nanda Devi is a goddess compared to the other ones) and you can only see that mountain very rarely, it is normally shrouded with mist but when you climb up high enough in Auli, high above Auli, you are above the clouds and suddenly the giants just appears out of the mists!

Holly: It is a very magical experience when you get so high that you are above the clouds and you are kind of looking down on the clouds and seeing the peaks of mountains, I have very rarely been able to experience that, but it is so magical.

Susan: After you reach Auli, you are always above the clouds and we spent a day there we did another trek. I think that’s where, if you have read my book I had read Frank Smythe’s account of his arriving at (he doesn’t call it Auli) and I literally stopped at that exact spot and I couldn’t believe it was the same spot, I kept reading it again and again, I thought this is the spot because he described the mountains – he didn’t have any pictures then. He describes the exact peaks, quite unbelievable, and –  as an author and avid reader myself – I love to be in places where people have been in books!

I think the year before last, before I did the Camino for the second time, we went to the Lake District and walked over there and of course I had to go and stand over there and look at where Wordsworth was inspired to write Daffodils and go to Windermere and all those places and go to Wordsworth House and look at it! The Lake District was beautiful as well but it was a bit small compared to the Himalayas!

Holly: {laughing} Very small compared to.. completely different scenery.

Susan: Still good walks and for someone who has read English literature it is still good to see where Peter Rabbit may have popped out from {laughing}.

Holly: So how many days should someone plan for this trip? All the way up to the Valley of Flowers and then back, and you made several visits to the actual valley, how many days should people think about planning?

Susan: We took ten days, but I would say that you should take two weeks, because you are going all the way there and don’t do what other people do, you know Indian tourists who just come and do it, they just rush up and down. It takes you a full day’s walking from Govindghat to Ghangaria, and if you want to do the Valley of Flowers, or go on further to the Sikh Temple, you should actually rest, because one of the things with altitude is to acclimatise, so you should take a complete day’s rest at Ghangaria before you ascend. We went up twice to the Valley of Flowers and then we went up to Hemkund Sahib which is even higher where there is a Sikh Temple where there is a little ice glacial lake and at the edge of it you have the temple. So that is also a significant climb. All these climbs they are vertical! {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} That’s what it sounds like from your book!

Susan: They are almost vertical, and you can’t just stroll up you have to watch every step; and when you have to watch every step it gets exhausting. We took three days to get up because we went to Kirtinagar and then we went to Auli and at Auli we stopped for a day and then we started climbing. So that took us three days to get there. Then from Govindghat we had one day and five days (it takes another day to come down). I would say ten days minimum to enjoy it because we spent a lot of time at Ghangaria, but at Ghangaria you have to go up and down all the time. So we spent about five full days in Ghangaria and I think to really enjoy it you need ten days, because then you come down and then you rest and recover from the altitude and then you go again the next day.

One of the best things for altitude is to not rush around like a mad, fit, person, but to keep going. One of our Himalayan guides told us that the way the Himalayan people manage the walks is because they work slowly with small steps and that is how you go far and high. So slowly, steadily, literally with small steps and I think you can really enjoy the Valley of Flowers, I would have liked more time in Ghangaria, just to recuperate. Ghangaria itself is not a very exciting place. It is a bit crowded… but the days when you are are in Ghangaria you can wander off to the valleys at the side, it is very beautiful and you can see really wonderful things and, one of the things about the Himalayas in India, it is very safe in the countryside there, you don’t have to worry as a woman… you don’t have to worry about anything.

Holly: That was one of my questions, is it safe for women who want to maybe travel there on their own?

Susan: I would say it is safe to travel on your own, but you can’t travel on your own, you have to take a guide. Yeah it is totally safe, there were lots of women on their own over there. I don’t know, I don’t believe in doing things on your own, if you can afford a flight to Dehradun, or if you can afford a flight even from India to Dehradun, I think you should bite the bullet and pay for the porter and pay for the guide, and support the local economy.

Holly: And I think another thing that is really important that you do mention in your book is: don’t haggle or try to bargain the person down on the prices, because this is their only way of living, this is the only thing they can do, they have a very limited season to work, and just pay them!

Susan: Yeah just pay them, the rates are not obscene, they are not that bad really. You can take a helicopter and go up. One of my friends had hurt her leg and she was determined to take the helicopter down and I said, ‘okay, I will come with you’, I sort of fancied seeing it from above, I thought it would be nice for my book to see it from above. I took one look at the steep valley and the way the helicopter was turning and I looked at the security and it was nothing, and I thought: I am not going in this, this is such a flight hazard.

After all, I am a military wife – my husband was in the air force – and I looked at it and I thought: there is no way I am going in that helicopter, the way they are doing it, and so I left… we went very early, and [my friend] stood in the queue and I just continued on down. And later on my friends they crossed me and they said, ‘what are you doing here?’, and I said, ‘I decided not to go in the helicopter’.   

Holly: They can be dangerous.

Susan: Yeah, a couple of days later there was an accident so… What really made me paranoid was that there was an army unit next to the helipad and guess what was standing next to the gate? A fire tender. They don’t have firetrucks there but I recognised it for what it was, it was what we used to call in Indian army parlance a fire tender, which is a water tank, a trailer full of water and I am thinking:  oh dear!

Holly: Yeah that’s not a good a sign! So Ghangharia is kind of a base camp and from there you go up to the Valley of Flowers, you can go up to the Sikh Temple, can you kind of explain for our listeners who haven’t yet read your book, what is that like, going up to the Valley of Flowers each day? What is the trail like? What is the experience like? I know that we talked a little bit about the narrow window of time but what is a typical day?

Susan: You would get out, try and get out, of your accommodation pretty early, by 6.30am, and head on down to the restaurant or the hotel which is providing you food because you don’t necessarily get food in the place where you are staying. So head there, get your breakfast, and pick up your packed lunch, because there is no food on the way. So you pick up your packed lunch and water and a drink and whatever and head out of Ghangaria where you have to cross the Lakshman Ganga river, which is quite a bridge (I suppose it is an okay bridge), at one side is the glacier, the glacier is still there, it is just melting so you have a melting glacier and above the melting glacier you have three levels of waterfall. It is unbelievable!

Holly: Wow!

Susan: You have these waterfalls falling and then you cross the bridge and at the bridge you turn left to go to the Valley of Flowers, and right if you want to continue to the Sikh temple. So you go to the Valley of Flowers, you have to check in, because there is a forestry department there (don’t imagine anything civilised, there is much screaming and yelling!) and you enter your name, basically the forest rangers enter your name and you have to pay to get in. Then you head off from down there. You kind of turn down a side valley and that is where you are walking along the banks of the Pushpawati, which is the river, and in the monsoon it is quite a boiling, raging, torrent, absolutely raging, but you already see the flowers popping out on the side and all over.

And then you cross the Pushpawati, and again now the bridge has become more and more rickety (it is a fairly rickety bridge!), you cross that and immediately you start almost a vertical climb up really steep crags, and there is hairpin bend after hairpin bend, but as soon as you get even two hairpin bends up you start seeing the flowers on the side – these Himalayan balsam. Himalayan wildflowers are small, they are not large and showy, and you see the silver birch, the white birch trees, oh it is absolutely beautiful. And as you get higher and higher, guess what you get? Clouds!

Holly: {laughing} So you are in the middle of the cloud!

Susan: Absolutely and you are looking down and sometimes you wish you hadn’t looked down because it is a steep, steep, vertiginous, drop. So this very steep climb is extremely exhausting, it is not very…it is about one-and-a-half/two kilometres and after that levels out, you are on a ridge, you are into the Valley of Flowers so it is kind of flat. So you walk along this part and then you come across another glacier remnant and that is where you have an even more rickety bridge which is now a single plank (!) and you cross that and then you are at this place, there is a huge massive boulder there called a [b] which means boulder gate and then you are into this very Tolkien-ish/Lord of the Rings valley, which is absolutely stunning and the bushes which are bearing the flowers, they are above your head.

So you wind along those and you come across even more meadows, so it is all above the tree line, lush green grass and banks of flowers in masses and it changes every month, almost, it changes because of the monsoon and we were there in August which is the peak of the monsoon and also the peak of the flowering. So lots and lots of flowers which were unbelievable and that’s where you can walk in and you find also that they have got berries, and you eat the berries and it tastes like menthol. Have you had Vicks?     

Holly: Yes. It doesn’t sound very tasty!

Susan: Yeah! And these berries are tasty and she said, ‘go and scratch them’, and it is like Vicks, and it is the same colour, the purple colour. She says, ‘this is for increasing your circulation’, so you can breath better. So that is quite, quite, amazing. You have river beauty, banks of them, and the streams have melted, so you have lots of streams to cover and then if you walk far enough you come to this green meadow and in the middle of that is a grave complete with a cross, and that is the grave of a female botanist (what’s her name?), Margaret Legge.

She came up to document all the plants because obviously the Botanic Society of England were not impressed with Frank Smythe’s work, because he was a mountaineer he couldn’t have done a very good job documenting the plants! So they said, ‘okay we need plants documented, we will send a good woman out there, she will do a good job’. So unfortunately this poor lady, she came out there, I don’t know how long it took her, it took her a month to reach there but I think she died within two or three days because she fell off a cliff. So she is buried there. But I think maybe she is happy because she died doing what she loves? 

Holly: She died in a beautiful place.

Susan: Yes, so it is quite, the local people and the local society maintain the grave and yeah it is quite amazing, because the grave it gets covered with ice every single winter. I think by the end of September you have the first snowfall and glaciers start advancing in the valley, they close the valley.

Holly: So there is a very small window of time, is it June through August? When can you travel to this valley?

Susan: Roughly June to September, normally it opens on the first week of June, and it closes first week of October, or the first snowfall. So this year there was snowfall the last week of September, so it closed. Once the snow comes that’s it you can’t do anything because literally the glaciers come and fill the valley. So there isn’t much you can do about it and this is why in Ghangaria the roofs collapse under the snow and they have to redo it and to redo it everything has to be carted up on the backs of mules, so it is a big task to even repair a single tap or what have you.

Holly: Mm you are in the middle of the mountains and there is nothing up there, just just little villages, it sounds like.

Susan: And everything has to come up by mule from Gobindghat – I mean, how much can a mule carry, anyway?

Holly: Not much.

Susan: Not much. But it did open this year despite…but it opened in August instead of June, it opened in August and there were one or two people who went up and they said yes it was beautiful but not many people, which is good I guess. I was surprised that they actually opened it, but I think those States they can’t survive without the tourist traffic, so they wanted some tourist traffic. So people have been travelling there since August, September, the odd person. Lots of people in India, they have got this thing saying, ‘work from the mountains’, it is almost like a home-stay because they have got internet servers, so they go and they stay in these places and are actually spending some time in the Himalayas, so it is a way for people to both enjoy the Himalayas, get away from the plains, and for them to get some income, the people who are there to get some income.

One of my friends who came with me, she went on another trek in the Himalayas just at end of November, or December, and she said it was cold, but she said it was really good because there were hardly any crowds and she said, ‘we were in our bubble’. So it was only the people they went with, they all knew they were tested and they didn’t mix with anyone else, their tents were pitched only for them. They didn’t use any accommodation, so she said it was quite safe. She sent me a picture of herself on the plane, almost with complete protective gear! She had a mask and she had a screen and everything on the flight but she said, ‘I cannot bear it, I am trapped over here for so long, I am going to the mountains’.   

Holly: So what is it like, since it is such a small window of time since you can visit there, is it quite busy? Are there are a lot of people? Does it feel crowded?

Susan: I think from day-to-day it is different, sometimes the first day we went, I was thinking, ‘oh my god what is this place? It is so crowded!’. The path up was absolutely packed, but once you actually get into the Valley of Flowers, there is so much room the crowds kind of disappear. I mean it is not as if you are alone but in some areas, if you walk a bit further, you are alone. Literally when we were walking up it was continuous traffic all the way – traffic meaning people – all the way up. And I was quite thinking it would be horrible, but once you went up there everyone vanished, I don’t know what happened! And on another day we went up, there was almost no one. And even coming down, coming down, again, you feel like there were whole stretches where I didn’t see anyone! – for 10-20 minutes I would be walking without seeing a single person.

But it is quite strange, which is why I said it would be nice if you spent more time there because these tour groups come in clumps and you will suddenly have a whole lot of them, and then the next day there will be no one. So it was pretty good but it is India, Holly, you can’t really expect there to be no one! {Laughing} But despite that, there were entire stretches when I thought: I can’t believe it, I am at the top of the mountain and I cannot see a single soul here, I could be alone in the world.

Holly: I love that. So one thing you say in the book is that once you start going up the trails, you have to keep going or turn back. So is this just like a single file of people just moving, moving, moving, step, step, step? Is it just non-stop all the way up?

Susan: Yes it is. I suppose you could turn and go back, but then you wouldn’t reach the Valley of Flowers. I think if you start from Gobindghat, which is the road head, from there you have to walk and you have to reach Ghangaria because there is nowhere else to stay in between. I think that’s what I meant and from Ghangaria there is nowhere to stop and if want to see the Valley of Flowers, you have to keep going, there is nowhere to stop and say, I will stop over here. Like if you are on the Camino you can say: there is a village here, I will go into the Albergue here, the next day day I will continue to walk.

You can’t do that! You have to keep walking because there is nowhere to stop, the only thing you could do is turn and go back, that’s the only choice. It is not so crowded, it is not as if it is crowded that you can’t move, but there is nowhere to stop, it is just a steep mountain, and you are not allowed to stay in the National Park, even if you try to say: okay, and hide in a boulder and start over there. You are not allowed to do that, I don’t know if some forest ranger will come and drag you out, but it is illegal and you are not allowed to do it.

Holly: And also I noticed in your book that as you are coming down the mountain and you pass by entrance gate, you have to give your name, so they are checking you off to make sure you came out.

Susan: Yes absolutely. I was talking to the guard and he was saying, it is really for your own security because if you don’t come out, we will try to send someone to find out if you are safe.

Holly: Yes, that makes sense.

Susan: Yes because things can happen, but very easily if you are not careful, you could slip over one of those edges and go down. You have to be careful over there as Margaret Legge showed, I don’t know what she did, but she tumbled down a gorge and died, so it is very steep.

Holly: So what should someone expect to budget for a trip like this? I know that is kind of like asking, how long is a piece of string? But what is the kind of range that you think it would cost someone to plan a trip like this.

Susan: The trouble is I keep converting from Indian money to…

Holly: to Australian dollars?

Susan: …to Australian dollars. So, we spent about, I think the guide cost was about 30,000 rupees per head. And how much would that be? It is actually very cheap, it is about 5,000, Australian Dollars, up and down you could do it, including your air fare. It is very cheap, which is why I say don’t haggle. But I would say, I rewrote the book in June last year, immediately after publishing I published again. I would think safely to double that because of Covid now, you don’t want to use any form of public transport, you definitely want your own cab and you don’t want to stay in any shared accommodation. You don’t want to stay in hostels, you want to only stay in individual rooms and all of that increases the cost.

Holly: Right, of course.

Susan: Possibly, you don’t want to take porters because it is too close, you know? I would be sitting on the back of a porter and be carried up, like you can, so that is out of the question. If you are going to spend more time you have to pay more for accommodation, that’s why I am saying you could easily double that amount for today just to take precautions. And you would need to definitely always buy your water, drinking water, you wouldn’t want to risk that.

Holly: Yes.Alright. Well thank you for sharing with us about your adventures. Tell us a little bit about your books because you have got your book about the Valley of Flowers but you also have two other books about your walking and outdoor adventures, so tell us about those?

Susan: So the other Himalayan books are called Chasing Himalayan Dreams and this is a six-day hike in the Eastern Himalayas, near Darjeeling; where you walk up to a point called Sandakphu where you see this complete range of Kanchenjunga and it is called the sleeping Buddha. So the range of mountains it looks like a man sleeping (huge!). So it is absolutely perfect, you have the five peaks of Kanchenjunga, you have the smaller peaks and way out to the West you can actually see Everest.  You can actually see four of the highest mountains in the world from that point.

Again, it was one of those walks which is absolutely stunning at every point, you see these mountains around you and you go up through pine forests and banks of rhododendrons, depending on your season. You can walk up there and it is about a three to four day walk up and three day walk down – same problem, altitude sickness, you have to be careful about your altitude. Chasing Himalayan Dreams, it was again a dream of mine, I had wanted to walk it when I was 16 and I was studying in Darjeeling and all the guys used to go and walk it, all the guys from the boys colleges and schools would go and walk it – we couldn’t. And they were saying, ‘nah, nah, nah, we walked up to Sandakphu and you are a girl and you can’t do it’. But of course it was not that we couldn’t do it, we weren’t allowed to do it; you weren’t allowed to head off on your own and do it.

So that was one of the dreams that I thought suddenly, okay it was a forgotten dream, and you forget about it, but I said this time: this is something that I want to do, I have always wanted to walk this trail. And the trail is all along the border, literally, the trail is the border between Nepal and India. You walk along the trail and you can either camp if your tour guide provides it but because we went in winter we stayed in teahouses all the way and it was very comfortable – not luxurious, but comfortable – although teahouses are a luxury in the Himalayas. One of these things is that we noticed that all the teahouses were all run by women. That entire area there is no work and so all the men go down to the plains, so most of the women were running things which was very good for us.

Also a reason why I say support the economy, because when you think of a Himalayan farmer, the actual Himalayan farmer is a 50-year-old woman looking after a brood of grandchildren and children whose children are working in the plains, sending money home. So that was Himalaya Sandakphu trail, called Chasing Himalayan Dreams, a very personal journey and lots of stuff about what I thought then and what I thought now and again the same thing, hit the altitude and you think: okay, now I am facing myself, I am not that fit, I am not that wonderful {laughing}, because I am so tired, what is the matter with me!

Holly: Lessons learned!

Susan: Yes, I think in the Himalayas the biggest lesson you learn is how small you are.

Holly: And you have had some very different adventures on the Camino, haven’t you?

Susan: Yes, the opposite. That was another place, the Camino was never an idea, I didn’t even know about it, quite frankly I don’t know how I heard about it. I might have heard a friend talking about it in Australia and then suddenly I started only seeing Camino movies, I saw ‘the Way’, I kept seeing books about the Camino and I read Paul Coelho’s book and it sort of started hitting all over and I just said: that sounds like a good thing to do. Also I was at the stage where I thought: okay, I need to get fit, I am getting too fat and putting on weight, what shall I do? And I only like to walk and I need to have a goal and so I had this to get fit for it. So I started walking as a fitness goal and then thought: okay, I am so bored of all the places I walk and I need to go and just walk 100km in Spain, where I have never walked before!

So we went there and the plan was to do the Camino Frances, which is like a six week walk, but at that time I was still working, we had planned this and I because a bit wary of it because we had a lot of work at that time and we wanted to do it in September/October and there was suddenly a lot of work and there was no way I could ask for leave and expect to keep my job. Again, just looking at things and I just found the Camino Ingles, a shorter Camino. Again, I didn’t find any books about it at that time and just looking at the internet and some stuff and we went and did it and that is how we did that walk. And again I found that the book that I had read was wrong – they had changed the route and so I came back and wrote, that was the first book that I wrote.

Holly: And that was the first book of your that I read, because I was hoping to walk the Camino Ingles last year and then Covid came! You are right there are very, very, few books on that trail and yours was one of three that I read. Yes, it is a very good book. I will link to that in the show notes.

Susan: Thank you. I walked it a second time because I updated it and completely rewrote it because they changed the route. I still don’t know why, I think the older route was better, but my book contains the side notes – if you want to walk this other route, take this turn! So you can do that, but it is a do-able thing, you can do it and it just takes six days. From Australia it takes two weeks that’s it up and down and we went to the UK because we have family there. It was really, I am really grateful to the Camino Ingles and to walking and believing in walking because it kind of launched me on a whole different career as an author and writing books. I have always been a writer, but when you are writing technical manuals for geeks, you don’t tend to think of yourself as a real author – you know that imposter syndrome that haunts us.

Holly: That’s a very different type of writing.

Susan: Yes it is, I think I have been able to take the systems from that and focus from that and apply it to this, and I am really happy. I used to enjoy technical writing, believe it or not, I am a complete geek, I love learning new technology! But I discovered that I also loved learning [about] new places, new routes, new things to do and applying all the systems which I learned from there to get the books out fast – I can’t stuff around with a book, get it out fast and be done with it.

Holly: So what is your next adventure once Covid lifts and we can travel more freely?

Susan: Oh gosh Holly! Last year I had these huge plans last year, I was going to do the TransSiberian train, not walking and then from Moscow head down and get onto the European system and then head down to Spain and do the Camino Frances and the Portuguese and do all that and then I was going to come back to India and with my same group of friends we were going to do Mount Kailash. I think two of those I can no longer do because the state of affairs between India and China, you can’t do Kailash anymore, that’s really… and I don’t think I would want to do the TransSiberian now with the train either. So that leaves me with me to go back to the Camino…

Holly: Sounds likes a plan!

Susan: Sounds like a plan yeah. Because we come from Australia it is not worth going just for one walk, you might as well do a couple, so. Possibly I might start with the Portuguese and then do the Frances, one of the reasons why I decided to do the Portuguese was that I heard a talk by John Brierley, you know John Brierley is like the God of Camino books.

Holly: Yes.

Susan: He is absolutely… people say that his books are not really accurate but anyway he is a wonderful, wonderful person. I met him in person and we talked so well and he is into the whole walking as a personal development, as a spiritual thing, and as an ecological endeavour. So one of the things he said was don’t walk the Frances because you are destroying the environment, it is no longer a pilgrimage, people are walking it as a trophy. He said go and walk other Caminos, he said there are hundreds of other Caminos all marked, all beautiful. So after hearing his talk, and that might have been in 2018 or middle 2019, I said: okay, we will do the Portuguese first and I thought the Portuguese would be a good book for me because I actually have a home in Goa and Goa used to be a Portuguese colony for 500 years.

So if you are going to Goa today, almost every hill has got a white painted Portuguese style church and you go into them and you could be back on the Camino. They are not boring old English Anglican churches without colour, they are just full of colour. So I thought it might be an interesting book to do and a bit of research. I thought I would do the Portuguese and link it up somehow to Goa because what I am actually working on, with another friend of mine who has actually done this, but she is now marooned in England and she can’t come back, to do a walk from the north of Goa down to the south of Goa. So I was thinking I could do a walk from the north of Goa and end up at the Bom Jesus, which is where the body of Francis Xavier is.

Holly: Oh okay.

Susan: Another Saint, like the Santiago Saint, so I thought I could plug into the saintly thing and do a Goa Camino. So I was planning on doing a bit of that adventure and exploring, not just writing about a Camino but inventing my own Camino.

Holly: Ooh, that sounds like a good idea.

Susan: Yes I think that might be my next plan, as soon as I can go back to India. I am waiting for the vaccine, can’t wait for all of this to settle down in Europe and India because currently you are not allowed to leave Australia, can you believe it?

Holly: Wow. Well the good thing is that you are kind of self-contained so it is easier to stay safe, in theory.

Susan: Yes so I am becoming like the government and thinking: yeah you shouldn’t let anybody else in because every outbreak that has been had has been because of returned travellers who have brought it. It escapes despite quarantine and everything. So anyway we are waiting for that vaccine.

Holly: Sounds good.

Susan: So that is what I am planning. I might come back to the Lake District, I have all my notes and I haven’t written my book on the Lake District as yet. I wanted to do the Coast to Coast and I didn’t have time last time, I just had about five days in the UK.

Holly: Another trail for sometime soon.

Susan: Yes, have you done it?

Holly: Oh no I haven’t, it is one of those things that is on my list, there are too many trails here in the UK.

Susan: I know, you are so spoilt.

Holly: I know, we are very lucky here and I have many trails on my list and little-by-little once lockdown lifts up, hopefully, work my way through them. So thank you so much for joining us today and talking about the Valley of Flowers and all of your books and adventures. Where can people find you online? What is your website?

Susan: It is SusanJagannath.com.

Holly: And what social media websites do you hang out on?

Susan: All of them I think: Facebook, Instagram, I am even on LinkedIn although it is a bit of a dead zone. Yep, I am on all of them. Even on Twitter. I am not too active on anything except Facebook but I try to be there.

Holly: I see you on Instagram quite a bit.

Susan: Yes I am on Instagram, but it is automated Holly.

Holly: Oh is it!

Susan: Every writer has to have an automated social media or they would go mad. {laughing}

Holly: Alright well thank you again and I look forward to sharing this with our listeners, so they can discover a very different type of adventure in the Valley of Flowers.

Susan: Thanks Holly, it was lovely talking to you.

 

Holly: Please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode, you can email me at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

Also if there are any other random little known trails or adventures that you would like to hear about and I will find someone to talk to about if I haven’t done it myself, which I probably haven’t if it is that rare, I think you have probably heard me talk about all of my adventures. So if you have something that you have always wondered about but aren’t sure if it is right for you, let me know and I will research.

Thank you so much for listening and remember to visit: HollyWorton.com/391 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.