Chail (2250m), Badi ki dhar (2061m) and Kathpol ka tibba (1936m) are the highest points of district Solan (City of red gold). Two of these highest points are situated in tehsil Arki and are situated in a radius of 15-20 kilometers from my home town Darlaghat (Lets not argue about whether Darlaghat is a town or a village. keep it the way I wrote it), and yet I never got a chance to visit them till this date.
Trek to Kathpol ka tibba Starts from Malokhar village which is 1200m high above mean sea level. The trail is totally marked from bottom point to top point with a little or no vegetation on the way. It seemed like hills borrowed trees from some other hill. Right on the summit there is temple of Baba Balak Nath. This was the steepest climb I ever did in my life. Their is a funny story related to this place that whoever sleeps atop in the night was found on the road next morning.
We started our climb at 10:00 am from Malokhar. As we were aware that it takes 2-3 hrs to reach summit so we were thinking that the total trek might be of 7-8 kilometers as it was a steep climb. As we progressed we felt the same thing that we thought that it was 7-8 kilometers and took us about 2 hours to reach, but the GPS was high and showing just 2.78 kilometers on screen.
On the way up we saw a girl playing shepherd of low hills, she was grazing her cattle and sheep with no one around. I was surprised to see that, at that age on Sunday mornings I used to watch TV or play cricket for the whole day and there she was doing her part so that her parents can do other things. Life is hard in the villages with no connectivity of road.
We were half the way up and again saw a women mowing and her two kids were helping her. People of villages are so hardworking that they everyday climb the whole damn hill just to mow and feed their cattles with that.
From top you can have 360°view. You can have a view of Ambuja cement plant, Jaypee cement plant, little glimpse of Satluj, Shikari devi far away and Badi ki dhar. But everything will look a little blur due to pollution caused by these two cement factories.
On the way down we took another path which was little difficult and a shortcut and I had a nice fall on the pebbles which blew my ass. It became difficult even to find way as we descended 300-400m. Instead of falling, slipping on pebbles we reached Malokhar swiftly in 1 hour 16 minutes.
Please follow these things while traveling –
– Manage your waste well and don’t litter
– Use dustbins wherever necessary
– Avoid plastic bottles in hills. Usually you get clean water in hills and water bottles create a lot of mess in our ecosystem.
– Say a big NO to plastic and avoid those unhealthy snacks packed in plastic bags and rather buy fruits.
Plz share this article To spread message of clean and green Himachal
View Comments (2)
Great post
thank you