Pin Valley National Park in Spiti - journey of a lifetime
- Bipasa Chakraborty
- May 7
- 4 min read
Updated: May 10
Pin Valley National Park, an offbeat destination, is part of the cold desert biosphere reserve situated in Spiti valley of HP. Its like a green oasis in the cold desert of Spiti. Mud village (12500 ft) is the last village inside Pin valley. This valley preserves endangered snow leopards, Siberian Ibex and many more rare species of flora and fauna.
In our spiti trip, after visiting Tabo monastery we started for Pin valley taking Tabo - Kaza road ie NH 505. Just 15 km before reaching Kaza, there is a diversion road to the left at a place called Atargoo, just after the confluence of Spiti and Pin river, there we have to cross a bridge to the left that lead to this beautiful Pin valley. The valley offers charming unrealistic beauty with vastness. The changing colours of the valley throughout the journey was enthralling. With lush greeneries and yellow wild flowers, with mauve coloured valleys, with grey to brown pastel shaded mountains and Pin river flowing parallely make this valley so picturesque. The silence of the snow capped Himalayas will give shiver in the spine. This place has nothing else to offer but charming beauty of nature. One of the most beautiful road trip done by us. Less disturbed by travelers, this place is a hidden gem in Spiti.
Inside Pin valley National park, there are around 17 villages and a major village is the Sagnam village, with beautiful green fields and white houses mostly made of mud. Moving forward comes the Mud or Mudh, a quaint picturesque village. Though we returned the same day but a day long hiking inside Pin valley Natiinal Park core zone can be done after taking prior permission from forest department. For that one have to stay overnight at Mudh village.
After reaching Mudh village, weather was deteriorating in the village and the distant Himalayas were getting covered with clouds and gusty chilling wind started blowing, so we decided not to stay long here but to get down to have lunch in Sagnam. Mud village is the end point of the famous Pin Parvati Pass trek that typically starts from Kullu and ends here. There are very few options of homestay in Mud.
Because of global warming and climate change, these areas which usually never received rainfall before are now having rainfall, which is a major concern here. Locals were telling they never saw any rainfall even two years before. And here mountains are made of mud and loose scree rather than solid rocks, so rainfall causes damage to the nature causing erosion, landslides and here houses are made of mud too as mud acts as good insulator and keep warm inside during winter. So heavy rain washes away their mud damaging their houses too. So rainfall is not at all beneficial but hazardous here. People here are used to snowfall only. Rain started pouring heavily and we managed to enter a little shop at Sagnam to have lunch. There we met with some goverment officers, engineer and police persons posted in Kaza. They came as invited guests in a district level cricket tournament going on in Sagnam at this high altitude. Rain had disrupted the play and they came for lunch too. They discussed about their hard life in Kaza, harsh winter here, their struggle and all but the people here are so warm & friendly always smiling. We had the best hot masala vegetable Maggie here. Rain had almost stopped and we had finished our lunch. So after bidding juley (goodbye), we started our return journey and then the best thing happened. We saw a huge rainbow covering the whole valley over the mountains. Never seen such a big, fat & beautiful rainbow in my whole life and never will I am sure. I stared at the beautiful rainbow till my heart’s content... like a child, clicked photos to frame this moment and saw the rainbow gradually fading away in the lap of the Himalayas.
We moved on & saw a swinging wooden bridge broken at few places, with wire support for holding and did a little venture by walking over the bridge which was a very scary experience, as the whole bridge was swinging with the gusty wind and Pin river was flowing below with full speed. This bridge is used by locals, connects the road with their remote villages located on other side of Pin river. There are few such hanging bridges connecting remote villages of Pin valley. Life indeed is very difficult here and yet people are so content and wonderful with their minimalist life style in true sense. With whole lot of good memories we proceeded towards Dhankar monastery in Dhankar village in the afternoon which was our next destination before entering Kaza.
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