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PARTYING MUSICALLY & HOW!
Lucknow Royals club recently organized a Karaoke theme party at upscale club in the state capital. The event saw enthusiastic participation from all members of the club who embraced the theme with open arms.
The singing fervor caught up with all the members who all joined in to try their hands at singing. But the real surprise came from the unbelievable performance of Saninder Pal Singh and Jay Arora who were awarded with an acoustic guitar and a full sized keyboard respectively. After a fabulous round of signing, members swarmed the dance stage to shake a leg.
What could the Garden of Eden be than a place of sunshine, freedom and flowers, I wondered. The Biblical possibility of perfection, of paradise, was all but a distant dream; till I found one that could be. All I needed to do was pack my bag, step out of my front doo and follow nature’s sounds. I wanted a garden, I got a valley.
The city slumber and languor had been promptly washed off with a quick early morning dip in the cool waters of Ganga at Haridwar, Uttarakhand. The temptation of spending some more time was too much to not give in to. The call of the blossoming souls in the Valley of Flowers was, however, the bigger pull. It was a battle between excitement and patience.
THE WAITING GAME
The roads only take till Govindghat, around 300km from Haridwar. The confluences of rivers en route to Govindghat and the silent majesty of mountains had me entertained but the lure of the ultimate was making the minutes seem like hours. Devprayag, Rudraprayag, Karnaprayag, Nandaprayag and Vishnuprayag are the five unions of the river Alaknanda. It takes birth at the feet of Satopanth and Bhagirathi Kharak glaciers in Uttarakhand and merges with Bhagirathi, which takes form at the foot of Gangotri glacier in Garhwal, to give birth to Ganga in Devprayag.
The approaching dusk had only multiplied nature’s echo. William Shakespeare had said that ‘One touch of nature
es the whole d kin’. The day, a relaxed eakfast at Govindghat and a quick 4km ride till Poolna was followed by treading the path alongside bathed greenery and flowing streams for almost 10km to reach Ghangaria.
COLOURS EVERYWHERE
Greeted by a melange of flowers, scents, earth and trees, a couple of kilometers into the trek, the valley opened its arms and presented the heaven that I was searching for. It seemed like a fairyland where I would meet pixies showering their magical dust somewhere. Once upon a time, the locals hardly ventured into the valley as they thought the place belonged to the fairies and anyone who went there would be captured by them.
The green carpet that stretched as far as the eye could see was well highlighted by flowers of various colours and sizes. The purple of Himalayan bell flowers, pink of Geraniums and white of daisies added a touch of familiarity in the vast unknown. The place is also home to the Asiatic black bear, snow leopard, musk deer, red fox and blue sheep among others. All of which are rare or en ered.
The virtual paradise that Valley of Flowers is, remained hidden till the early 20th century. In 1931, British mountaineers Frank S Smythe, Eric Shipton and RL Holdsworth were coming back from their expedition to Mt Kamet, the second highest peak in the Garhwal region after Nanda Devi. They lost their way and found themselves in a valley full of flowers and named it thus. It was declared a national park in 1982 and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
LEGEND HAS IT
The cascading little waterfalls, crystalline streams — some having embraced the change in weather and some further up refusing to turn from snow to water, and flushing meadows were guarded by the ighty mountains th snowy tops. e clouds gulfed their eights again dding mystery the real. The lklore has it that was from here t Hanuman ught the magical dicine Sanjeevani t brought Laxman to life during the e of Lanka. ne look at the sprawling expanse of 87sqkm in Chamoli of Uttarakhand and anyone would know the place could be a thing of envy for gods, too. Valley of Flowers boasts of over 500 species of flowers, making it a favourite not only with botanists but all appreciators of nature’s magnificence.