Valley of Potpourri - Autumn in the Valley of Flowers

In late September last year, I joined Sahastra and a group of four friends on a trek to the Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand. When we reached there we were told that the season for flowers had slipped behind us by two weeks. We prepared for disappointment but instead discovered to our happy surprise that the Valley in September was fall's magical fairyland, ready to be tucked in for a long winter nap. This piece was published as the cover story in India Abroad Magazine, August 27, 2010.  

Autumn burnishes the Valley of Flowers with ochre, gold and fawn

WHEN I ARRIVED in the Valley of Flowers, Uttarakhand, I expected to experience the vistas I had gleaned from brochures and travelogues: Lush expanses of verdure embroidered with bright floral spangles. But the valley that greeted me was a picture of desiccation. The waist-high flowerbeds sported an autumnal burnish of ochre, gold and fawn as they braced for the inevitability of the Himalayan winter. 

The peak of Nar Parvat as seen from Ghangharia, 3 km from the Valley of Flowers. The cliff walls on either side of the valley rise thousands of feet.

A hypnotic hush lingered, tempered only by the muted roar of distant waterfalls, feeble bird calls and the wheezy whisper of the wind among the drying stalks. I also felt an overwhelming sense of isolation — ours was the only group traversing the white gravel path that snaked through the flowerbeds.

The last of the flower enthusiasts, who had braved the monsoon rains and the profusion of leeches, had departed weeks ago. The blossom-studded meadows that had charmed visitors from June to August were a distant memory. Gone were the much photographed Brahma Kamals (Rheum nobile) and cobra lilies. The violet primulas and buttery-yellow marsh marigolds had disappeared. The edelweiss had turned into ashen stars. The celebrated Himalayan Blue Poppies, which bloomed during the monsoon and held an inexplicable fascination for Japanese flower-seekers, had turned into membranous cups rattling with seeds. Pale pink balsams with translucent stems were still in flower though some already bristled with seed pods. Only the geraniums, hemmed in by natural hedgerows of lilac asters and mustard inulas, thrust out their cheery pink and white blooms to greet the sun.

The Valley as seen from the trail.
The heart of the Valley is a good hour's walk from this point.

In the monsoon of 1931 the English mountaineer Frank Sydney Smythe and his botanist colleague R L Holdsworth, who were descending after their pioneering conquest of Mount Kamet, accidentally entered the Bhyundar Valley. Through veils of mist they spied expansive carpets of blue primula, irises, wild roses, violets and anemones. ‘It was impossible to take a step without crushing a flower,’ Smythe wrote in a subsequent memoir.

A consummate mountaineer, writer and photographer venerated by many of his contemporaries, Smythe had climbed extensively in the Himalayas as well as in the Alps and the Canadian Rockies. He had attempted Mount Everest three times — twice with Hugh Ruttledge and once as a member of Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman’s 1938 expedition. Smythe wrote more than 27 books and travelogues before he died at 49 of complications induced by malaria.

Bursts of remnant colour light up a tawny field

Returning to London after his unexpected discovery, Smythe devoted himself to gardening, a hobby inspired by his serendipitous descent into the Bhyundar Valley. But the ‘Valley of Flowers’, as he had christened it, haunted him constantly. In 1937, he returned to explore the region and wrote of it in his book, The Valley of Flowers (Hodder, London, 1938).

Near its end is a chapter titled ‘Autumn in the Valley of Flowers’, which served as my lodestone, as I wandered in Smythe’s footsteps barely a week before the tourist season ended.