It can be tough to find the combination of stunning physical beauty, solitude, and a true feeling of getting off the beaten path all in one destination. But Kashmir’s Warwan Valley ticks all the boxes and then some.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have experienced more than a lifetime’s share of mountain travel throughout my life, as a career of being an avid trekker, travel writer, climber, and photographer has brought me to the far corners of the Andes, Himalayas, Patagonia, Alps, and a plethora of other stunning ranges around the globe.
Yet more recently, in the age of mass adventure tourism, I’ve found that selfie lineups have become common on the bottlenecked trails to Everest Base Camp, the Inca Trail, Mont Blanc, and plenty of other formerly magical spots.
Thus, it was a reaffirming surprise to spend a recent ten-day trekking into Kashmir’s Warwan Valley, about as remote, untouched, and stupendously gorgeous as any nature lover could ask for.
India’s fabled Vale of Kashmir, a series of technicolor-verdant valleys set in between the high and dramatic peaks of the Himalayan and Panjal mountain ranges, had been a no-go for years.
An armed insurgency against the Indian military went on for ages, with a spate of bombings, kidnappings, and general insecurity destroying all vestiges of former tourism in the beautiful state.
But in the last decade, safety has improved, tourism has returned, and outside of a few isolated incidents, Kashmir has again become a magnet for outdoor travel, boasting fine winter skiing and summer escapes from the heat of the plains.
I travelled through Kashmir on a bicycle in the 1990s, back when it wasn’t very safe. And had long wanted to come back to do some hiking. My wife and I finally got a chance this past summer, joining in with a group from the burgeoning Indian trekking community to attempt a crossing of the hidden Warwan Valley, a picturesque, isolated valley only accessible from its Kashmiri side entrance or else via an arduous crossing of a glacier from its northern Zanskar side.
We opted for the latter, doing a crossover trek that went from the high elevations of the arid Zanskar high desert scenery into the lush greenery of the Warwan, a journey that we will surely savor for years to come. We started our journey in Panikhar, a small village nestled under the behemoth Nun-Kun massif, a set of 23,500-foot peaks that are part of the Great Himalayan Range.
Panikhar, in the Suru Valley of Zanskar, is shielded from the Indian monsoon by these massive mountains, which bear the brunt of storms on their southwest sides, meaning that the valleys here are arid, mostly barren, and at extremely high elevation. Only elaborate irrigation techniques created by the Zanskaris allow for pockets of green, where small villages eke out existences growing wheat or barley, creating mini oases in the high desert.
While horses are normally used for trekking in Zanskar, Ladakh, and Kashmir, on this trek we’d only have them on the Kashmiri side, as one of India’s largest glaciers, the Bracken Glacier, separated us from the green valleys that we hoped to see after several days.
Our journey involved crossing the Bracken through a maze of boulders, ice, moraine, and constantly shifting terrain, meaning the route was constantly changing and that it was too dangerous for horses carrying heavy loads to try to clamber through.
Instead, we had a pair of fixed camps on the Zanskar side which we’d use before crossing the Lomvilad Pass, and then meet a team of horses coming up from the Warwan side once we safely descended.
Our group ascended along the Chalong Nar River, up to around 12,000 feet, where we camped and acclimatized as part of our preparation for crossing the pass. The walking here was on a good shepherd trail, and other than a few quad-high river crossings, mostly easy and enjoyable.
Coming closer to the Pir Panjal range here, water became more abundant, with cascades dripping down from the peaks above, and glacial melt filling alpine lakes. Further up, the lakes were filled with giant icebergs, more reminiscent of something out of Iceland than anything one would ever associate with India.
From our last camp on the Zanskar side, the few shrubs around us disappeared, and as we climbed higher, we entered a world of rock and ice. We began what would be some thirteen hours of clambering over moraine, an accumulation of rock debris deposited by the melting glacier, where there was no trail, and where the usually soil-covered ice would sometimes just drop away to reveal crevasses and ice rivers or present tough challenges, such as needing to leap across unstable boulders or crumbling ground to avoid the holes and frigid glacial rapids.
Even my mountaineering background was of minimal use here, as the route through this rock-strewn labyrinth was so convoluted and rarely used that finding easy passages (that hopefully led to further easy passages and not dead ends) was an exercise in patience and fortitude. Luckily, our technical guide, Deepak, was well-suited to the task.
Deepak had been one of the Indian climbing team members on legendary American climber Conrad Anker’s attempt at the previously unclimbed Shark’s Fin route on the Indian peak Meru, which he, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk eventually summited, and Chin then made an acclaimed documentary about.
Deepak had been to Camp 3 on Mount Everest and had participated in multiple search and rescue operations on India’s biggest mountains. Son of a muleteer, he grew up in a poor family, one of six children. Deepak’s father died when he was eight, and he took over as the money earner by continuing to work as a mule man, which later led to him guiding, as he knew the routes, and then further on to climbing, eventually taking part in every Indian mountaineering association training. When he smilingly told me, “No college, but full knowledge,” I knew we were in good hands.
After some seven hours of climbing, we followed a narrow ridge up to the Lomvilad Pass, neither steep nor overly taxing, but more importantly, the divide that would see us descend into Kashmir. We hit several long snowfields here, carefully following Deepak’s choice of route that avoided potential crevasses. As we descended into the valley below, the main sweep of the Bracken Glacier appeared, highlighted by a stunning alluvial fan that swept down from the mountains, resembling a German autobahn, only made up entirely of ice. Several members of our team had trekked all over India and they remarked that hands down, this was the most beautiful place in the country they’d ever seen. We stopped to eat lunch and savor the view, and I marveled over the fact that this wild place and thoroughly magical spot was for the moment, ours and ours alone.
Further down the glacier, we could see the verdant Warwan Valley in the distance, our destination for the night. While it probably wasn’t more than a few miles as the crow flies to get off the moraine, it took us another four hours, picking our way like ants through the rubble, crossing ferocious streams that descended from the mountain slopes, jumping across potential landslides, and being alert for the ever-present rockfall danger. While we’d all safely ascended the pass without altitude issues, this would be no place to trip and sprain an ankle or worse, with miles of terrain left in a one-way valley where there is no cell signal.
After thirteen hours of mountain travel, we arrived at Humpet, where there was a cluster of shepherd huts across the river, an abundance of flowering meadows, and a welcoming kitchen tent, where our cook was preparing soup, dal, and plenty of sweet chai to help us recover. Despite fatigue setting in, most of us were gleefully still running around like little children, marveling at the profuse fields of purple monkshood flowers, golden poppies, verbena, and pink Himalayan bistort, all in full bloom. After the barren highs of Zanskar, this was like being let loose in an oxygen-filled art museum.
The rest of the trek down the valley was total bliss, even with the occasional rain showers that accompanied us through one meadow after another. The walking here was mostly level, pretty much downhill the rest of the way, water was plentiful, and our wildflower-filled camps were brilliant. Settlements began to grow larger as we traipsed further down the Warwan, eventually turning into small villages such as Sukhnai, Rickenwas, and Margi, home to the Gujjar, also known as Bakarwal, a tribe of sheep and goat shepherds who live permanently with their families in the lower Warwan and run their livestock up towards the Bracken Glacier in the summer.
While other valleys in Kashmir have become overrun with domestic tourism in the past years, the Warwan sees few visitors, Even on its lower end, the lone road that reaches Sukhnai still comes in via a hair-raising mountain pass on a terrible track, which is closed by snow for 8-9 months of the year. You probably need to be fairly determined to get here, and willing to stay awhile if you do.
The reality of tourism, development, and being in the country with the world’s largest population will surely change the face of the untouched Warwan Valley. But for now, it remains a trekker’s delight, and one well worth exploring before the changes take hold. It certainly is a spot I’ll hold dear for years.