Bilal Hussain

Three of us have been doing this same trip every August for four years now, and this year a fourth friend joined for the first time. The format doesn't change much: drive up, camp by the river for several nights, and use it as a base for day walks rather than moving camp around. The forest here is the reason we keep coming back over other valleys we could pick instead — deodar trees old enough that walking under them feels different from anywhere else nearby, and the river is loud enough at night that you stop noticing it after the first evening. We spent one full day on the flat riverside walk, which is easy enough that our newest member, who doesn't hike much, was completely comfortable. The climb to Katora Lake is the harder day and the one we always build the trip around. It's steep in the last section on loose ground, and this year it took us noticeably longer than previous years — nobody's fault, just an off day for the group as a whole. The lake itself, in its rock bowl, is worth every step of the climb; we sat there for over an hour before starting back down, which in hindsight meant descending later than ideal and losing the last hour of good light on the way back to camp. Evenings were the same as every year: a fire, whoever cooked that night's turn, and a lot of complaining about how much harder the walk felt than we remembered. It's become a tradition precisely because nothing about it needs to change.