Hike to Bagdwaar, kingdom of clouds

Before you read:

Very risky for solo hiking.Better pack water bottles and some foods as there are no shops along the trail. If lost then find the route that has pollution(human leave marks where ever they go) . Please do not pollute the trail.

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Click here to check out all the pictures of bagdwaar hike.

I am bitten by the travel bug, unfortunately there is no cure and I do not care. I am a man consumed by wanderlust . If I had just few days to live then I would spend it traveling , far and wide until my last breath.

A month ago I hiked to champadevi which was a big let down so to discard the lingering discontent I decided to hike to Bagdwaar. If you do a quick google search on Bagdwaar you will see that it is the origin of the holy Bagmati river which is cool right?

A week earlier I called in my friends and informed them about the hike (solo hike around the valley is very risky, believe me, I have done it) which we did in only Rs 300 per person and they gave me a green signal. I told them that it was going to be 5 hrs hike but it turned out to be a tiring 14 hrs of walking.

A day before the hike, we were visited again by the earthquake which kept my friend awake the whole night but I had to sleep, it is hike thing haha. On the morning of the hike day, I woke an hour late 6 am, YES I am trying to brag :D, no just kidding or am I ? Then I packed some fruits and dry foods in my bag and left for purano bus park. I met my home boys there. I found out that there are no vehicles that would leave for Budanilkantha from purano buspark but there are micro buses that can be boarded from chakrapath. 30 mins later we reach Budanilkantha , had our breakfast and walked another 20 mins to reach the Shivapuri Checkpoint.

We were total of 4 peeps and the entry fee is Rs 57 for Nepalese. After entering the conservation area, the guard checked our bags and once he was sure there was nothing suspicious about us we were allowed to pass.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, filled my lungs with fresh air and breathe out. It felt really really great. How much I have missed getting lost in the realm of nature, I realized it then. The air had different aroma there, smelled like wet trees , soil and everything combined. The cool breeze aroused me, I am not going to lie. I loved it.

There are many crossroads in the trail and we ended up taking the wrong one but along the way we got to witness beautiful waterfalls. Luckily fellow woodcutters told us we were heading in the wrong direction and U-turn we made.

We got to see a deer but I guess my singing really scared it off but any way I think my singing is still good `Country road take me home…. to the place.. I belong….`. My friend and I , trying to do ,into the wild shit, took the slopes rather than the stairs and I lost his aviator lens, now I have to pay him. Like I said, there are many crossroads in the route but some other hikers had drawn an arrow on the right trail and crossed the other one. It really made us easy to track the route so we thought of helping other fellow hikers and we filled the arrow with stones so they could be spotted easily.

After hours and hours of climbing the stairs we reached to heaven, well it is a kind of heaven, a point where the view was just amazing. Kingdom of cloud, it made me whisper to myself as I gazed the panoramic view of mountains which looked as if they were floating. I have acrophobia so I could not stay there for very long but I did manage to take some badass pictures.

Resuming our hike after the short visual break, we reached nagi gompa which I did not find anything interesting (I am sorry). We saw a board showing the route to Bagdwaar but somehow we did not reach bagdwaar. I do not know how could we have missed it but I am pretty sure that I did not see any trail leading towards Bagdwaar. Hoping that we would find it we were only surprised to see ourself that we were on another trail, sundarijal-chisapni trail. We asked a villager on the way and he told us that Bagdwaar was on the trail we came from. It was getting late anyway and we decided to take the sundarijaal route to home.

After reaching sundarijaal bus stop at 6pm we were left in a lurch as there were no bus that would take us home. As we were very tired and hungry we stopped for eating. After gaining some stamina we resumed our walk and reached home at 10pm.

We started hiking at 8am and reached home at 10 pm. 14 hrs of walking nearly killed us but it was an lifetime experience that money can not buy so we were content.

Now I am soon going to do ABC trek, if lucky then solo or I can only do Ghorepani-poonhill-ghandruk trek. Lets see what will be the condition of Nepal till then.