Travelling, Volunteering and climbing Friendship Peak! Staying with an Indian family in the mountains, learning useful words of Hindi, getting oriented in Indian culture & way of life and becoming a part of the village celebrations. This is what all the excitement of beginning a Gap Year program with us. Help in cooking and taste the best local cuisine, visit nearby schools and teach the little students about your country and people. Then comes your part to learn from the Himalayan masters about contemplation, meditation, yoga and Ayurveda. Next step is your interaction with the stakeholders of tourism in mountain states and joining them in volunteer projects majorly on capacity building and environment issues. At the end, it’s time for some real adventure, moving out for trekking and exploring new pastures.
Route details and general observation
The area for gap year programs selected is Kullu valley, Spiti Valley & Kangra valley of Himalayan state, Himachal Pradesh. The idea of selecting Himachal Pradesh for gap year program is availability of all sources of education and opportunities which we wish to offer to a Gap year student/ youth. After leaving Himalaya, the Gap Year youth will be full of energy and confidence.
- International airport to hotel in Delhi transfer by small coach/ medium or large cars as per the group size
- Sightseeing/ monument visits as per the itinerary
- Delhi to trek beginning point and back to Delhi transfers
- Transfer to international airport in Delhi after the trip
- Transportation of porters, cook, kitchen staff to trek beginning point and back to their places after the trekking
Accommodation – city hotels with breakfast & remaining on full board
- Hotels as per the program
- Trekking duration camps with all meals
- Gala dinner at Delhi with expedition mementoes/ souvenirs
Staff
- Porters for the trekking part
- Cook and kitchen helper (01)
- Trekking guide (01) from trek beginning point to trek end point
- Local sightseeing/ city/ monument guide
Equipment
- Trekking tents for the members
- Trekking tent for cook+ helper and trekking guide
- Ground mattresses
- Kitchen tent, chairs, tables, stools, utensils, crockery and cutlery
- Toilet tents and toiletries
- Medical kit
- Maps and directions
Administrative assistance to the expedition team
- Cargo Management for big groups
- Insurance of the staff and porters for trekking trips like Kangla Pass
- Inner Line permits/ restricted area permits
The cost doesn’t include
- Air tickets of the expedition members
- Any kind of insurance of the clients
- Personal expenditures of the clients
- Helicopter rescue
- Personal sleeping bags and sacs
- Cargo handling charges
Skiing supplement
- If you want to ski down from some point, you can write separately.
Day 02: Delhi- Chandigarh (train)- Kullu Valley by road: Morning train to Chandigarh (03 hours) and drive to Kullu Valley. Kullu valley was known as the end of the habitable world. This is a broad open valley formed by the Beas River between Manali and Larji. This valley is famous for the beauty and its majestic hills covered with Pine and Deodar Forest and sprawling Apple Orchards. The course of the Beas River presents a succession of magnificent, clad with forests of Deodar, trees of Pine on the lower rocky ridges. Kullu valley is sandwiched between the Pir Panjal, Lower Himalayan and Great Himalayan ranges.
Day 03 to Day 08:Kullu to Tirthan valley: Morning after breakfast, drive to Tirthan Valley which is about 60 Kms. The valley is glorified and beautified by perennial alpine trees and lush green pastures. Tirthan stream abounds in trout fish and is globally renowned for angling. British rulers identified Tirthan water, as a crystal clean river, most suitable for trout fish. They brought seeds of best quality fish from SCANDANAVIAN countries and put them in the Tirthan stream to thrive. Secondly, the valley is the home of Great Himalayan National Park. The park is spread over an area of 1,171 km2 that lies between the altitude of 1500 to 6000m. The Great Himalayan National Park is a habitat to more than 375 fauna species that comprises nearly around 31 mammals, 181 birds, 3 reptiles, 9 amphibians, 11 annelids, 17 mollusks and 127 insects. This is the place where you have orientation of Himalayan Life by living with a local family and knowledge of yoga & meditation through the Himalayan masters. During this stay, you will be taken for 2 days’ trek to SHILT HUT in the Great Himalayan National Park and your knowledge about the eco system and Himalayan fauna will be enhanced. A day is devoted for the angling also.
Day 09 to Day 12:Teaching assignment in the schools under Great Himalayan National Park. During this period, the volunteers are expected to interact with the students and kids of the nearby villages and schools and share with them their personal experiences, information of their country and the subjects they study at their places. The volunteers from the English speaking countries are suggested to teach English and the communication skills. The students must learn basic information about the country of volunteer and this interaction will leave an impression in his tender mind for social service and universal brotherhood.
Day 13:Drive to Manali and check into a student’s hostel run by Kuoni Academy at Manali. Evening is free to interact with the borders of the hostel.
Day 14:Morning walk to Kuoni Academy and presentation on Community Capacity Building program “Rohtang initiative”. Afternoon is free to explore Manali town, its market places and in the evening dinner will be hosted by the project Rohtang Initiative. Rohtang Initiative is a capacity building program to make people aware and responsible for the biodiversity issues through tourism education. This initiative provides a unique opportunity to raise public awareness for the importance of biodiversity to tourism and the role of sustainable tourism in the conservation of life on Earth. The initiative has different capacity building programs distributed in all 12 months of the year.
Day 15 to Day 18:Participating Rohtang Initiative programs and training the local community and tourism stakeholders for sustainable tourism practices along with the experts of initiative. The training program will take place in various villages and tourist spots.
Day 19:Climbing Friendship Peak- a life time experience & achievement: we are offering you a peak climbing experience which will remain with you throughout not merely as an experience but an achievement.
Trek to Solang valley: Morning after breakfast, you start walking to the Solang valley, which is a beautiful valley in Manali region, famous for paragliding and skiing slopes. Overnight at Camp.
Day 20: Morningwalk to DHUNDI and trek to Bakarthach. The total distance is about 10 Kms and about 5-6 hours will be taken. Camp for the night at beautiful campsite of Bakarthach.
Day 21: Bakarthach to Base Camp/ another 4-5 hours.
Day 22:Base Camp to Advance Base camp/ 5 hours.
Day 23:Summit Day
Day 24: Trek back toBakarthach
Day 25: Trek Back to Dhundi andtransfer to Manali.
Day 26: Full day rest in Manali.
Day 27: Drive to Chandigarh in the morning after breakfast and visit to Rock garden in the afternoon and check in to hotel at Chandigarh for the night.
Day 28: Morning train toDelhi and transfer to Agra to visit Taj Mahal.
Getting there: Your nearest international airport is Delhi where you will meet with our expedition manager. After essential visits to IMF and cargo (if required), you will be escotrted towards the initial point of your adventure as per the program details.
After the expedition/ adventure journey, you arrive back to Delhi. After de briefing (in case of expedition) and farewell ceremony, you will be driven to international airport to board flight back to your home.
Airtickets: We have our partners in almost every foreign countries, so if you need any assistance in your air tickets bookings, you are always welcome to speak to us to know about our partner close to you.
Cargo Management: We have strong tieups with the cargo management companies to get your consignments clear timely in Delhi. In maximum cases, you will only need to spend just 2 hours for getting your consignmwent delivery. Once you send the documents and the boxes details, we start locating them in India.
Insurance : It is a condition of joining our trips that you must be adequately insured. All persons are expected to arrange their own insurance. Polices should cover any potential risks involved in such adventure.
Our hotels and camps: We offer you best economy hotels in cities and towns and till base camp we provide you very comfirtable tents with maximim possible faciltiies in the mountains. For the trekking, Jeep Safaris, MTB and other adventure journeys, we provide the most luxurious camps fitted with dining areas and modren toilet facilities.
Adventure India briefing: We have excelent maps, images and movies of majoriety of our adventure expeditions/ joiurneys and sports. A short briefing in our offices is highly recommended so the team understands logistics, forecarst problems and know where the solutions would be. We stress on planning, planning and planning in any adventure expediton and till now we have remained successful in all of our expeditions just because of our planning. So we need you to be an active part of it.
Rescue and helicopter evacuation: if the expeditons are well planned, rescue operations can be avoided. In the history of 14 years, we didn’t encounter any seviour requireemtn of rescue but still we can tie up with the agencies to provide helicopter evacuation on your request and willingness to pay the charges.
Peak booking formalities: already mentioned in detail in our mountaineering formalities in India link. For necessary applications either you can check the website of IMF or speak to us.
Ground transportation: We provide the ground transportation compriseing of best available cars/ copaches in fine roads and rough trucks in remote areas of the Indian mountains.
Porters and ponies: We provide ponies till base camp and HAP/ LAPs as per the requirement of the expedition.
Fuel and gases: Fuel (aftwer BC) is not a part of cost included section, but we will manage Butane / Butane propane gases for you on your timely request.
Trek & BC food : We offer a mixture of Vegetarian and Non vegetarian food till BC including the several herbs we have individually discovered with the medicinal values and capacity to keep the body warm. We have cooks who make Korean, Japnese and Continental food along with Indian food.
Our guides & instructors: Our guides are basically trained till BC trekking and support to establish BC. But our instructors do have good experience of mountaineering who can join the expeditions to higher levels too.
Ground Support system: We have fantastic ground support system developed in collaboration with the local people of nearest villages, army camps, porters and local guides. We have re discovered the use of traditional communication system also along with the setellite phones to stay in touch with the groups after BC. Our BC staff is trained to keep information of the groups at ABC and between and act as per the situation.
Cost Includes & not: The cost includes all hotels, guest houses, camps till BC, food till BC, ponies, porters, LAP/ HAP, food & tents for the porters, cooks and staff at BC, insurance of our permanenet staff, food for LO, cargo management, all transportation, all sightseeing, liasioning and coordination, trekking guides and BC management. The cost doent include IMF fees and environment levies, State Government fees and environment levies, porters insurance, clients air fares, helicopter evacuation, extra porters requirement from the BC, extra days at or above BC and any expenditure on personal level including clients insurance/ visa etc.
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