Kheer Ganga + Buni Buni Pass

The reward for walking uphill for six hours in the Parvati valley is a bath the mountain has been heating for you since before you were born.

We took the quiet side, the Buni Buni forest line, where the path smells of pine sap and the villages across the gorge look pinned to the slopes. At Rudranag the water twists past a small shrine, and porters rest under the tin roof, sharing beedis and route gossip.

The last climb is honest work. And then the meadow: Kheerganga, wide and worn, prayer flags moving, steam rising from the spring pool like the mountain exhaling.

The story says Kartikeya meditated here for years and the spring once ran white as kheer. What runs now is hot, mineral, and completely convincing. We lowered ourselves in at dusk with snow peaks going grey above, and the day's whole climb dissolved somewhere between the shoulders.

Local truth: the pool is an offering before it is a hot tub. Separate bathing spaces, no soap, low voices at dawn. The meadow is under real pressure from its own fame; be the visitor the place would ask for.

Come on weekdays, off season, April or late September. Carry your rubbish down; the mules already carry too much. The Buni Buni line up, main trail down is the best circle.

I have taken a thousand baths in my life. I remember one.