Parashar Lake Trek

Nobody warned me that the island moves.

We had climbed three hours through cedar shade above Baggi, talking less with every switchback, and when the meadow finally opened there it was: a round green raft of earth drifting on dark water, slow as a thought you are not ready to finish.

An old man was circling the lake with a brass pot. He told us the island visits every corner of the water in a year, and that no one has ever found the lake's bottom. He said it the way you say the time of day, then went back to his round.

The temple leans over its own reflection, three storeys of deodar carved centuries ago for the sage Parashar. Inside it smells of oil, wool and cold stone. A priest waved us in, marked our foreheads, asked which village we were from. Delhi felt like a strange answer to give a place like this.

We ate maggi and drank chai at the one stall, and the wind kept rearranging the meadow grass like a hand smoothing a bedsheet. I had planned to take photographs. Mostly I sat.

Local truth: people here don't say the lake is beautiful. They say it is awake. You will find yourself lowering your voice without deciding to.

Come in March for snow at the edges or October for glass-clear sky, walk up instead of driving if your legs allow it, and circle the water the way the old man does: clockwise, unhurried, empty-handed.

I came to see a lake. I left having been seen by one.