Just near the Serolsar lake, there is a temple of goddess ‘Buddhi Nagin’. It is believed that goddess ‘Buddhi Nagin’ resides inside the Serol Sar lake and is the mother of 60 ‘Nag Devtas’ in Himachal Pradesh. It is also said that Pandavas visited Serol Sar in Dwaparyug during their exile period and planted rice here. This Blogpost will some really interesting facts about this place, the temple, the lake and the wonderful hike up there.
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Above video is shot in front of Buddhi Nagin around Serolsar Lake. It was a moment to celebrate beautiful hike from Jalori pass to Serolsar lake and this small & beautiful temple.
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Above photograph shows Buddhi Nagin temple and the Serolsar lake in the foreground. After an enjoyable trek through forest from Jalori Pass, you reach the place where Serolsar lake is located in middle of forest and surrounded by colourful hills all around. This trek goes beyond the lake and you can experience some of the brilliant views of stone mountains. This lake is circular in shape and most of the time shining with clear reflection of sky. There is a belief that you would not notice any leaf floating in the middle of the lake. It seems that birds around the lake ensure that lake looks beautiful without any distraction in form of leaf or anything else of that sort.
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Can you guess what's unusual about above photograph? I would let you think about it and would share the inputs in the end of this post. Do comment back what you had guessed and did that match the reality?
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Everything you see in this photograph is reflection in water. This photograph is cropped in such a way that it doesn't have other part and then rotated at 180 degree. Now just go above and look again. The water in the lake was so clear to have almost same view in reflection.
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There is small shop at a distance of 100 meters from lake. This shop offers nice maggie, tea and some variety of munchies. We had tea with biscuits at the lake. This man told us various stories about the lake and suggested us to visit the lake again in winters, when water gets frozen and you can play on the frozen Serolsar. It sounds scary, but true. I checked some of the images of frozen lake and it looks awesome. Hope to visit Serolsar lake during winters soon.
I visited Jalori Pass in 2010 and then planned again in 2012. Both the times, we planned this small trek from Jalori Pass market to Serolsar Lake. Jalori Pass market has hardly 10 shops. The roads goes beyond Jalori pass and it hits another beautiful place Banjar. The trek to Buddhi Nagin temple and Serolsar lake is through dense forest.
These multi-layered mountains look awesome from Jalori Pass. To reach Buddhi Nagin temple from Jalori pass, there are 2 treks. One is to take Banjar road and get into the forest and then reach Serolsar lake. Other starts from the temple, which is located near Jalori Pass market. We took the one which starts from Jalori Pass market. Before starting the trek, make sure that you have enough water to drink and some snacks. There is only one shop near lake and there is no fixed schedule of this shop. You may find it closed as well. So prepare yourself by assuming that there is no shop on the trek to Buddhi Nagin temple from Jalori Pass.
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This trek to Buddhi Nagin temple takes 1.5 hrs from Jalori Pass, so it can be planned in a day. If you want to do camping around this place, you need to carry everything with you. Apart from this lake, we couldn't find any other source of water on our way.
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The forest was quite vibrant during the time we visited Serolsar Lake. The dry leaves were giving nice color contrast to green forest around us. Throughout this trek you get shade of these huge trees, except few smaller stretches.
As we crossed the half part of the trek, we hit this place where we saw lot of abandoned houses. It looked like a small village, which is left behind by a community.
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Some of these houses were built under huge rocks. I had seen similar houses in Spiti, but these were very old. Some of the houses were having locks on the doors, while others were open with no windows and doors. We asked about these houses at Jalori but now I don't clearly remember the information. Because on our way, all of us had varied theories, so I can end up writing my own theory if I plan to write :).
Some of the houses are strategically built under huge rocks which were very well tied with hills. Overall it looked very exciting, but not sure how it would feel to live in such places with no access to daily-use stuff and very isolated from rest of the world. After reaching back Jalori Pass, we asked a shopkeeper about these houses and he told something very strange which was hard to digest. He said that a community called Gujjars own this village and land around this area belongs to them. But most of the time, they travel with their cattle. Each family own approximately 300 goats, few horses, dogs etc. They keep traveling during most of the time during an year and come back to this place in summers. Every year, they reconstruct these house and keep the budget low as they always know that place is temporary.
There are moderate ups and downs on the way. It's recommended to have trekking shoes, because of the kind of terrain. Although one of the pahadi trekker with was in sleepers.
There is small cut near Jalori Temple, which leads to Serolsar Lake and Buddhi Nagin temple.
The walk/trek towards Buddhi Nagin temple started after some snacks at Jalori Pass Market. The boards shown in this photograph are appropriate indicators in forest. Because of Buddhi Nagin temple, people visit the place for religious reasons as well. Since there are various paths inside forest, so it would have been difficult to reach the place without these indicators.
There is a resort on the way from Jalori Pass to Buddhi Nagin temple. Actually Jalori Pass is very popular place among riders and hikers. So there are some interesting places to stay around Jalori Pass. By looking at this resort, it seemed that place is not very popular and it was not very well maintained as well. Probably it was not the right time and they plan overall maintenance as per tourist season.
Overall it was fun walking inside these dense forests with cool breeze and colorful flowers all around. Some unique trees and plants in forest made this trek more interesting. We also shot some videos but never downloaded... Let's see when we would be able to share those.
Although the trek was as easy easy as we had expected. It took much more time than what we were told. Probably local folks reach the lake from Jalori Pass in 45 minutes, but it took 1.5 hr for us to reach the lake from Jalori Pass. There were few ups and downs which took more time than the plain routes.
After first 30 minutes of walk, we were exposed to wonderful mountain ranges. Each of these mountain ranges had different magic. Some of them were covered with snow, few were completely rocky with no grass or snow and others were covered by dense forests. It was sunny day but clouds were also playing games with us. At one point of time, we were scared that it's going to rain and there is no way to hide ourselves.
Slowly these clouds covered whole sky and suddenly it was very cold out there. Some of us were wearing shorts and T-Shirts :) .. But enthusiasm about reaching Serolsar Lake was awesome. Two folks from the group reached the place in 1 Hr, while others took more than 1.5 Hrs.
Sunlight welcomes back with some songs and dance in the forest. Whole journey was quite joyful with these interesting folks. We sang lots of folk songs from Shimla Region and I still remember few lines of 'Kaliaro Hando...' . In fact, after this trip Rohit tested me twice and I passed with good scores :)
This whole trek from Jalori Pass to Buddhi Nagin temple was very beautiful. At times, we passed through dense forests and then reached some places with deep valleys covered with green grass & colorful flowers. Cattle roaming here n there around our paths, although we could not figure out the owner of those cows. There was no village on the way and no sounds, which could indicate any habitation.
At times, clouds were literally chasing us and those moments were most beautiful moments of this trek. At times visibility reduced to 1 meter only. On hills, this is very usual scenario and it's very frequent during winters. During this we met some tourists from US who were coming back from the lake. They looked very happy and also showed some photographs. On asking the remaining distance for us, they smiled and asked us to keep walking :) ... They were carrying camping stuff as well and probably stayed at Buddhi Nagin temple last night.
Again clouds were showing their magic, but we kept climbing.
After crossing a very dense forest and few valleys, we reached Serolsar Lake with a small temple on it's side. At first glance it looked small, but after a while we got to know about the actual size of this lake and magical beauty around it.
As you can see that water in this lake was crystal clear and whole lake looked like a huge mirror. There is a saying about Sirolsar Lake that if leaves from surroundings come inside this lake, birds come and pick them out to keep the lake clear like this. Don't know how true it is, but surely it was surprising to see this lake clear even when surrounded with lots of trees on adjacent hills.
A silhouette of Buddhi Nagin Temple around Serolsar lake, Himachal Pradesh, INDIA
Here exactly this temple looks like. This is a typical architecture of temples you see in Shimla, Kullu and Manali regions of Himachal Pradesh. There is a very famous temple in middle of Manali town, which is completely made up of wood and estimated cost of the temple was in crores and it is hard to digest the fact that such a huge money is invested on that temple, which is very small in size.
Luckily there was a small shop near Sirolar Lake, where we could have some tea and biscuits. I think he also had arrangements for maggi n all. Rates were quite decent as compared to the hard work required to bring all raw material to this place. We suggested him to charge more from tourists. At least he had proper right to charge 10 rs for tea.
Closer look to the shop and shopkeeper at Sirolsar Lake. He is the only person who lives here at Sirolsar Lake.
Rohit Sharma having some chit-chat with this only entrepreneur @ Serolsar Lake. Media people are generally curious about all the facts like the place he belongs to, how much he earns in a month and what exactly is the daily schedule he follows etc.
It was time to come back after a short break at Buddhi Nagin temple.
Sunset hues were visible in the sky when we reached Jalori Pass and we were quite late to reach our next destination, but everyone was quite happy after this trek to Buddhi Nagin temple from Jalori Pass.
At the end of every trekking post, I usually get a question - 'Is there any connecting road to Serolsar'. And the answer is no. That's why this place so peaceful, clean and worth doing a trek of 1.5 hrs. So if you are around Jalori Pass, do plan to visit Serolsar lake. You would enjoy the beautiful trek through the forest.
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