I have the most happy announcement to make today!

We have finally announced dates to Rupin Pass and Buran Ghati for this September and October. 

Until now, we had held back from opening these groups because there was a government order that banned trekking in the Kinnaur region of Himachal Pradesh after September 15th. 

This afternoon we have finally got a green signal from the government to run the treks. We could not have been happier! 

Rupin Pass and the Buran Ghati are the two most sought after high altitude treks in India. Trekkers have been waiting to register for these treks for a few months now. 

Dates are open from mid-September until mid-October. 

Unfortunately, there is bad news too. We won’t be able to open more than 8 groups for these treks this season. 

So my advice is to plan your trek as soon as possible. 

If you have any questions about these treks, do go through the FAQ sections on the trek pages. 

1. You’ll see greenery at its best in this season. 

Since the monsoons have just watered the grasslands, you’ll see them at their lushest best. The meadows of Dayara on the Buran Ghati trek are best experienced in September and October. On the Rupin Pass trek, the Saruwas Thatch campsite is going to be a flowerbed, and you camp right beside it.

The meadows of Dayara on the Buran Ghati trek are a photographer's delight, especially in the post-monsoon season. Picture by Indiahikes Head Photographer Avinash SH

2. The hills are alive with small and big waterfalls. 

This is especially true of the Lower Waterfall campsite on the Rupin Pass trek. Because it is just after monsoon, hundreds of waterfalls burst to life on the walls of the cliffs that surround you. It’s a sight you’ll not get to see at any other time of the year. Even on the Buran Ghati trek waterfalls cascade down from the slopes all around you. 

The Lower Waterfall campsite at Rupin Pass is an experience on its own, with an incredible number of waterfalls on the sides of the cliffs. Picture by Indiahikes Head Photographer Jothiranjan

3. The mountains are at their crispest best.

Since monsoon clouds are washed away by mid-September, the sky is void of any clouds. This is when you see the mountains at their crispest best, where you can see every nook and cranny of the mountain sides.

With lovely blue skies, the mountains stand out crisp and flawless in the post-monsoon season. Picture by Sooraj Jain

4. The sunrises and sunsets are worth dying for.

This is something unique to this season. We have seen the most dramatic splashes of colours in the sky. Also, since the skies are squeaky clean, the sun and its alpenglow on the mountains around are astounding.

Somehow, the dispersion of colours during sunrise and sunset are so dramatic in the post-monsoon season, that its hard to beat the drama. Picture by Sushrut Sardesai

5. There is snow but not so deep that you sink to your knees.

Rupin Pass and Buran Ghati are treks that climb to around 15,000 ft. These are extremely high altitudes that retain snow almost throughout the year. While there will not be snow for you to sink to your knees, you will find some snow, especially as you approach the passes.

While there isn't too much snow in September and October, there is still enough to give you an alpine experience. Picture by Anirban Banerjee

That's about the Rupin Pass and Buran Ghati treks in the post-monsoon season.

If you have any questions, don't hestitate to get in touch with us! 

Rupin Pass and Buran Ghati Opened For Sept-Oct!

Indiahikes is known for its vast database of trek information. Thousands of trekkers use our detailed documentation to trek every day. This database is highly respected for its credibility and authenticity.

Even though Indiahikes has the largest database of treks, it is not enough. More and more trekkers want to trek in different corners of the country. Many do not know that there are trails right in their backyard.

This is where you can help in identifying treks in and around your city.

At Indiahikes, we have opened the role of a Remote Trek Documenter so that trekkers like you can contribute to the ever-growing database.

By working with us as a Remote Trek Documenter, you will bring out lesser known treks on the trekking map of our country. This comes with a set of responsibilities that we discuss next.

➤ What your role will be as a Remote Trek Documenter

As a Remote Trek Documenter, you will plan your exploration by understanding the trail, charting out a rough map, planning your travel, talking to the locals to get as much information, and finally explore the trail.

This means, you should be an avid trekker yourself. You want to explore and document treks as much as we do.

Next, you should know how to take good landscape pictures of the trek. Pictures take trekkers on a trek even before they go on a trek. Your pictures should enable that. (Even mobile phone photography is OK.)

Lastly, you should know how to express the trek in writing. For this you need to have a good command over the English language. Your documentation should serve as the first draft for our DIY Team to readily take up without much editing.

To summarise, you should have the following skills:

Know how to read and draw geographical maps.

Be comfortable with talking to strangers.

Be Curious to explore lesser-known or completely new trails.

Take excellent landscape pictures using a phone or a camera.

➤ How you will be compensated for your work

Each trek you document will be considered as a project. You will be paid per project, once the documented trek is edited and published on the Indiahikes website.

The pay depends upon the type of trek you document — whether it is a day trek or a multi-day trek. On average, you are expected to earn Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 per project.

You are also entitled to the following benefits:

Your travel cost to the trek and back is reimbursed by Indiahikes, irrespective of the type of trek you document. (Travelling in flights or cabs are not considered for reimbursement)

If you are required to travel to another city to document a multi-day trek, Indiahikes will reimburse the cost of stay and food. (Up to a maximum of Rs 700 per day for stay, and Rs 250 per day for food)

Note: Your expenses are reimbursed only upon submission of relevant bills/invoices to the DIY Team.

If this role excites you as much as it excites us, send in your applications to suhas@indiahikes.com by including ‘Working as a Remote Trek Documenter’ in the subject line.

Why do you want to take up the role of a Remote Trek Documenter?

Which treks have you done around your city?

P.S. Here are some of the treks documented by our Remote Trek Documenters:

Drop in a comment if you have any questions and we will get back to you.

We are Looking for Remote Trek Documenters at Indiahikes

Many trekkers have been asking me if we have started recruiting again. I’m happy to tell you that we have. You may have missed this email last week.

So I’m sharing some roles that you may find interesting.

If you’d like to work with us, or know someone who may like to work with us, this email will give you a good idea of the roles we have.

1. Experience Coordinators (full time, Bengaluru based)

Experience Coordinators help build the unique trek experience that Indiahikes is known for. They focus primarily on the pre and the post trek experience, while our Trek Leaders focus on the ‘on-trek’ experience. 

Experience Coordinators work closely with other departments to build these experiences. They talk extensively with trekkers, understand and learn from their experience. The role requires considerable imagination and creativity.

The role also requires them to handle trekker queries, help them solve their problems, be an adviser to them and coordinate their movements.

It is a role that has communication at its crux. Which is why people who are well-travelled, socially friendly and with good exposure to the outside world fit this role well.

Experience Coordinators work out of our office in Bangalore. We are only looking for those between 23 and 28 years of age. 

2. Assistant Experience Coordinators (part-time, work from home, but Bengaluru based)

This is a part-time home based role for those who cannot join our office team. The role requires you to assist our Experience Coordinators team with their regular work.

So it’s not something you can do after office hours. It does not suit those who would like to supplement their regular income after office hours.

AEC’s need to commit to 5-6 hours a day for this. This would be at usual office hours, but with some flexibility. We work on Saturdays too, so the work is between Monday and Saturday. We want you to be Bengaluru based so that you can visit us at the office once or twice a week. 

The role requires excellent communication skills (English and Hindi). Prior work experience is required.

As an indicator, this role pays around Rs 2.4 lakhs per annum to start with. 

3. Content Team Members (full time, Bengaluru based)

Indiahikes is known for its information. We have been building authentic, informative and creative content for our trekking database for the past 12 years. We are the Trekipedia of the country. Every Content team member helps grow this vast database of trek information. 

In this role, you write thought provoking articles, research the world of trekking, document treks, interview experts in the field, work on photographs, videos and podcasts. 

As a member of the content team you also take the growth of Indiahikes forward. You do that with articles, videos and our brand messages. 

The variety in the role is enormous; the work is global. Growth in this role is rapid. The worst thing that could happen is that you will be working directly with me. 🙂

I need you to write well. I am horrified at people who think they can write fluently, but cannot. I don’t want you to have a masters in English, but writing fluently is an ability honed since childhood. When I see your application I will know. 

I do give preference to those from the world of media or have exposure to the world of content. However, if you write well and are willing to be groomed that suits me as well. 

4. Assistant Trek Leaders (you will work in the mountains)

There are some roles that are written straight out of MBA textbooks. This is one of them. 

If you are keen to assist our Trek Leaders on our treks, learn leadership from them along with management skills, then this is the perfect opportunity. If you do well you could become a Trek Leader with us.

Trek leadership is not about taking trekkers from point A to B. It is about creating an experience that stays with a trekker for a lifetime. These are no ordinary trek experiences. These incorporate the best of outdoor learning on our treks. 

As an Assistant Trek Leader you will learn management skills that are at par with the best of MBA training across the world. 

Further, I don’t have to tell you about leadership skills. People from across the world apply to work with us as outdoor leaders. The reason is simple. Outdoor leadership is the highest form of collaborative leadership that anyone can learn. Leading a team of trekkers in the outdoors where you have to take firm decisions every minute, every hour, day after day hones your leadership skills that no amount of classroom training or office experience can give.    

Good trek experience, preferably Himalayan. Treks like Triund and Kheerganga do not count. 

If you have trekked with Indiahikes, we love that! You already understand the Indiahikes trek experience.  

If you are well read, travelled extensively, have a good exposure in life, you make the ideal Assistant Trek Leader.

If you or someone you know would like to take your career forward at Indiahikes, here is how you go about it.

Click this link to go to our careers page. Follow the instructions on “How to Apply”.

If you are shortlisted, we will write back within seven days, usually quicker.

After that, we’ll have our recruitment process, which you’ll find very interesting. All our applicants tell us it’s the most different interview process they have been to (whether they’re selected or not).

I must admit, we are extremely picky about whom we work with, but those who are finally selected, have their personal and professional journeys charted out for a long time to come. Many find it hard to believe, but most of us at Indiahikes are here for life.

With that, I’ll give you time to share this further or mull this over. 

Just drop in a comment if you have any questions. 

Indiahikes is Recruiting Again!

We have been receiving lots of calls and mails of late, asking if our annual calendar is ready. So it is with utmost excitement that we’re announcing this!

Our Mountain Lovers Gold Calendar of 2019 is finally here! 

There’s a buzz in the office with everyone poring over the new calendar.

And why not! The calendar has turned out to be a class apart! Take a look at it yourself. 🙂

It took us months to put this calendar together.

First came the process of selecting pictures. It’s a Herculean task! Deciding which treks to feature itself was a tough task. We love all our treks dearly, so just zeroing in on 12 out of around 25 treks was difficult. So imagine selecting just 12 photos out of more than a 1000 photos!

Then designing it. Our designer Ryan has done a fantastic job making the calendar look so elegant. He was patient enough, even though we suggested hundreds of changes with each draft.

And then came working with the press, getting proof copies, re-reading them, editing them to perfection.

In a way, every single person in our office has contributed to the calendar. And we love how this Mountain Lovers calendar brings us all together.

The final product is totally worth it! 🙂

The Mountain Lovers Gold Calendar 2019 has 12 stunning pictures from our Himalayan treks. Each picture seems better than the other. The photographers must take a bow for creating these story-telling masterpieces!

We have already received several orders without even announcing that the calendar is out (really wonder how word gets out!). And we usually run out of stock soon. These are limited edition calendars. We won’t be reprinting them.

So, needless to say, order yours soon! It makes for a great gift to yourself or to anyone you know who is a mountain lover.

Buy the Mountain Lovers Gold Calendar 2019 here.

It costs Rs 290 inclusive of the shipping charges.

We will be shipping from December 23rd onwards, from Bangalore. It should take around 2-3 days to reach any other mero city. A day or two longer for other cities.

We hope this calendar takes you on many more treks and makes you proud to be a high altitude trekker!

Also, we don’t have a wall calendar this year — While the wall calendar is one of the most prized possessions of our trekkers — something many of you were looking forward to — we won’t be printing it this year. It was taking too much effort and time of everyone at office to send it to you. With the peak winter season on our heads, we had to take the hard decision this year to not print it.

So unfortunately, we don’t have the wall calendar this year. We know trekkers loved it, we loved it too (Still have ours from 2016, 2017 and 2018). But we’ll not have it this year. Perhaps next year we’ll see if we can bring it back.

The desk calendar more than makes up for it. So make sure you pick one up soon! 🙂

We have received lots of calls and mails asking for our Mountain Lovers Gold Calendar 2019. And it's finally here! Order yours soon!

Our Mountain Lovers Gold Calendar 2019 Is Here!

We invite you to participate in the December 2017 Trek Photographer of the Month contest! This contest is exclusive to Indiahikes trekkers who have trekked with us in December 2017.

Our judge will select three winners for this contest – One Grand Prize Winner, two runners up. We also have a Trekkers’ Choice Award.

The meadows on the Brahmatal trek covered in snow. Picture by Kasturi Sule

This month, the Winner gets a voucher of Rs. 5,000 as the grand prize. You can avail this voucher on any of your future treks with Indiahikes.

The First Runner Up gets a Trek Voucher of Rs.3,000 and the Second Runner Up gets a Trek Voucher of Rs.2,000.

We also have a Trekker’s Choice Award, where our trekkers choose their favourite shot through a poll. The winner gets a Goodie Bag by Indiahikes!

1. Maximum of 5 photo submissions per person

E-mail your photo entries to contest@indiahikes.com. The last date for entries is 24th January 2017.

Regarding copyright: Copyright for all images submitted as a participant remains with the respective photographers. However, each photographer grants a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual licence to Indiahikes to feature any or all of the submitted images in any of their publications, their websites and/or in any promotional material connected to this competition.

Results will be announced on February 1st, 2018.

If you’re writing a blog post about your trek, send it over to us! We will share it on our social media channels and if we deem it suitable for our website, we will publish the same. Let the whole trekking community read what you have to say about your trek.

Send your blog post to swathi@indiahikes.in.

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