A week of walking from one alpine lake to the next, each a different shade of blue. A short photo tour of India's most beautiful trek.
Some treks give you one great view and build the whole week around it. The Kashmir Great Lakes gives you a new one every single day. Vishansar, Kishansar, Gadsar, Satsar, the twin Gangbal lakes — each sits in its own bowl of meadow and rock, and each is a slightly different, improbable shade of blue.
The trek starts in the meadows above Sonamarg and spends the next week crossing from one valley to the next over a series of high passes. The walking is generous with time — long meadow mornings, unhurried lunches by the water, passes that reward the climb with the next lake laid out below you like something staged.
A lake a day
The rhythm of the route is what stays with you. You wake beside one lake, climb a pass named after the next, and drop down to camp beside it by afternoon. The colour of the water shifts with the light and the depth — turquoise where it is shallow over sand, deep ink-blue where it is not, silver when a cloud passes over.
It is, by common agreement, one of the most beautiful treks in India, and it earns the reputation without any single dramatic summit day — just seven days of walking through country that keeps quietly outdoing itself. Bring more memory cards than you think you could possibly need.
