How many flowers are too many flowers?
Nobody has ever answered that the same way twice.
For most of us, a lot of flowers once meant a small garden. A few pots outside our house front door. Our mother or Grandmother would be outside every morning with a watering can - watering those little marigolds, roses, maybe a jasmine creeper along the wall.
And, we will be sitting on the stairs as kids and watching without really watching.
That was our idea of flowers. That was the ceiling. Then someone tells you about the Valley of Flowers.
Not planted by anyone. Not been arranged by anyone. Not tended by anyone with a watering can.
Just — there with over 500+ species of flowers.
Editor Desk - Alemaari Adhyaya
In June month we crossed a pass.
Next month. i.e July, we walk 500 species of wildflowers. Has the season officially lost its mind, and honestly? We are completely here for it. June felt like the hinge month. The one where everything tips from one world into another.
Once the Hampta Pass Trek with Chandratal Lake opened, our group crossed from the lush green valleys of Kullu to the rugged, high-altitude landscapes of Lahaul in just a few hours.
And now July is approaching. The Valley of Flowers is waking up. The snow is melting into streams. The first wildflowers are pushing through soil that was frozen a month ago.
I keep thinking about that. About the gap between a Hampta Pass crossing and a Valley of Flowers morning. About how this season keeps asking us to hold two completely different experiences simultaneously the stark and the saturated, the barren and the blooming, the silence of a high-altitude desert and the colour of a valley that has 500 species of flowers trying to exist in the same space at the same time. Is that too many flowers?
I genuinely don't know. But I think we're about to find out.
— Arshalakshmi
Editor, Alemaari Adhyaya
STORIES FROM JUNE
From a high pass in Lahaul to a lakeside camp under the Moon Lake — June kept us moving.
OUR FIRST MONSOON INVITATION: HAMPTA PASS & CHANDRATAL LAKE [Premium]
June didn't ease us into the monsoon. It threw us straight into it onto a pass at 4,268 metres where the Kullu valley ends and Lahaul begins without warning.
We ran two batches this month, and they couldn't have been more different from each other while walking the exact same trail.
On the crowding question — because we know you're asking.
Hampta has become one of the most popular monsoon crossings in Himachal, and with popularity comes the thing nobody likes talking about: crowded campsites, queued-up trails, and that slightly chaotic energy that can take the mountain out of a mountain trek. We've felt it too, on certain stretches near Chika where multiple operators converge.
So we've made a deliberate call. Our campsites are pitched a little further from the main cluster, close enough to the trail, far enough from the noisebecause the whole point of paying for a guided Himalayan trek is the experience of being in the mountains, not in a tent colony.
A few departure slots are still open for July and August whether you're bringing your college friend group, traveling solo, or finally convincing your partner that camping at 4,250 metres next to a lake that has no colour of its own is a good way to spend an anniversary. Families with trekking-fit teens, first-timers, repeat nomads — all of you are welcome on this one.
Reach out at info@treknomads.com or +91 9886444809 to lock in your July or August departure before the monsoon batches fill up.
VALLEY OF FLOWERS: WE'RE CLOSER TO THE BLOOM THAN WE'VE EVER BEEN
Our first Valley of Flowers departure of the season left on 27th June, which means by the time you're reading this, somewhere in the Bhyundar Valley, a group of our trekkers is standing in front of something that genuinely doesn't translate into a photograph.
Here's what most people don't know about the bloom: it doesn't arrive all at once. The valley doesn't switch on like a light. It builds, species by species, week by week, as the snowmelt finds its way into the soil and different flowers take their turn. Late June is when the early bloomers — the Brahma Kamal's cousins, the primulas, the first blue poppies — start showing up at the edges of the trail. By the time our July batches reach Ghangaria, the valley should be deep into its main flush, with the Inderkilla daisies, geraniums, and balsams crowding in alongside everything else competing for four kilometres of trail.
It's not one flower repeated 500 times. It's 500 different flowers, in 500 different shapes and shades, occupying the same four square kilometres at the same time, with absolutely no regard for how that looks to a person who grew up thinking a "lot of flowers" meant a row of marigold pots.
We have departures running through July into the bloom's peak window — the second half of July through mid-August is historically when the valley is at its most saturated, when even people who've seen the photographs a hundred times stop walking the moment it opens up in front of them.
If you've been putting off Valley of Flowers because it always felt like "someday" — this is the someday. The trail is open, the first batch has already gone in, and the valley is only getting fuller from here.
[Departures available through July and August — write to us at info@treknomads.com to find a date that works.]
What's upcoming on the Trails
![Hampta Pass & Chandratal Lake Trek [Premium] | 2026 - Tour](https://vl-prod-static.b-cdn.net/system/images/000/831/144/44488055a0fa7db971593c2dd681ba0f/668gt/8261a49b-0c0f-4556-8821-ac404ae6a9c3.JPG "Hampta Pass & Chandratal Lake Trek [Premium] | 2026 - Tour")
![Markha Valley Trek [Premium] | 2026 - Tour](https://vl-prod-static.b-cdn.net/system/images/000/696/989/20d9fde45193baa6c2d7e0a59e6354d8/x640gt/ladakh-g02a1788ab_1920.jpg "Markha Valley Trek [Premium] | 2026 - Tour")
![Manaslu Circuit Trek [Premium] - Tour](https://vl-prod-static.b-cdn.net/system/images/000/793/984/7c00bad31a96f60e6e925baaf9d936f5/668gt/IMG_0489.jpg "Manaslu Circuit Trek [Premium] - Tour")
![Annapurna Base Camp Trek [Premium] - Tour](https://vl-prod-static.b-cdn.net/system/images/000/508/785/9dc35bf99a7ae655e25fad9835b45f8c/x640gt/31162279775_6c40cfe07c_k.jpg "Annapurna Base Camp Trek [Premium] - Tour")
Our departures are filling up fast!
While most batches are already fully booked, the following departures still have limited slots available.
Nepal Treks - Open Now Everest Base Camp | Annapurna Base Camp | Annapurna Cirucit Trek |
Mardi Himal Base Camp | Manaslu Circuit Trek | Langtang Valley Trek
Ladakh Treks - Open Now Markha Valley | Sham Valley | Lasermo La
Expeditions - Kang Yatse II | Mt.Elbrus | Mt.Kilimanjaro | EBC+Island Peak | EBC+ Lobuche Peak | Mera Peak
Write to us at info@treknomads.com or call +91 9886444809.
We're always happy to have an honest conversation about which trek makes sense for where you are right now.
Two Ways To Lose Your Phone Signal
Both start in Leh. Both cross 4,000+ metre passes. Both end with you a little more humbled than when you began. But Markha Valley and Lasermo La are answering two completely different questions for two completely different trekkers.
Markha Valley is the trail for someone who wants Ladakh's culture as much as its altitude — mud-walled villages, barley fields, monasteries tucked into cliffs, and the chance to drink butter tea with a family whose home has sat in that valley for generations. It's also the trail that leads somewhere bigger: the same route that takes Kang Yatse II climbers to base camp. Walk it for itself, or walk it as the first chapter of something higher.
Lasermo La, by contrast, is quieter, less travelled, and built for trekkers who want Ladakh stripped down to rock, altitude, and silence fewer villages, fewer other trekking groups, more of that raw high-desert solitude that first drew people to this region before it became a destination.
If you want company, culture, and a clear next step toward mountaineering — Markha. If you want to feel like you have the Himalayas to yourself for a week — Lasermo La.
We run both. Tell us which question you're trying to answer, and we'll point you to the right trail.
[Check upcoming Markha Valley and Lasermo La departures — write to info@treknomads.com]
WHAT'S YOUR NEXT EXPEDITION?
In our last edition, we talked about ponchos and crampons.
Soon after, your replies began to arrive.
Some of you wanted to know more about the climb. Some asked for the itinerary. Others simply told us it had been on their dream list for years.
Reading through those messages, we noticed something. Many of you weren't just curious about the expedition—you were already imagining yourself on it. Maybe all you needed was a little nudge.
So here it is.
There's a particular kind of trekker who does Valley of Flowers or Hampta and comes back changed in a way that doesn't fully wear off. They book another trek within weeks. Then another. And somewhere around the third or fourth Himalayan trail, a different kind of question starts forming not "where next" but "how much higher."
That's usually where an expedition conversation begins.
We're not saying everyone who walks through 500 species of wildflowers needs to end up on a 6,000-metre summit. But for the ones who do start wondering —Kang Yatse II , Mt.Elbrus , Mt.Kilimanjaro are all currently taking departures, and every one of them started, for someone, as a much smaller trail that simply didn't feel like enough anymore.
If a part of you has been quietly doing the math on what comes after your next trek — this is the page where we'd love to have that conversation.
Curious what your next step up looks like?
Write to info@treknomads.com and we'll talk it through honestly; including whether you're ready yet.
We Didn't Expect to Fall for You Again
A letter from everyone who packed a poncho and left with something they didn't expect.
Dear Monsoon,
We'll be honest. We weren't sure about you this year.
You have a reputation, you know. The kind that makes people check the forecast three times before committing. The kind that fills group chats with "but what if it rains the whole time?" And somehow, that only makes it more memorable. As if you're something to survive rather than something to walk into. And then June arrived.
You sent your first invitation through Hampta Pass, and we answered.
Our first batch stepped out of Manali, not entirely sure what they were walking into. Green Kullu valley on one side, your clouds gathering somewhere above Balu Ka Ghera, Mt. Indrasan and Mt. Deo Tibba watching from above like they'd seen this before. Because they had. They've watched you do this every year: arrive uninvited, stay longer than expected, and leave people completely changed.
The pass crossing happened in your company. 4,268 metres, the landscape shifting from lush to stark in a single morning, and you somewhere in the wind, somewhere in the cold, making everything feel more real than it had any right to.
And now, you're doing something else entirely.
Somewhere in the Bhyundar Valley right now or very soon, our first Valley of Flowers batch is walking into what you've been building all season. Five hundred species of wildflowers that exist only because of you. Every Brahma Kamal, every blue poppy, every geranium crowding the trail — all of it yours.
We have more batches heading your way through July and August, waiting to see your beauty through the wildflower valleys, high passes and lakeside camps.
Yours, reluctantly at first and then completely,
Everyone at TrekNomads and every trekker who said they'd never trek in the rain.
TOP 10 DOWN JACKETS EVERY TREKKER SHOULD KNOW.
From Budget picks to Base Camp beasts.
Two Summits. Two Dates. Both Worth Circling.
Most people can't pronounce the first one.
Koz-ee-OS-ko(Mt.Kosciuszko) Polish name. Australian mountain. 2,228 metres above the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales and one of the Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent. The one nobody talks about first. The one that quietly makes the whole list feel possible.
We're going on 26th November 2026. 4 nights, 5 days from Sydney. On summit day you take a chairlift from Thredbo Village and walk 13 kilometres through alpine meadows, past glacial lakes, through terrain that looks nothing like the Australia most people carry in their heads. No crampons. No technical experience. Just legs, open sky, and the quiet satisfaction of standing on a continent's highest point.
November is spring in Australia. The wildflowers are out. The Snowy Mountains stretch in every direction. And if the Seven Summits has ever crossed your mind even once, even briefly; this is the one that makes it start to feel real.
The second one you already know.
5,895 metres. Africa's highest peak. Five ecological zones between the base and the summit. And a final night that starts at midnight and asks more of your mind than anything your legs have trained for.
We're running a Kilimanjaro departure that summits on 26th January 2027 — Republic Day.
There's something about standing on the roof of Africa on the day India marks its constitution that felt right when we saw it on the calendar. We can't fully explain it. We just know it felt like a batch worth building.
8 days from Moshi, Tanzania. Rainforest, moorland, alpine desert, arctic summit four worlds in one climb. The cold nights at Kibo Hut will test you. The summit climb begins in the middle of the night, when every step feels a little harder than the last. But reaching Uhuru Peak as the sun rises over Africa, with Republic Day beginning below the clouds, is a memory you'll carry long after you return home.
If that date means something to you the way it means something to us; this is the conversation to have now.
Kosciuszko — 26th November 2026 | 4N 5D | Sydney
Kilimanjaro Republic Day Summit — 19th January 2027 | Summit 26th January | 7N 8D
Write to info@treknomads.com | +91 8496885968
Everything you need to know before you book your trek
Planning Your Ladakh Trek in 2026? Start here
Markha Valley Trek
Don't Book Until You Watch This
Everest Base Camp 2026
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Read More →UNTIL JULY
July doesn't knock. It just arrives. Wet boots at the door, clouds that haven't decided yet, and somewhere on a trail in Uttarakhand, a group of people walking into something they won't have words for until long after they've come back.
That's the thing about this season. We sent people into a pass crossing and watched them come back quieter in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion. We watched the first batch disappear into Bhyundar Valley and stopped waiting for updates after a point because some experiences don't send messages.
July has a valley full of 500 species waiting for the people who choose it next.
We hope some of those people are reading this right now.
Until the next edition — may the mountains stay somewhere in your thoughts.
