Warwan Valley Trek In Kashmir 7 Nights 8 Days
Warwan Valley Trek in Kashmir Package Overview
The Warwan Valley Trek is a truly exceptional journey through the Trans-Himalayan region of Kashmir. It stands out as one of India's most exotic and offbeat treks, offering a rare blend of serenity and natural beauty that is hard to find elsewhere.
A Trek of Contrasts and Wild Beauty
This high-altitude adventure takes you across diverse and breathtaking landscapes. You'll traverse beautiful grasslands, high pastures, and expansive meadows filled with wildflowers, as well as cross deltas and glaciers. A striking feature of the trail is the sheer scale of the journey; it includes navigating a vast, ≈10-kilometer-long glacier patch.
The trek is a spectacular passage from Kargil to Kashmir, providing a glimpse into two contrasting natural worlds. You'll witness the sparsely vegetated but vibrantly colored mountains near Panikhar transform into the lush, sumptuous greenery of the Warwan Valley. This transition offers a sense of moving between two distinct natural realms.
An Untouched Haven
The valley itself, where the trek concludes, is a place incredibly isolated and untouched by modernity. The people here maintain a traditional, ancient way of life. The area remains cut off from the rest of the world during the long winters, and even in summer, it sees only a handful of visitors—primarily those who seek out offbeat, quiet, and least-explored destinations.
This trail is steeped in history, having been part of an ancient Trans-Himalayan route connecting Kargil and Kashmir for centuries. Thankfully, due to its remoteness, it has remained one of India's least-exploited treasures.
Trekking Difficulty
It's important to note that the Warwan Valley Trek has a difficult gradient. It is best suited for seasoned trekkers or those who possess a solid, high level of physical fitness.
What are the Highlights of the Trek?
Sumdo’s River Delta Basin: Sumdo is a breathtaking valley that is the confluence of two rivers. You will be fascinated by the vast river basin formed in the valley. The river turns into small rivulets cutting the basin in many forms and ways. You will be walking through these lush meadows alongside these little rivulets in Sumdo.
Bracken Glacier Traverse: The glacier traverse in Warwan Valley Trek is the most difficult part. This is the longest and most tiring day. It takes around 12 hours of continuous trekking to reach the campsite. What makes it difficult is the glacier traverse. This bracken glacier comes within an hour of a walk after Lomvilad Pass. It is greyish and it is fascinating to look at it from a distance and then traverse it. This is what will remain in your memory in the years ahead.
Grasslands: Kashmir Great Lakes trek has the most alpine lakes than any trek in India. There are around a dozen lakes in and around this trek that you can access and see. All of these lakes are glacier-fed and most of them have the famous fish trout present in abundance.
Warwan Village: As you will start entering Kashmir, you will see a striking difference in the landscape. Here in Warwan, the landscape is lush and green. It is in this beautiful warwan valley there is a settlement. The houses are traditional, people are hospitable and kind and least exposed to modern life. The trail goes through the village with beautiful fencing. A fresh river stream cuts into the middle of the village. This village is the perfect shot for wallpaper or scenery back home.
Addon Per Person;
Outdoor Insurance: 650 INR
Backpack Offloading: 4500 INR
Pick & Drop Srinagar: 4500 INR
Warwan Valley Trek in Kashmir Itinerary
Day 1 Srinagar to Panikhar
Altitude: 2,130m
Time taken: 3 hours drive
The first day of the Marchoi Trek you will stay at a homestay at Naranag. This is to acclimatize you with the altitude and the weather. You will take a walk in Naranag village in the evening before your dinner.
The homestay is situated overlooking the snow filled pine forest and the Wangath river.
Day 2 Panikhar Acclimatization and Exploration
This is a rest and acclimatization day before you start for this long Trans-Himalayan Trek. Explore the beautiful Panikhar landscape and village. Since this trek is challenging and goes to high altitude, it is essential to spend a day here for acclimatization. It has a way that goes to Zanskar and towards the Nun Kun Expedition. You will see villagers busy in their farming life and will relish their hospitability.
Day 3 Panikhar to Sumdo/Denora
Altitude: 10,700 ft to 12,350 ft
Distance: 14 km
Duration: 5-6 hours
The first day of trekking takes you first to the shimmering Panikhar Nallah. The trail walks parallel to this nallah and then crosses the bridge and goes to the other side of the nallah.
In a short walk, the village recedes and vanishes. The trail is wide goes through a narrow valley and has a gradual ascend. The landscape in the surroundings is barren. To the right side of the trail, the river cascades down beautifully.
As you walk along the trail, it unfolds varied attractions. There is a bridge crossing and a fantastic lush grassy meadow that has river streams cutting through it. You will come across on your way to the shepherd settlement. Immediately afterward, you reach the Sumdo campsite. This is the place of confluence of two rivers.
The trail now narrows down to a wide walking track. Continue walking on the trail. Another half-hour later, over a wide curve, you get the first glimpse of the two intersecting valleys up ahead. Below is Sumdo, your camp of the day. The campsite is scenic with rivers, meadows, and mountain chains in your surroundings.
Day 4 Sumdo to Kalapari
Altitude: 12,350 ft to 12,875 ft
Distance: 3 km
Duration: 1.5 hours
On this day there are many river streams you will have to cross. These multiple streams that are close to each other take around half an hour to cross. The water is cold and makes your feet numb. Panikhar Nallah is in your vicinity. This valley has another shepherd settlement.
Start the day by taking off your shoes. Multiple streams need to be crossed to get to the other end of the basin. The direction to take is the valley to the left, sticking to the right of the Nala that rushes down the valley. Immediately after the river crossings, you will see the basin of Denora and Sumdo. This is a gorgeous view. The landscape and this basin are quite wide and unending. The meadows are strewn with colorful flowers around you.
Shortly, you will see the meadow of Kalapari. You will camp in this meadow beside the river stream.
This is the shortest trek day and the gradient of the day is easy. All other days are challenging.
Day 5 Sumdo to Kalapari
Altitude: 12,875 ft to 11,550 ft via 14,550 ft
Distance: 17 km
Duration: 11 hours
This is the longest and the toughest day of the trek. You will have to start early in the morning. After having a hearty breakfast, gear yourself for the tough trek day. The trail is definite. However, what makes the day difficult is the length of around 17km, and the glacier traverse. The glacier trekking here does not need any equipment other than trekking poles. This is quite a safe maneuver. The trail goes through moraines.
Shortly after you have left the campsite, you will go via moraines and get a view of Kalapari summit and glacier. From the top look back towards your campsite, it looks so much spanning and vast and gives a panoramic view of the valley down.
You will now see the famous and only lake on the trail. The lake is fed by the glacier and has chunks of snow floating in it. The trail is beside the lake and exposes you to the long glacier about 1km wide. This is the brackish glacier is called the Kaintal Glacier.
After the glacier walk, the trail leads to the valley. After this valley is another glacier, you will be walking on the moraines and then get below the Kalapari mountain. Shortly after his glacier, you will have to ascend towards the pass. The pass stands at an altitude of around 14,550m. You will see multiple lakes on your way most of them almost frozen.
Large snowfields lead out from the pass. They are gently sloping and easy to walk on. Get on to the snowfield in front, keeping a general direction towards the valley opening towards your right. It takes about half an hour to get there.
On your right, a large lake, almost frozen, is in your view. There is a steep boulder section that can be difficult to negotiate as you descend. This is until you get close to the opening of the valley. At the opening of the valley, you get your first view of what lies in store on the other side.
The descent from the pass has little patches of snow walking and it leads to the famous Bracken glacier here. This patch of a glacier is quite hard and icy. You need to be careful with your steps. The icy glacier recedes and then comes the rocky moraines. Immediately afterward, you will see the Kaintal valley below. This valley has a rocky trail and then turns into a vast grassland. The campsite is amid this grassland.
It takes over two hours to descend through the moraines to get to the edge of the glacier and a faint upper grassy area. It is another hour of descent through very rough moraines before you get to the basin of the river that emerges from the bottom of the glacier.
Although the trek is challenging, the campsite is rewarding. This is the patch of heaven here.
Day 6 Kaintal to Humpet
Altitude: 11,550 ft to 10,950 ft
Distance: 16.5 km
Duration: 6 hours
This day is long with continuous ascents and descents dominating the trail. From Kaintal the trail goes alongside the river and passes through shepherd huts. The trail has many river streams till Humpet.
The grass fields and meadows are long with horses grazing charmingly. The trail within a short distance takes you to the top of the hump which gives you a spectacular view. There are many such humps till the next campsite.
The trail on its way has many river basins. After almost every grassland you will see a couple of river crossings. The water is shallow but cold. You need to remove your shoes to ford these streams.
There is one famous grassland called Sar grassland. Post this grassland, the bracken glacier is out of view. A couple of hours of the trek after the Sar grassland, you get the view of the Humpet.
Humpet gives you a contrasting view of both Kashmir and Ladakh. To the west are far-stretching lush mountains of Kashmir and to the East are barren mountains of Ladakh.
The campsite of Humpet is on a grassland. From the campsite, you get a fantastic view of the shepherd village called Thangkam.
Day 7 Humpet to Sukhnai
Altitude: 10,950 ft to 9,225 ft
Distance: 16 km
Duration: 7-8 hours
This day of the trek is a long downward trek towards Sukhnai Valley. On the way, one gets a view of the route that leads to Amarnath Yatra. Sukhnai is in Warwan Valley which holds 285 plant species of which 26 species are said to be threatened.
The trail starts with an ascent and then a long descent for about 4 hours. The descent takes you to the beautiful grasslands and gorgeous Sukhnai Village.
A trek of a couple of hours takes you to the junctions where a clean river merges with Kaintal Nala and becomes a wider river. Towards your one side is the mountain range and the trail that reaches to famous Sheeshnag Lake and the Amarnath Yatra.
From this junction is what starts the exotic Warwan valley. The valley is not wide and has many river crossings like in the previous days. The trail is decent from here. You will see a bridge here and near to it is the trail going to Sheshnag Lake.
On this day you will have to cross some overhangings, so you need to be careful with your steps. Be confident and careful while traversing these overhangings.
Immediately afterward, you will get a fantastic view of Sukhnai. The view is of long grasslands. It takes a further 2 hours of trek to reach the village of Sukhnai. The trail goes through farms with short fences. This gives it a countryside look of Europe. This part of the trail is superbly beautiful.
Day 8 Sukhnai to Basmina to Srinagar
Distance: 15 km
Duration: 5 hours
Drive Duration: 5 hours
This is the last trekking day of this trans-Himalayan trek. This day of the trek beholds the beautiful grasslands and Marwah River and the pretty village of Rekenwas and Basmina. The trail is strewn with ascends and descends. After a couple of hours of walking, you will see the beautiful Rekenwas village.
The striking feature of the day is the succession of pristine villages and the Marwah River. One such village is Basmina. It is a slightly bigger village than others. It has few shops and a hustle-bustle. The people live here with traditions and are untouched by modernity.
The people here are welcoming and curiously will ask where you traveled. The village has a river on one side. Finally you will reach Basmina from where out cab will ferry you to Srinagar.
The drive is extremely scenic and takes you first to the famous Margan Top and then descends to the Anantnag district. Passing via villages and orchards, the road merges with the NH1 highway and takes you to Srinagar.
Inclusions
- All veg meals during the trek. Breakfast, lunch, evening snacks, dinner.
- Camp accommodation on all the nights in high high-quality tents on a triple-sharing basis.
- Sleeping bags, sleeping mattresses, dining tents, and cutlery included.
- Mountaineering qualified and experienced trek leaders, guides, and experienced cooks.
- All the necessary mountain medicine includes first aid, oxygen cylinder, etc.
- Passes and permits.
Exclusions
- Lunch on the first day.
- Personal expenses.
- Offloading
- Transportation
- Insurance
- gst 5%
- Anything not specifically mentioned in the inclusion
Additional Services:
- If you wish to avail of our transportation service, then the extra cost will be 4500 per person. The transportation cost is to and fro. The pickup and drop place will be Srinagar.
- Offloading charges: Warwan Trek has mandatory offloading. The cost per bag is Rs 4500/ per bag. The maximum weight allowed is 10kg. Please note that only a proper trekking backpack will be allowed to offload. No trolly or suitcase will be allowed to offload. We strictly follow the rule of adequately place the load on our ponies.
- Meal plan: In every meal plan, we try to provide different varieties, trying not to repeat the dishes, particularly at dinner and lunch. Here is the list of dishes and items from which we serve the clients.
- Breakfast: eggs, paratha, chana, poha, dalia, upma, cornflakes, bread toast, butter, jam, roti, coffee, tea, kehwa, etc.
- Lunch and dinner: we make a variety of dishes and try to serve the varied dishes. On all trek days, there will be different dishes served. We try not to repeat our dishes unless the clients say otherwise.
- We serve veg dishes like veg biryani, veg pulaw, muttar paneer, palak paneer, aloo gobi, rajma chawal, rajma kadhai, mix veg, chana masala, kadhi chawal, dal makhni, bhindi masala, dal fry, veg korma, Kashmiri nadru, Kashmiri haakh, aloo matar, bhaingan ka bharta, dam aloo, andaburji, etc. We have both roti and rice available for dinner and lunch. We serve them with different pickles and salad.
- For evening snacks we have tea, pakoda, soup, noodles, maggie, veg rolls, biscuits, etc.
- For dessert we serve gulab jamun, phirni, halwa, custard, sewaya, fruit chaat, fruit cake, almond cake, etc.
Highlights of Warwan Valley Trek in Kashmir
The Grand Trek: The best reason you should do the Warwan Valley trek is the grandness that this trek has. This is the Trans-Himalayan trek with long walks through grand grasslands and under the shadow of the towering peaks of Kisthwar. You will get the landscape of both Ladakh and Kashmir. From barren, rugged mountains to green landscapes, you travel two words in this trek.
Bracken Glacier: The walk on the bracken glacier. In summer treks, you don’t get this beautiful experience of walking on a glacier that is too safe without any technical manoeuvres. Finishing of this glacier traverse gives you the feel of summiting the challenge of trekking.
Grasslands: The long, lush grasslands of Warwan Valley. The joy of walking for days in endless grasslands with river streams and surrounding mountains is straight from the travel fantasy. You will be immersing yourself in this experience.
Offbeat Trek: This is the most offbeat trek. You won’t see any crowd on this trek. Warwan Valley is the least populated. On the way you will hardly see any people going around. Just here or there some shepherds make their flock graze the lush grass.
Difficulty Level of Warwan Valley Trek
Once you are interested in doing this trek, you must know the gradient of the trek. The Warwan Valley Trek is difficult. This is in no way recommended for beginners.
The trek has almost all days where you will be walking for an entire day. The longest day is when you will be doing a glacier traverse and crossing over Lomvilad Gully. This day takes around 12 hours of continuous walking. It tests your endurance and resilience in trekking.
You must be physically fit and must have done some high-altitude treks before. The trek has many challenges apart from high altitude and length like traversing the glacier.
In terms of safety, we take the best care and precautions for the trekkers. However, you must have good stamina and endurance to finish this trek.
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