Manshi Top Sharan Forest trip to a Hidden Heaven on Earth

It was a cool night of November, when we had started our trip to a hidden heaven on earth to explore Manshi Top in Sharan Forest. It was an adventure in Sharan Forest to ascend the summit of Manshi top at the beginning of winter season. Manshi top is the summit of Manshi mountain in the Siran valley near Paras village. We were a group of sixteen people from Acheron Instruments, seven females and nine males.

At mid-night, we were loading the luggage over the coaster. All of us, had reasonable size of luggage except Arslan who had number of jackets and shoe pairs as going to perform a modeling on ramp to display those. "Are you going to sell them.", Waqas said. He was one of best person to make jokes on every occasion to set everyone to laugh. He is also an experienced traveler and provided all of the advisory related to tour. "We are getting late, hurry up", Usman cried at the same time. He is the CEO of Acheron Instruments having an extroverted personality of getting social interactions with everyone in friendly and unbiased way.

White 2023 model coaster was on Lahore - Islamabad Motorway (M1), to achieve our final destination, Manshi Top in Sharan Forest. Paras village is a well-known spot in Kaghan Valley to have expeditions to perform hiking toward Manshi Top, achieving the summit of Musa Ka Masala, and going to Shogran. The trek to Manshi top begins from the Paras Village, just located on the Mansehra-Naran Road. One has to park vehicle near Paras village or Kawai town to hire a jeep for Sharan Forest.

All of us were excited to get the glimpses of Sharan Forest and planning for adventures over there. We also had taken uncooked food to perform an adventure of cooking mania in the dense forest of Sharan. Due to the cold nights of winter, everyone had worn jackets as well as warm shawls. Distance from Lahore to Islamabad was covered without any hardships due to jolly comments of Waqar and Asad as well as spicy and crunchy munching. Raiha who was the custodian of all of the eatables, was distributing them in chunks to control the food intakes to maintain our body fat for travel fitness.

After performing morning prayer near Burhan Interchange, coaster driver was struggling to find the Hazara Motorway to enter in the Kaghan Valley through Balakot. He had to take a five kilometers turnaround to get back to take a final turn toward the Hazara Motorway. Salman and Waqar had pointed it, "Where are you going? Check map", they shouted over driver. Salman is a tall and strong-muscled person and has an experience of travelling and hiking. He was planning all of the tour activities in the trip.

Hazara Motorway is a wonderful architecture over the chest of Himalaya Mountain Range. It was engraved by cutting and busting the mountains of Himalaya range. There are also three tunnels those are constructed by Chinese engineers with great effort by drilling the long and difficult mountain ranges. These tunnels provide a unique travelling experience in the Northern Areas of Pakistan.

"I am hungry, stop somewhere", Kashif screamed due to his uncontrollable and efficient digestive system as he claimed. It stimulates a wave of hunger in others too, so finally we had to stop in Balakot Bazaar to restore energies to do hiking for Manshi Top. Balakot is the famous town in Mansehra and is the gateway to Kaghan Valley. After crossing the bridge over the Kunhar River from there, one will be in the Kaghan Valley. Breakfast includes trotters of goat, fried eggs, and beef curry with chapatis. "Eat well, get your food properly", Hadayat said to Shahid. Hadayat was a man of perfect attitude to give equal importance to everyone, whereas Shahid was a shy and attractive personality, but corporative and supportive. Everyone wanted to enjoy his company due to his polite wording that pierce deep inside other's heart for a long association. It was the first place, where the miracle fact of digestive system or hungry system of Kashif identified, when had taken four bowls of trotter soup.

During stay at Balakot, we had also explored the Balakot Bazaar and visited various shops of dried food and electronics. There was a little difference of rate of dried food over there as compare to Lahore markets, but they had comprehensive and diversified varieties of dried foods, those are commonly not available in Lahore. We also had purchased some eatables and chicken for a BBQ party tonight in the Sharan Forest.

Snake like road from Balakot, led us toward the Paras Village in the Siran Valley shedding under the pine trees. There were sharp cuts along the road, made it the most of the beautiful part of journey. "Wow! it is amazing, I have never seen such type of beauty.", Asad yelled with joy and showed that happiness with noise and dance. Asad was one of the funniest persons in this group, his funniest talk on every moment were enough to amuse others. He never missed any chance of making a fun.

Winter season turned the leaves of most of the plants yellow and dried out to be ready to fall. Some of the trees were now without any leave except pine tree, which were still green and made the landscape a greenish touch with scattered yellowish browns colors of other trees. All of these gave another fascinating and charming landscape for the viewers. Finally, we were near Paras village to hire jeeps to complete next part of the journey. We had hired four jeeps for this purpose, and started to transfer our belongings and luggage to one of the jeeps. It was really a hard job, but we had to do it.

After crossing the bridge, made of wooden planks, over the Kunhar River, jeeps were struggling to gain hundreds of feet elevation on each turn on the narrow, rough, and bumpy trek toward Sharan Forest. Due to uneven and rough trek, we were unable to fix our body and unable to avoid collision with the roof and sides of jeep. Trek was covered with the shades of the dense pine forest with leafless trees in the Siran valley. Instead of abundance of trees, pine leaves were unable to stop sparkles of sunshine having scattered colors effect as crossing the among the leaves.

On the passage, one of the existing locations was the Sharan Waterfall. "Stop! it looks great to stop there.", Arslan shouted as waterfall sighted. Sharan Waterfall is a small waterfall having more than hundred meters height with a small pond in front of it. There were thousands of trout fish inside it, and could be seen by naked eye. The sight gave a fascinating effect of colors on waves of pond as well as singing sound of falling of water. The bluish green water of pond painted the sight with more sharp romantic colors that attracted everyone to stop there to get unforgettable memories. All of these were resembled as a hidden heaven beautifully curved in the Sharan Forest.

Sun was just going to hide itself behind the hill tops in the Siran valley, when we had just entered in our hotel in the pleasant and calm atmosphere of the Sharan Forest. The horizon just above the line of mountain range filled with reddish color with gradient effect of blue white light. "Yippee, it's my dream to look this seen." Gohar uttered with an applause of happiness. The atmosphere resembled as a perfect location of peace and calmness with cold breeze of winter to spend valuable moments of life with love ones. All of us settled to take a short rest before enjoying the relish of spices of dinner including potato sticks and chicken tikkas.

Nothing could stop to eat the crispy and spicy potato sticks fried by Asad. Extra sauces and ketchup rolled over the chips were adding more flavors to give the superb starter for a dinner. Meanwhile, Waqar was setting the chicken tikkas with touch of spices and vinegar. In few minutes, burning charcoal were ready to start barbeque. Salman and Waqar were turning the chicken pieces to cook them from all sides. A burning charcoal gave nice aroma of barbeque as drops of oil fallen over them. It would be the fortunate event for Kashif as any tikka was fallen over the charcoal and got processed by his digestive system. At the same time, wooden logs are set on fire to enjoy the midnight with bonfire. Then, everyone was enjoying the potato sticks and chicken tikkas in the golden light of moon in the sky full of shining stars and warmness of the bonfire. "It's awesome!", Kashif pronounced with mouth full of chicken tikka. Setting around the fire, all of us were taking sips of hot tea and coffee that made us active to participate in singing, gossips, and jokes till the burning logs became to ashes in midnight. Antakshari, an Indian style game to sing a song with last letter of opposite team song, was played among boys and girls. Girls were well prepared for it, specially Habiba who was mostly first to sing any song. Girls were singing in melodious and lyrical sounds, whereas boys were just trying to say songs in harsh and tuneless sounds. Instead of that, boys were the winners of this game. There were rounds of tea or coffee after each thirty to forty minutes, to get warm us in the cold night there. Girls had put all of their efforts in preparing the tea and coffee to check the validity and reliability of our immunity systems.

It was a clear morning in the Sharan Forest, when we were ready to start our adventure toward the Manshi Top. All of us are equipped with the required items for trekking such as trekking sticks, water bottles, eatables, and some other essential items. After covering a small distance by jeep, a narrow steep trek led toward the Manshi Top inside the dense Sharan Forest. The trek beautifully scaled and ascended vertically in the forest toward the meadow at the top. The initial part of the trek was much steep; therefore, much effort and hardship were required to move next. Few of us refused to move on due to steepness of the trek, and then moved back to the hotel.

Trek was full of fallen dry pine leaves, rocks, and pebbles. It became much narrow at some spot and became more difficult to ascend, so great care and control was required to ascend it. The tall pine trees were knitted around the slops in a way that left little room for sunshine. Sometimes, there were chirps of birds in the surrounding, but we were not able to locate them due to forest thickness. There are several species of birds like crow, sparrow, cuckoo, etc. It was not easy to move inside the dense and thick forest to achieve the top, one can easily detract in wrong direction. Therefore, we had arranged a guide who led us to retain us toward the vast meadow on the top. Our guide was a sixteen years young and smart boy. He led us toward the Manshi Top with a quick walk that was not possible by our team members, so we had to call him to wait until we reached there. After each five minutes trekking, we had to take rest to relax ourselves by taking long breathes.

After one hour of difficult trekking, we reached over the meadow area on the top. Due to winter season, it shows dull greenish color with mostly dried grass over it. It was not as flat as we were expecting. It was like a huge bumpy landscape with sharp inclines and ascends. We had to cross multiple such slopes and gaining more altitude than previous. "Snow is there!", Asad and Kashif shouted at the same time as they looked the snow on the left side of the trek. It was the remains of previous days snowfall in the region and became ice then. Instead of that it was the happiest moment for them, and they started to get their snaps around it.

Finally, we had reached on the summit of Manshi Mountain after doing another one-hour trekking that completely drained our energies. instead of that, we were happy to achieve it and started to dance over there. Kashif and Asad were starting to compete each other while dancing, and finally Asad was the winner. He was really a good dance as well as amuzing everyone on every occasion. I really appreciate the company of Asad, as he is a perfect man while traveling.

"You are strong ladies!", Usman praised Raiha and Rabail upon achieving the Manshi Top. Both were the only girls who had achieved the summit of Manshi Mountain and were deserved for salute their solid courage and determination. Even, Usman himself was deserved it on doing that trekking adventure. So finally, we had achieved the summit of Manshi Top with our courage and self-determination.

A strong flow of cool and pleasant air was there due to the wideness and broadness of the meadow. A panoramic view of Siri Paye with shining top of the Makra Mountain was clearly seen from there. At the foot of the Makra Top in the bottom, the Kunhar River was flowing deep just like a snake in the gorges of the Himalayan Range. On the opposite side, another splendid view of the sharp peak of the Musa Ka Musala was clearly seen. To ascend the Musa Ka Musalla, the Manshi Top is used as the base camp, but it is little bit difficult and dangerous trek from this side. There was a small water pond that was frozen completely, normally used by shepherd for their animals in the summer season. "Look! there is a dam.", Hadayat pointed toward it. Upon his comments, there were load chuckles and giggles all around on the Manshi Top.

We had relaxed ourselves in the pleasant and calmed atmosphere over the top. Cool breeze penetrated into our body gave an energetic spike in our blood to set us ready for next hectic and restless day of the tour. We did not miss any moment to capture the wonderful memories over there, so try to fix these in our vision. After taking the delicious paratha and omelet baked over the traditional oven mostly used in the Northern Area, we had started back to hotel.

Descending down was another difficult part of the adventure. It became difficult to move down on sharp inclined trek. Salman had slipped there due to sharp edge of the rock, and fortunately he had no injury. Now everyone became cautious and careful while stepping down on the sharp treks. Arslan and Shahid were helping female members to descend down on such a difficult trek. They were the real corporative and supportive members of the group, that attitude must be the essential element in group travelling.

"A matchstick in a monkey's hand can burn the jungle down." had been proven there in the Sharan Forest, when Asad had fired a portion of dry grass. We had forced him to extinct it, but it spread out over a small area. Due to dry leaves, it became difficult to stop it and a small sparkle was initiating other spot of fire. All of us had tried to stop it by pressing with our shoes. After five minutes, we were able to extinct completely, but light smoke was still smelling in the pleasant air of the Sharan Forest. "You are going to burn jungle." all of us yelled to Asad on his stupid mistake.

Jeeps were once again ready to get back us to Paras Village. Sun was just touching the top line of the mountain ranges in the west. Light reddish light was going to mix with the bluish sky under the light layer of fog due to low temperature of winter. Yellowish light of jeep's headlights was struggling to identify the bumpy and uneven trek downside. One fox was spotted in the jeep's light, who quickly hid himself in the darkness of the forest. As we had reached at Paras, we had to shift our belongings and luggage on the roof of the coaster that was parked there since the last day. Instead of tiredness of all of the today adventure, we had to do it.

Once again, our Coaster was running over the motorways to get back to Lahore. There was a peaceful silence inside the coaster to revise our wonderful memories of the Sharan Forest and Manshi Top. That silence was broken by Waqar, relating his jokes with Kashif and others to make loud laughs. The tiredness of the tour was vanished by having a delicious dinner including crispy burgers, chicken pieces, and French fries at KFC Sial More Interchange on the Lahore-Islamabad Motorway. All of the remaining food was taken by Kashif to diminish his hunger that would never be ended. It became a reason of next part of jokes by Waqar to make last laughing moments in the coaster, while it was struggle to crawl in the darkness along the motorway to find our comfortable beds to take rest.