Buni-Buni Pass Trek with family and friends

Myth 1 - Buni-Buni Pass Trek is an easy to intermediate trek

Reality 1 - It is an intermediate to difficult trek

Myth 2 - First half of the trek is steep, second half is plain walk

Reality 2 - The entire trek is quite tedious with steep climbs

Pronounced as Buni-Buni or Bunbuni. Base Location - Barshaini, Himachal Pradesh 

Having said the above, our group of sixteen, consisting of 8 year old to 42 year old, comfortably did the 2 nights / 3 days trek to 11500 ft Buni-Buni Pass and enjoyed every bit of it.

While researching on which trek to combine with our 10-day trip to Kasol and Tirthan Valley, the most common answer that came up was Kheerganga. Having read several blogs on the way Kheerganga is over-commercialized with hundreds of tents, thousands of people, mostly smokers and party-goers, we collectively chose to steer away from it. 

We read some blogs about an offbeat path called Buni-Buni pass, but honestly, not much information was available. That is also my motivation to write this blog.  

We did the trek with a company called Trek The Himalayas (TTH). They were honest enough to admit that this was their first time to this mountain. They in turn tied up with another local agency named Him Trek from Tosh, which in turn tied up with a local shepherd on top of the mountain. Despite these multiple layers, we were super lucky to have a great team of trek leaders and helpers from all the above. That really makes the trekking experience more fulfilling. 

We started the trek on  Monday 31st May 2022 from Barshaini Village, at the foothill of both Kheerganga and Buni-Buni Pass. Barshaini was about 1 hour ride from Kasol. It was a warm and sunny morning.  Our bigger bags were offloaded to mules for which we were charged Rs 900 per bag. We collected our trekking sticks from a local store in Barshaini for Rs 40 per stick. While our trek lead from TTH, Narendra (Nari) met us previous evening at our hotel Kasol for a detailed briefing and also rode the bus with us from Kasol to Barshaini, we met Dhruv from Him Trek at Barshaini. His other colleague Chirag joined us mid-way. 

I must confess we were a bit perturbed with the delay in things and lack clarity as we started our ascent at 10.30 AM. But as it goes with such expeditions, things got smoother as the trek progressed. Our first stop was at a town called Kalga, about 30 minutes steep climb from Barshaini. It has a bunch of cafes. Huffing and puffing, we stopped at one to have sugarcane juice.  

We then started our 8-hour ascent to Buni-Buni Pass. We crossed some trekkers / picnickers soon after we started from Kalga. They were returning from Kheerganga, and they were surprised to know we were going to a place they'd never heard of. As I said before, the climb was difficult. It wasn't too rocky or without a path, it was just continuously steep. 

We were already prepared by our trek lead to carry wind cheaters or ponchos, besides two bottles of water and food, which we all did. And little to our surprise, it started drizzling almost half way through our trek. Rain brings winds which brings down the temperature significantly, making it more difficult to do the climb. 

We had our packed lunch of toast sandwiches organized by TTH. Although the sandwiches were soggy and cold, none of us complained and quickly downed them. The second half of the climb saw a lot of us adults and kids becoming grumpy, repetitively asking our trek leader Chirag - "how much more time?"

We finally reached our campsite in 3-4 batches of people with varying speeds between 5 and 6 PM. It took us an average of 8 hours to do the ascent. Our campsite was a meadow occupied by 2 families of shepherds with their animals. There were no tents pitched at the site due to the rain. We all huddled in a small and dingy cowshed waiting for the rain to subside and our tents be pitched. We had our evening snack (the mountain staple 'Maggi') and dinner inside the shed. We were all getting increasingly cold and tired. We layered up with all the layers we had (thermals, fleece, down jackets, gloves, woolen socks, gators, beanies) and got inside the tents at 9 PM to call it a night. Most of us found it difficult to get sleep due to the cold temperature at night. We were told it went to about -2 Deg C. The hot water that we got from our helpers at night had frozen in our bottles. 

Day 2 

The morning sun came up early at 5 AM and brought a much needed respite from the rain and gloomy weather. The campsite, the meadows, the mountains and snow peaks all looked just too gorgeous to melt our tiredness away and refresh us for the day ahead. 

We took a lot of pictures, had a hearty aloo-paratha breakfast and felt really good. A bunch of us decided to trek to the snow line on the second day while the others chose to take it easy and just enjoy the sun at the campsite. I was in the former group. 

We started the hike from our campsite at 10 AM. Our guide Chirag was quite well versed with the mountains. We crossed several mountains and meadows to finally reach a dense forest without a defined path. The 45-60 minutes of walking through the forest with loose sand was a bit risky and could be avoided by taking a longer path. We finally reached the Buni-Buni Glacier. While the walk was fun to start with, dangerous in parts, the glacier was a bit underwhelming. Since this group mostly consisted of teenage kids, they were up for all the challenge. 

We finished the day-trek and reached the campsite for lunch at about 3 PM to meet the other group, who had an equally amazing time soaking the sun on top of a hill overlooking the campsite. We spent the rest of the day playing some games, chatting, a good dinner and also calling it a night early at 10 PM. 

Day 3

We were all up and about early again on day 3. We packed our bags, had a quick toast and tea and were ready for the descent by 9.15 AM. While we had to watch out for our knees and ankles, we all concurred that going downhill was far easier and faster than climbing. It gave us more opportunities to take pictures and reminisce the tough times we had just 48 hours ago while climbing the same mountain. 

Most of us decided to collect plastic waste on the way down. The kids found the process rather interesting and participated wholeheartedly. While collecting the waste from the mountain was very satisfying, we were clueless as to where to dispose off the waste. We emptied our at a cafe in Kalga only to yelled at by the lady who ran the cafe. She said she doesn't care where we take it but not in her dustbin. That's the sad truth of our beautiful mountains in India, something for all of us to ponder and contribute in changing for the good. 

In conclusion, despite all the hardships, we all brought back nothing but the fondest memories to cherish for a lifetime. While some of us might say we might not do a trek like this ever again, I am pretty sure the impact that the mountains leave on us will have us coming back soon. 

This blog is written with the purpose of sharing information about an offbeat trekking destination, not for it to become another picnic spot laden with Maggi stalls and cafes. I hope you will enjoy this beautiful mountain as much as we did, make sure you do not litter the mountain and also collect any garbage that you see on your way back.