well finally the merathon trekking day in our trek arrived which in the hearts of our hearts we all feared :o..... it involved a trek of a little above 12 hours and we did 4 lakes and 4 passes...........
we started off at 8 am from Misperghal Banda and trekked along a gentle slope for about 1 hour to reach the BC of 2nd lake and our first target of the day....we left our luggage in that spot and headed out for the lake ascend which was steep and lasted for 45 mins.....
we reached the top to see a big and butiful lake in 2 parts.. the locals called it "Sherpanghal lake" but we called it Shar lake to make that simpler... the lake itself was quiet interesting vbeing in to parts with the central region so shallow it cud be crossed on foot.... it was amazing to c such a unique shape... the team spend abt half an hour at the lake and then had goat milk tea which the locals brought for us... it was refreshing and we started our half hour return journey to the BC from where we reached Shar Banda at abt 11.30 am....
shar banda is the last proper settlement before the series of shar passes... its a big settlement with a proper loud speaker equipped mosque etc.
at shar banda our guides and porters refreshed their knowledge of the route while we had a delicious regular meal of makhan lassi cheese and roti.....
we started for the pass at abt 1 pm and reached the first Pass at 4 pm ... we were surprised to see a medium sized lake on top of the pass. this is a very rare occurrence even ion Tahir sb's opinion who has done numerous passes in Pakistan...
bht he ala mahool bht tha lake parr.. badal a ja rahay thay..... over the top flow kar rahay thay aur lake ko aik mystic look day rahay thay.. we enjoyed our short stay there and moved ahead for second pass.... 10 mins into our walk we reached another lake named it "shar pass lake 2" it was a crater type lake much bigger than the first one and we saw it from altitude.. then we descended onto the bank of the lake and ascended again to the top of the second shar pass....for abt 1/2 hour... at the top the view was amazing... it was the confluence of swat and dir and the open vallyz amused our eyes.... on the left was Daral Valley and right was Usherai Valley of dir... unfortunately our guides were also confused here and they conceded that they had come ahead of shar pass for the first time... they did not know the was ahead..... we were officially lost..... here we sat for abt 45 mins while our guides went in all directions to find locals and ask for directions.... finally they found a possible route straight ahead into the passes where we moved to see the fifth lake of the tour called chamber lake just at the start of Daral valley... her ewe crossed two passes and along a narrow ridge where we could c dir and swat kohistan regions our our right and left respectively....
finally we reached Chamber a small settlement at around 8.30 pm after a steep descend from the passes to ground level..... here there was a small nomadic camp abadi where we stayed the night in a tent......