Every morning when I go to work, I get to see the pride of Pir Panjal Himalayas, a heartwarming view of Mount Deo Tibba (6001 meters) and Indrasan (6221 meters). What lies beyond these two mountains always troubled my weary mind.

I got my answers while coming back from the Kamrunag Lake Trek this weekend. More about that later!

There are two peaks in this photograph. The dome shaped peak is Deo Tibba, whereas the tip rising above the dome is Indrasan, which stands at 6221 meters.

Lake Kamrunag is in Mandi District and it stands at 2850 meters, approximately same height as that of Triund in Dharmshala. However, Triund being closer to the Dhauladhar Ranges receives heavy snow whereas Kamrunag manages as much as 5-6 feet of snow.

There are many ways of approaching this lake, via Rohanda or via Karsog or even via Chailchowk. If you are interested in this journey and the historical story related to this lake, I suggest you go through these two links: Kamru Shikari Yatra | Kamrunag : The Rain God of Mandi.

This journey was undertaken via Rohanda because that’s the easiest approach. Also, the other two approaches are occupied by wild animals as they have to descend the higher reaches in winters because of unavailability of food.

Now coming to what we talked about in the beginning of this blog post, the mystery beyond Deo Tibba and Indrasan.

While coming back from Kamrunag, I saw the ranges beyond these two mountains. I had seen them before but never paid attention. Immediately, I asked my friend Himalayan Volunteer, who helped me recognized these mountain peaks.

Preliminary observation reports that the peak that rises like the fin of a shark is the Norbu Peak and what lies to its right is the Ali Ratni Tibba, a prominent peak of the Central Himalayan Arc. More info will be added when these peaks are compared with the ones on a map.

Theft atop the Kamrunag Lake?

कुल्हाड़ी से बर्फ काट कर लूटी पवित्र झील,कमरूनाग पहुंची श्रद्धालुओं की टोली को नजर आई अनहोनी,पास मिली मिट्टी से गहराया शक

— Etv Himachal (@himachaletv) January 7, 2015

I came across this tweet by Etv Himachal on January 7 and asked them if the lake in question was Kamrunag Lake. However, such twitter accounts are run on auto-pilot mode, so obviously there was no answer to my query.

It appears that the report of theft was true. There were visible shoe marks on the frozen lake and someone had tried to wield axe on the snow covered lake.

Not many years ago, it was a practice to make offerings to Kamrunag Dev by throwing money (coins) and jewelry into the lake. And nobody knows when did this practice start. One can safely make a guess that the practice started hundreds of years ago.

And this answers the question why locals behave cynically whenever they see someone inquiring about the rituals of the deity.

Hope sanity prevails and such ghastly incidents never happen again.