Klaath - the hot water bath 

(29th December, 2020)

Cafe interiors

I was technically working from mountains, so before opening work at 9-30AM, I made Bro's cafe my daily breakfast joint. Omelet and tea costs INR 130 and tastes good.

Every evening, all those staying at our basecamp used to gather and share how everyone spent his or her day. In these gatherings I used to get ideas for what to do the next day. In one of these, I overheard Monique talking about hot sulphur springs at Klaath.

We were advised to go downtown ( a good 2km downhill walk from basecamp) and catch a bus to Klaath. However, my roomie decided otherwise, and chose to spend INR 200 for a cab to Klaath.

Everyone who's been to Manali knows about sulphur spring at Vashisht, and everyone who knows Himachal knows about hot water spring at Manikaran. However, Klaath is a small village alongside the Beas river which is famous for multiple hot, sulphrous water ponds or kunds as they are known in Hindi. It lies on the way toward Delhi.

It's a natural marvel that the ice cold Beas flows on one side of the road, and natural hot water pools exist on the other.


The river flowing alongside Klaath town

There are a lot of hot water sulphrous pools in Klaath, both public and private, all at walking distances from one another. The cab dropped us at a public pool, in which we didn't feel like bathing.



Ultimately, we found a private kund which allowed a maximum of four people for INR 500. I didn't enquire about the time allowed, but I guess an hour is easily allowed.

Natural hot, sulphur baths are known to have medicinal properties, but we just went in for the experience. 

The 4ft. deep pool

There are no luxuries in here. No changing rooms. It's good we carried our towels and extra clothes to wear post bathing. The pool in picture looks dirty, but is actually super clean. The water takes such color due to high sulphur content.

Once I went neck deep into the pool, I really felt out of the world. Such hot water, in such cold climate. Heaven, what else !

I thought we'll relax here for an hour, but the water is so hot that we came out in half hour only. The experience starts after you get out of this pool. The dizziness was like I had just downed a Patiala peg.

The pool supervisor was a wise man. He asked if it was our first time in Klaath to which we both nodded. He asked us to relax on the stools outside bath area and we got chatty.

Every ounce of cold was rubbed off, as I sat there wearing clothes. The supervisor told us that the water is even safe to drink! But we didn't try it. He further told us that Tibetan people lie down for 2-3 hours and they have to be woken up to be told about time! It was pretty strange for us as we could not tolerate the heat for more than 30minutes !
We asked him if he liked Delhi, to which he responded that he dreads the smell of garbage when he enters Delhi. 

My beloved roomie asked him where the heater was kept to heat the pool water to which the wise man guffawed. I understood the emotion behind his invalid question. It's really difficult for city bred people like us to imagine that water with such extremities of temperature could flow in such proximity. 

The wise man had told us that dizziness would go away after a while, and the same happened. We picked up our things, and bought water and a comb.

While returning, we were mutually sure of taking a bus back. The bus from Klaath to Manali charges INR 20 per person and runs every 30 minutes.

Such a day of relief !