Valley of Flowers on high Himalaya Mountains is a National Park famous for its natural beauty and wealth of various flowering plants blooming in the whole of 90 acres of the park. The park in located to the west of Nanda Devi National Park. Together with Nanda Devi Park the area is known as Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve and is covered under World Network of Biosphere reserves since the year 2004. The Valley of Flowers houses hundreds of verities of flowers of many colors, the valley was declared as National Park in the year 1982, many famous flowers like Brahmakamal, Blue Poppy and Cobra Lily are also found in the park. The valley lays the upper Garhwali regions of Uttarkhand laying in the Zanskar mountain ranges of Himalaya. The highest point in the park being Gauri Parbat which is at the height of 6700 Meters. Exactly the place is in Chamoli district near Joshi Math in Garhwali region (formerly known as Bhyunder Valley). The place had disappeared from tourist map due to its difficult approach, but a British mountain trekker Frank S. Smythe accidently located it and was very fascinated by it and named it Valley of Flowers, he also wrote a book by the name ?Valley of Flowers? which made this place famous all over the world. The park is open only in summers from June to October rest of the year it is covered with snow. There are no settlements in the parks and animal grazing is not allowed here. One can reach Valley of Flower by trekking 17 Kms from Joshimath which can be conveniently reached by road from Rishikesh (Nearest railway Station @275 Kms) and Dehradun (Nearest Airport @295 Kms). Govindghat is the place near to Joshimath from where the trek to valley of Flowers starts, after 14 Kms of trekking you reach a small settlement Ghangaria 3 Kms before the valley, your base camp can be made here as there are hotels and mobile phone linkage here. Three Kms from here you enter the Valley from gorge over the Pushpawati River.
