Shahdara - Khariyan - Neelan Bhutto - Sanda Pathar - Pharila ruins

Someone once said “if you start hiking the same places, not by choice, that means you are a real hiker.”
It was my second time to Neelan Bhoto, after one year and 12 days. And third time to Pharila rest house ruins, after 3 months and 19 days. Plan was made and initially I was like, I have been to Pharila and Neelan Bhoto but I was told, while the spots are the same, trails would be completely difference.
And they were.

We drove to Shahdara early morning and reached the spot near the Shahdara stream and Govt School. We started at exactly 8 AM. Initially there was gradual hike as we passed through the houses/villa’s. There were kids taking their cattle up for grazing. Less goats and more cows. After hiking for over an hour we reached this place from where we could see the valley around. The hike became steep onwards. It was beautiful. Budhoo village was on our left but we continued the hike upwards reaching another village.
The top, Khariyan village ridge, was only a little above the village however it was rather steep. On ridge, we met the jeep track that starts from Dino Valley and goes far beyond Pharila.
We had some sandwiches, tea and biscuits there. Afterwards we started our long descend towards Neelan Bhoto on Jeep road which later met with the concrete road. Valley and villages were looking amazing in sunlight. In the village, people were sprinkling pesticides and dropping fertilizers in fields.
We spent some time staring at the fish at “Chilla Gah”. Neelan Bhoto has two spots where there are fish. I explored the first one last year which had a lot more fish and even bigger in size. This one had less Fish but the famous Chilla Gah was here along with the “Sanda Pathar” translated as the “Bull Stone”. Legend has it, that a bull turned into stone.
We started hike back and this was the part which I had done before. From the village, we took the steep route towards Pharila. The jeep road was being turned into concrete at places. Yet it was a steep road. Little kids were returning to their homes from school and accompanied us. What was really cute, that they would stop as we would stop and wait for us to continue our hike.
Clouds had started to cover the valley; at a ridge we could see the hills at distance. We spend some time at Pharila and started hike down from another route. After an hour, we reached at a point where we could see Rawal and Simli dams. Evening was very beautiful with views as mesmerizing as they could be and sun playing hide and seek behind clouds. The jeep track was going around another valley, which would have been a rather longer track so we took off to a narrower but yet visible track which was a ridge. After hiking on it we met with young kids who confirmed that we were on the right track. We descended at the village but as we were horizontally far away from the parking, we had to walk additional 3 kilometers on road. We reached back at 6 am.