A jeep road leads to Sharan from Paras (on Kaghan Road). It is about 16 km away from the town of Paras. Sharan is a beautiful place in middle of Manshi forest. There’s a youth hostel and forest rest house.
When you are going to Naran from Balakot. As soon as you reach the town of Paras, there’s a jeep road going on left side which leads to Sharan. When you catch that road, first you will have to cross the river kunhar over a bridge and then continue to go ahead on the road.
- The Bridge to cross River Kunhar
Amazingly the mountain landscape is barren with pinkish colored mountains and very few trees. The road will continue to rise..
- Rocky Mountains
After few kilometers you will reach a small town called “Bela”. Here you will find many people busy in farming. Sadly, You will also notice that timber mafia is very active in this area 
- People Busy in Farming At small town of Bela
- **Active Timber Mafia
**After the Bela Town, you will continue to go ahead on the same road.. Suddenly the landscape will change and you will enter the forest with huge pine trees on one side and huge mountain on other side of road.. Lots of butterflies are seen roaming here freely.. Almost no population and a weird silence all over the place.
- The Way to Sharan
When the road reaches the top, it will start to go down (on the other side of mountain).. After about a kilometer or a little more going downwards you will see the youth hostel.. There was no one present there.. A little ahead there is a Govt owned forest rest house
- The Rest House
As soon as you reach Sharan, you will fall in love with this place (if you are nature and adventure loving). Please remember this place is not for those people who go to Naran only to do shopping and “khaba” from Naran bazaar 
Sharan is ideal place for camping. You should take your own camping equipments because these are not available in Sharan. You can also stay at Rest House but my advice is not to do that because its very dirty. We were planned to stay a night there but because of some medical emergency with a friend we had to leave for Shoogran in evening and missed the night stay
Also take your own food because you can’t buy food here. In extreme condition, the rest house incharge will make “chanay ki daal” for you and will charge premium prices (we have experienced that)
It is ideal place for trekking and exploring the forest. You can hear lots of birds but will rarely see them because they are hidden in trees and usually in more deeper forest. We spent about 4 hours trekking and also went into deep forest but we didn’t go very deep because the rest house incharge told us about presence of wild animals (including cheetah and bear in more deeper forest). Here are some pictures which we took while trekking.
- Yellow flowers are all over the place
- Small walnut trees nursery. A good step by govt to plant these in the forest.
- **Somewhat deeper forest
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- Different variety of trees here
- My friends on hiking trek
- The debris brought by flash floods during the heavy rains
- **Beautiful sight of plant growing inside a fallen tree stem
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- **A Pine cone
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- Trekking besides the only stream in forest which becomes rageful during heavy rain and brings a lot of debris from upper areas. Should avoid going near the stream during rain.
- Some weird flower bud in the forest. if anyone knows the name then please let me know
- **In last.. the statement written on the wall of Sharan rest house. hehe
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