Tuesday, 26 April 2016

Manali Diaries


It all started when my room mate shashank and I were on our way to dinner. Most of our friends from the other classes were going on a trip to various places in Incredible India.  So, a question was raised as to where should we go ? What the budget was ? Which  would be the perfect place in this summer ?  Just for fun he said kulu Manali.  Of course, i was dumbstruck followed  by brief pause just that we are going to the extreme cold place in the extreme situation with the
 extreme budget.
 What is the exact budget ? He estimated the cost and said 17-20k. I was kinda dumbstruck and also thinking of an idea to convince my mom. I told that it was a trip organised in the college and the plan worked! So the next question  was who else apart from me and my roommate ? It was Subbu and Ruthvik who said yes without a second thought.

Obstacle
We thought of going in the month of March but we couldn't  go due to the extreme weather conditions in Manali and we were all struck with project submissions of final year engineering.

 Coming to the story......

 Day -1
 13th April

Karnataka express departing  at 7:30pm from southern railway station  Bengaluru. We all four boarded the train and I really don't want to  say about boring train journey we went  through. We were supposed to reach  Agra by 6:50am on day 3 but due to the delay of about 7
 hours we reached Agra at 2pm .

 Day-3





 Don't worry you will not be finding day 2 as we spent it in train sleeping all day ;) We reached Agra at 2pm. Just came out from the station and I started feeling Hindi air all around "bhai auto auto kaha jana hai aao baito ....." Guys trust me I'm one of the best Hindi spoiler. But  unfortunately I had my roommate who would prevent me by doing so :P  We hired a prepaid auto for 500 bucks. It was package for half a   day sight seeing. We travelled across the streets in auto and reached
 a small five feet road from where I m seeing white marble building and  yes you are damn right that's TAJ , Shah Jahan ka achievement. 

We passed through series of body massages , I meant security checks :D  and there we go to marvellous Taj Mahal . I just had a glimpse of my
 girl friend there , probably that is the ambience it has got. You see  Taj Mahal and you will fall in love :D  Nothing much to describe taj mahal as u would have studied history and  the next place was Red Fort of Agra which is replica of Red Fort of  Delhi. We just had a short walk under the burning sun, inside the fort and came back to  the auto to leave as we were running out of time to board bus to
 Delhi.  Everything were pre booked online it was just easier for us to go from  one place to other apart from local travelling. Travelled along the  Yamuna express reached The Capital city around 6pm and we had a bus to  Manali at 7 so we rushed to ISBT kashmiri gate ( main bus stand of  Delhi ) . We boarded Himachal Pradesh transport and travelled along the ghats for about 14 hours. It was 606kms from Delhi and all the way it has got curves, sight of valley , snow at far distance , basically as shown in Randeep Hooda's Highway movie.

 Day -4
 Am I going little boring ? Here it all starts with so called two four letter words SNOW & COLD.
 "Last stop, Manali Manali " . As soon as we heard that voice, we  were in heaven. Imagine you are surrounded by snow in all four  directions and people walking with jackets covering them from top to bottom without leaving a centimetre of skin for snow . 
It was just  amazing and we were like illiterates who had just a pull over over us  and shivering. Checked into tree hill cottages in Manali we had booked a two duplex  rooms , one for two people. Since it was already 4pm we thought of having a look at local street of Manali it's called Mall Road 
where it  is centre of Manali and one would get everything there. We enquired  for snow activities, bike rentals along with local sight seeing that  day and shopping :) don't feel shopping is kinda girlish. Manali is  famous for leather jackets and we all purchased and roamed the entire Mall Road.
 We had a very good dinner and tight sleep.

Day -5


 It was 9am and 2 degrees by that time we all were freshened up and left  the cottage after sipping up masala Tea. We hired bullets for the cost of  1600/- for two days and left to kothi valley along the Rohtang pass.  It is not possible for me to explain  about the awesome ride along the snow


















 We reached the kothi valley where we had few snow activities like  skiing , snow bike etc and we played till afternoon and stopped by a  tea stall as our body started to freeze. " guys have you all come by  bikes ? Seriously ? " a person who got down from Innova said , we were  very happy for his excitement and he said there is a snow fall up in  Kothi valley. We actually had got half way down to Manali but we took  a way back to Rohtang pass route where we started experiencing snow  fall, initially it was less and we could ride our bikes but later on  it was extreme we use to get hurt by the hit of snow. It was -4degrees  up there and We reached to Gulaba en route to Rohtang where snow fall
 was at its peak. Hardly clicked few pictures time was around 4:30pm and exactly 13.2kms from foothill. Guess how long we took to reach foothills ? Can u believe me  if I say we took 5hours ? Yes it was such horrible , pain in the ass, fun that we use to ride for 2kms by that time we would be covered by snow and become numb . We used to stop by the tea stalls or small houses there and rub our hands and body for 45min. Finally it was  9:30pm when we reached foothills and another 15 more min to reach the cottage. We couldn't resist the cold that day so we ordered a room heater and slept warmly.

 Day-6

 -2 deg with rain fall and time is around 9. We got up but no point of freshening ourselves as we can't go out any where in the rain. It was raining till 12pm and we left for kulu around 1:30pm. Whether
was hitting us by its extreme cold and still we had to ride our bikes as it was last day for rent and on route we stopped by a castle  named "Naggar Castle" which was built by some King for his recreation
which is now made into a heritage hotel.

There is a beautiful panaromic view there
and you can see the river flowing. All the way we found a lot of small falls. We couldn't  make it to kulu since we were running out of time so we came back to Manali at 7pm and handed over our bikes. Just  had a walk in Mall Road and went back to cottage.

 Day -8
 Again it was just a replica of previous day. Rainy and minus degree  temperature actually feeling sad that again we can't go anywhere till  noon. But we were supposed to check out our cottage by 10 and leave to  kulu for river rafting. We did check out but couldn't go kulu as it  was raining continuously. We had no other option other than roaming Mall Road and enjoy the chilly weather for few more hours as the next day we would experience the extreme hot in Delhi. Yes, it's our last day in Manali. To miss that climate and the masala tea was like having a breakup with my girlfriend. It was horrible.

 Day-9

5:50am ISBT Kashmiri gate, Delhi. All the four Yawning, picked our luggages up. We were supposed to go to my friend Karthik s place, he stays in for upsc  coaching. We booked ola and reached his place. I will just brief up the day. Birla temple followed by Qutub minar , Red Fort , lotus  temple , Akshardham Temple and I really can't describe this as it was really hell for us to roam from one place to other in the hot sun. But Akshardham temple is a Must visit place and especially lightning show you are never supposed to miss it. You can ask anyone who has seen it.






 It was 11pm when we all finished and reached metro station from where Karthick picked us to show Delhi. Don't be wondered why I'm mentioning "show Delhi" though I have seen Delhi from morning. Guys, night is brighter than day . we all went to some Muslim street and had a tummy filling  dinner. Trust me people, the best food I have  ever eaten and we left to Connaught Place where Indian flag was dancing with the breeze. The entire night we spent there watching the flag taking pictures and roaming the street. Bengaluru is just a city but Delhi is one awesome city as I felt. One would never feel it's 2am or 3am ,you can find people roaming at that time too and in all the places ain't likeBengaluru. Still Bengaluru is best.

 Day -10

Last day of final trip :P

 It was 6am we left Karthick s flat took the bikes and left to Indian gate.
 India gate , a gateway for our day . Exact opposite to india  gate is Parliament House where u can look in the pictures and the path  from India gate to parliament is called as RAJ PATH
 where you can see  people march along during republic day and it is 2.5kms stretch. We walked along and went to parliament. Buildings over there made or  mouth to constantly utter "wow". We couldn't walk back :P so came back to india gate in autos. What's  next ? Come on guys Delhi is definition of shopping. Palika bazar an  underground bazar having 1000s of shops of every kind. Followed by  KArol bagh market an one more place to buy stuff only in terms of hundreds, no thousands at all. Such cheap goods . We all four shopped many things for everyone and finally it was time to bid a bye to Delhi as well as my close friend Karthick. We had a flight to  Bengaluru at 8:30. So departed from his place around 6 and reached NAMMA Bengaluru by 11:00pm, Whatever guys i just can't take away my eyes from Manali. Never miss to visit Manali and ride a bike to Rohtang pass in snow fall. Only one  in 100 do this thing. So I bet one can't do this -> -4deg , bike ride , April month , Gulaba en route to Rohtang pass

Special thanks to Karthick for his hospitality.
Haha let's put an end :)
Cya soon

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