Quick Information on Route, Total Time Taken To Reach Manali, What to do and What not to do and Spending one day in Manali for those who are in hurry plus who want it in short/to-the-point
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| Distant mountain as seen from our Hotel Room at Manali |
Route :-
The route suggested by the Google Map is the nice one . Its Delhi --> Karnal --> Ambala -->Kharar -->RupNamgar -->Ghanauli --> Bharatgarh -->Swarghat --> Naini -->sadar -->Bilaspur -->Sundernagar --> Ner Chowk --> Mandi -->khaliar --> Bajura --> Bhunter -->Kullu --> Shinir -->Jagatsukh -->Manali
Time Taken :-
It took around 9-10 Hrs with Innova. We took rest at few places like Mandi etc. too. All together I feel that its less than overnight journey. If you leave early in the evening like 8:00 PM or so, By 6:00 Am you should be in Manali.
Do's / Don't :-
Please make sure that you full your tank from some reliable place in Delhi itself to have peace of mind.
Have very light lunch and dinner on the day of journey plus keep it as less spicy as possible.
No need to take lot of water bottles from Delhi itself. Take it from Manali(Take at least 6-10 liters of water for each member before leaving for leh from Manali. Its not that you will not get water along the way but its just that those water bottles will cost you double. Mark my words, sufficient water intake is a must for a trip to Leh )
You may want to take lot of dry items from Delhi or Manali like chips, Kurkure etc. MAKE SURE TO KEEP SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF high energy CHOCOLATES like 5 star or crunch. I will suggest to keep 10 chocolates for each of the member. Some time these instant energies are all you need to stay good in the hostile chilling weather at more than 10000 feet above sea level.
Search for good hotel in Manali and don't get settled with what you get at first. There are lot of good hotels where if you negotiate well then you may get a room for 6 people even in only 3000/- per day
Don't have food in costly restaurants, Instead look out for local small dhabas.
Leave early for Leh...around 4:30 AM sharp to avoid crowd at Rohtang Pass.
What to do in Manali :-
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| The first view from our window |
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| 'Zoom in' view of the Mountain |
If, like us, You have only one day stay at Manali, Then allow the Driver to have sufficient sleep as he has to drive on one of the most dangerous road ahead. Have fun and beer at River bank or a long walk in the market or you may also go to Rohtang for an hour(This can be avoided as anyway you will go there while going to Leh) or you may try river rafting.
SHORT / TO-THE-POINT INFORMATION ENDS HERE....
As decided, we all have to meet at Delhi first. Three of our friends were in Delhi itself and only two of us has to come to the city. By the way, Five of us were me(Dhiraj), Shailesh, Dinesh, Kaushal and Sudhanshu(Kunwar).
31st of May 2012 Thursday (Still, trip has not started...)
It was around 11:00 PM when I reached Delhi. The first Sentence I uttered after coming out of the flight was "Shit...Have I landed in a burning furnace!!! :( ". It was so unexpectedly( for people like me who are coming from Bangalore ;) ) hot out there that I was just hoping that I don't collapse of this sudden heat. Somehow, I came out of the Airport and went to Gurgaon for food and booze...(Well, Its well known fact that In Delhi, if its mid night and you need some good plus less costly food and booze then only place you can think of is called GURGAON) . I was not that thirsty but was not at all in mood of giving up the pleasure of having 2 chilled beer in that hostile weather!!! Thanks to Rakesh for filling up my tanker with nice Delhi food...We went to Bed at around 1:00 am.
1st Of June 2012 Friday Day Time(Trip is yet to start...But at last, I got my degree from the College!)
Me and Kunwar stayed at Kaushal's flat last night. Though Kaushal left for office early in the morning(around 9:00 am :P) , Me and Kunwar woke up around 11:00AM. As we had to go to our beloved College (Ramjas College) for our hard earned degree which we were expected to receive 6-7 years back. See, I must confess that we are very positive guys who believe in old saying of "Its better to be late than never" or in our case it should be "We are always as late as never". Thanks to God, I got my degree and for Kunwar, we got the information that College has sent back his degree to University thinking that he is absconding! ;) :P
During the day, we were also fortunate to meet our friend at Hostel, Puran and our respected teachers Rahul sir and Panda sir. We had a good time chatting with our teachers and afterwards went for a nice lunch at Momo's Point. At the restaurant, We were joined by an old and very dear friend of us, Kunal and to our surprise, Momo's point had people waiting out side. we had to wait for half an hour before enjoying the fabulous, very spicy and a bit 'more than enough' meal...It was around evening and we rushed back to Kaushal's place as our bags were there only.
1st Of June 2012 Friday Night (10-11 PM Trip and Fun Begins...)
Had Mutton in Dinner at Shailesh's flat....Bought 24 cans of Beer... 3 bottles of Rum...put our bags in the Innova...had 2 beer...took 4 bottles of Water...all in sleepers and shorts...Zoooommmmm....cruising out of Shalimar Bagh towards the Chandigarh Highway!!!
Zooooommmmm Zoooooommmmm......Shhhhh.....Shhhhhhhhhiiiiittttttttttt....Shittttttttttttttt....within 5 minutes we started missing A/C!!! Actually, Driver has conveyed today only that he could not able to repair the A/C ...Ohhhhh God, we were so pissed off and sweaty... We tried consoling each other saying that at least Leh will not be this much hot....Little we knew that road to Leh will make us freeze!!!
We got our Fuel Tank full on the way to Chandigarh...Kunwar was sitting in front which was rightfully my seat as I have got long legs but I did not mind as I was feeling too sleepy at that time and as you all know co driver can not sleep! ;)
For rest of the journey which we did that night, I was mostly sleeping except for one of the Dhaba where we stopped at around 2:00-3:00 AM....
The Dhaba and Spicy lunch which me and Kunwar had in the afternoon
In night, when we stopped at a Dhaba, I felt like going for "number two". Thankfully, Dhaba has got nice hygienic toilets. After freshening up I was sitting outside having sip of my tea and saw Kunwar coming from the Toilets. He looked half relieved....I looked at him and laughed. He gave me surprising look. I just asked How was it inside? Felt the effect of spicy lunch we had today...and then he started "Ohhh Shit, That was the reason....and I thought why its burning!!! Did you felt too"....and in reply I shared my similar painful experience.... This incident made whole group fall into a fit of hysterical laughter (What an irony, painful experience of the two made everyone else happy...."Kya karoge Bhai, Yahi duniya hai!!!") :( .
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| Resting in the hotel room |
2nd Of June 2012 (Reached Manali and The Fun at River)
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| Me and Shailesh near the Dam |
We reached to one of the Dam where our vehicle stopped so as to allow us to straighten up and stretch our body. It was a nice small dam, Not as big as Tenughat dam in Jharkhand or any such dam found in Plains. Our knowledge Guru Sri Sri Sri Sri Kaushal ji Mahraj, let us know that Dams in mountains are like this only as its hard to get very wide area to store lot of water plus being inclined, we actually don't need to have lot of water reserved and so on... As usual we nodded our head in affirmation! We clicked few pics there and marched ahead towards Manali. Very soon, we were in Manali...It was around 10:00-11:00 AM.
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| Our Hotel Room |
Seriously speaking, Manali in itself is not that great....its like all other famous, fully commercialized hill stations....crowded, cluttered with all sort of commercial buildings like hotels, shops etc.etc....But its fine, I had my peace of mind by thinking that we are not here to visit this place but its just in our way to leh... so just chill and let us find a cheap and descent hotel to crash as all are very very tired, especially our driver Kamal! After few roaming around and negotiations, we finalized one awesome hotel room for around 3000 for one day(Till tomorrow morning). The room was huge and was good for 6 people with two huge beds. Best part of room was that it has the best possible view and was on the main road.(See pics...) . We were on the top most floor and the first thing which we see from our window is the river...Distant mountain on the other side of the window had white tip as if some one from sky has dropped some huge vanilla ice cream on it.
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| Kuwar, trying to catch some sleep |
Within few hours, all of us forgotten about our tiredness, except for Kunwar(Who crashed on the bed as dead meat. Reason :- In order to seat in front at co driver seat, my dear friend has sacrificed all his night sleep :P ). Shailesh and Dinesh suddenly shouted "Should we have bath in the river"...Kaushal looked at me in full surprise as we all knew that water will be very cold. I thought that I will have bath too as last time in Auli, we managed to have fun in water though that was quite chilling too. We took towel and came out of the hotel, locking Kunwar with his beauty sleep...
Fun At Beas(Vipasa or Vyas) River bank in Manali
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All of us were enthusiastic and were enjoying every bit of the view at river. Shailesh was first to reach the river. He touched the water with his leg to feel the coldness of the water and not to Kaushal's surprise(As he was the one who always insisted that water will be freezing cold), Shailesh pulled back his leg within few micro seconds. We all started smiling, But as we all are bounded by our non sense human nature, we all tried one by one to see that Is really the water is that cold? As expected, we all had same expression.....Oooopss, why did we even touched it, the part of leg which came in contact with water has became whitish, showing fall in temperature drastically at that part of leg!
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| Chilling our beer! |
But As I mentioned, we are bunch of very positive guys. It once again took only few micro seconds and all of us came up with a revolutionary, though tried by many, Idea. Lets bring Beer and chill it in this water!!! While we were still thinking, Kaushal brought 4 Beers and we put those in water with the help of few stones as we did not wanted our beer to be lost in the fast flowing currents of the river. By the time our beer was getting chilled, we did some quick photo session and sat ideal watching the mountains. After some time we took out our beer from our "Natural Freeze" and enjoyed it there only, sitting on the big rocks. We made sure that we bring the empty cans back to the room as we did not want to litter around.
We came back by evening and discussed about tomorrow's plan. We decided to start as early as 4:30 am so as to avoid any rush or Jam at Rohtang Pass and reach Leh by 8:00 or 9:00 PM. We had our light dinner at local dhaba which served awesome food plus it was not at all costly. By 10:00 we were back at room but went to bed around 11:00-11:40 PM...Thanks to the lazy service of the room attendant who took 1 hour in bringing our bill!!!
3rd of June 4:30 AM Manali
Never mind...We woke up at 4:00AM and thanks god....we hit the road sharp at 4:30 am.....All
were thinking that now its incredible Leh....Little we knew that dangerous Pang is waiting for us!!! :(
