Manali Travel experience

A road trip ranging of 2600km to Manali was one of its kind. Being at Bangalore for the past 10 yrs husband and I had been to various hill stations like Ooty, Kodaikanal,Coorg,Wayanad which were full of greenery, tea coffee estates, pine trees with creepers of various spices but Manali was an entire different experience all together. The snow clad Himalayan ranges were mesmerizing. India is indeed a land of diversites which can be seen in its food, culture, people, religious beliefs to name a few.

  

The trip started from Lucknow on 23rd Jan 2018 with a bunch of adventurous people on the Lucknow Agra expressway.Our four wheeler friends were Creta and i20 who made our journey a comfortable one. As we touched Agra the weather became cloudy and Delhi welcomed us with heavy showers. We drove out of Delhi after a 2 hours of struggle through heavy traffic and literally entered the land of dhabas. There were numerous dhabas with elaborate lighting advertising their boards to lure customers to drop in. We had already decided to stop at one of the famous dhabas named Amrit Sukhdev but seeing the overcrowded parking we planned to move on. Finally we had our lunch at Haveli Dhaba which is another chain with authentic Punjabi food and decor. Day1 of our trip through Panipat-Karnal-Ambala culminated with night halt at Hotel Sapphire in Chandigarh.

 We started our Day 2 around 10 am from Chandigarh to cover a stretch of 300km to Manali.

The mountainous trail started around  some 100km. The journey took us through Bilaspur-Sundernagar-Mandi-Pandoh and finally we reached Manali around 7:30pm and headed to Snow Valley resort.We had in between taken a short maggi lunch break to get a feel of pahadonwali maggi. Our first photo session with the snow clad mountains at the distant backdrop was at Pandoh. A secluded boat on the calm Beas river reflecting the beautiful hue of the sky above was a picturesque view.

Day3 was reserved for Manali darshan. After a heavy buffet breakfast we headed to Vashisht kund
named after Rishi Vashisht one of the seven sages of Hindu. The temple had beautiful intricate wood carvings and is famous for hot water spring which is believed to have medicinal values. Next on our list was Solang Valley.  Though we were disappointed a bit in this trip for not being able to witness snow fall live but we however enjoyed the snow activities like yak and horse ride, tube sliding at Solang. We had picked up dresses and boots on rent on the way to prevent our dresses from getting wet. All of us played with snow and by evening our legs were literally motionless because of it. My 4 year old daughter was the one who enjoyed the most playing with snow. By 6pm as we were about to return from the valley exhausted there was a faint drizzle of snow for few minutes. After a short rest at the resort we went for shopping at Mall road followed by dinner at Sher-e-Punjab. If shawl is on the shopping list from Manali then definitely Bhuttico is the place which is a cooperative shop and has authentic Pashmina, Kulluvi, Angora shawls and other stuffs.

 

  

 

Day 4 we had planned to visit Manikaran which is situated at a distance of around 45 km from Kullu, the scenic hot springs lay in Parvati Valley. It is a pilgrimage center or Hindus as well as Sikhs. We had lunch at gurudwara's langar. The temperature of water at the hot spring is 88-94 deg and hence is used to prepare tea and cook rice kept in pots submerged in the water for langar purpose. Since it was 26th Jan and because of the long weekend Manali had already been crowded and we were lucky enough to have planned the trip in the mid week.

 On 27th morning we packed our bags to say goodbye to Manali hoping for another trip to experience the snow fall which we missed this time. Before exiting we did visit Hidimba Devi temple which was very near to our resort. The temple is surrounded by a cedar forest and has tapering structure.

 On the return journey also we halted at Chandigarh before heading to Lucknow the next morning on 28th Jan.