3. A road trip to Himachal

If one is planning a road trip it is important to have like minded friends with you (you don’t want to squabble over what music to play and whether to have the AC on!). We are lucky enough to have two such friends in Maggie and Dennis, with whom we have at least one annual road trip to some exotic part of India or the other. The other important thing is to enjoy spending time seeing spots one is really interested in rather than going around like tourists on conducted tours. We are lucky in this respect too – we have all the time, being retired and have seen enough of the world to know that enjoying the ‘moment’ and the ‘little things’ is what matters. With that background I will take you on a slow paced trip from Gurgaon, Haryana via Chandigarh to Manali,  Jia, Dharamshala and Shimla, then back to Gurgaon.

Gurgaon - 
We made the effort to start really early from Gurgaon, to beat the traffic by finishing our packing at night itself. Dennis had restricted us to one bag per family and a couple of back packs for foodstuff etc to comfortably fit into the Palio dickey. At 6.30 am we finally drove after checking that we had our respective cameras, a good selection of music and our customary 3 packs of playing cards with us. Yahoo! I always feel such a rush at the start of a journey, in anticipation of the fun ahead.

Chandigarh -  
We comfortably reached Chandigarh at 12.45 pm, even after a leisurely breakfast of ‘alloo parathas’ at a roadside ‘dhaba’. We met up with friends and loitered around in sector 17 (the upscale market centre of Chandigarh) that evening. Next day we drove around Chandigarh revisiting spots we had seen many years ago. Sukhna Lake which I had seen way back in 1985 was a changed place. The old Peepul tree and these trees with pink blossoms stole my heart. 

At Sukhna Lake, Chandigarh

The Rock Garden, even after Mr Nek Chand, its creator, has passed away is growing and looks as good.

Rock Garden, Chandigarh

 

We also saw the Art Gallery and Dinosaur Gallery which has some interesting old maps and photographs of LeCorbusier's Chandigarh,  and embroidered birds and dinosaurs.

 

On the way - 
Early next day, by 6.30 am, we were off to Manali.
It was a hot day, being the month of May, so made ‘cooler’ halts at places like Roopnagar, Bilaspur and Sundernagar to have some cold drinks and water melons. After Mandi we crossed a small place identified by a temple called Hanogi Mata Mandir. It had a picturesque suspension bridge going over the river on which Dennis and Maggie had stood some 25 years ago and taken a snap. So we took another one to compare. They've done pretty good I'd say!

Before

After

Hereafter we crossed a 3 km long tunnel near Aut which cut off several kms from our trip. We reached Kullu in the afternoon, the long winding road running parallel to the Beas river. We passed several river rafting joints advertising their adventure sports and I promised myself to try that. Shortly, we started the climb up for Manali. Reached Manali by 4.30pm.

Manali -
Manali has become a crowded city. In the following days we explored the town and visited all these places mostly at trekable distances in or around the city.

Nature Park, Manali

                                                          

Nature Park, Manali

Vashishth Temple made of wood

One could hug this Angora for 10 rupees; being killed with love.

                               

I'm sure these yaks never aspired to be models. One pays to photograph them

The pagoda style 500 yr old Hadimba temple made of wood

The Beas flowing through Manali

                        

I kept my promise to myself and practically coerced everybody, especially Maggie, who is scared to go into flowing water, to go river rafting. It was the most exhilarating experience I’ve had in a long time.The fifth guy was a biker travelling to Leh on his bike all the way from Mumbai. Some people live life interestingly!!

What a thrilling experience!

Girish, our cute raft steerer who kept saying "row hardly" to make us use the paddles faster.

A wonderful thing happened to me in Manali– I saw the Paradise Flycatcher for the first time from our Guest House window. 

On the third day we took a trip to Rohtang Pass, (Rohtang means a ground of corpses! I guess because so many people would die trying to cross the difficult pass) but on a hired cab and hired some snow suits and boots, both of which were very wise decisions because we found a massive traffic jam on the mountain top and had to walk the last leg in the slush. Here we are looking like astronauts gone awry.

Maggie and I took a ride in an inflated tube on the slope. Too short by far but fun nonetheless. Don’t forget to check the video.

                        

Visited the Roerich House, in Naagar, where the famous painter Roerich and Devikarani lived. It is on a hill top with an amazing view, because Roerich had such a fascination for the mountains. We had to take sharp hairpin bends to reach the place. It is now a museum and no photography was permitted so I took a couple of reprints of his paintings of the peaks he saw from his window.

Shambhala

Dungra Yumto

 
While at Manali we bought a crate of apple juice and found out what pure apple juice tastes like - it was more than my stomach used to refined food could tolerate. We also collected some interesting fruit wines for back home. The only bottle we discovered in our cellar of these special products of Himachal is posted below. Now we can finish this one too!

Jia -
After fun filled 6 days in Manali we drove to the second part of our trip ie. Dharamshala. But instead of staying in the city we stayed in this small but truly beautiful place called Jia, to do some bird watching. You can check out about the beautiful birds I saw in an exclusive post, also about a baby mongoose I found here.

                                  

The snow clad Dhauladhar which is the backdrop to the lovely guest house below

The inevitable card sessions

Breathtaking sight!

Dharamshala -

From Jia we took day trips to Dharamshala made famous by none other than the Dalai Lama. He was not in town of course but we spent a nice couple of hours in the monastery in Mcleodganj, hearing the monks' chants (check video below). We also made a special trip to the Norbulinka Institute for the Tibetan refugee community. There we saw the Tibetan arts and artefacts like Thangka  paintings and appliqués, statues, dolls etc. being made. Painting thangkas is like meditating on the Buddha and conveys the same spiritual energy to the beholder. I bought a cute stuffed yak from there. Also bought some of the famous Kangra tea from a store outside.

The monks in prayer

 

Hear the chants

Appliques

Rajeev and Dennis praying for a safe trip

Tasting Tibetan food

Martyr's memorial

Don't miss the bundles he carries

There is the Church of Saint John in the Wilderness built in 1852 which we found quite fascinating. It has the grave of James Bruce, The Earl of Elgin in its premises.

  

Anandpur Sahib
From Jia we returned directly to Chandigarh.
On the way back we stopped to visit Anandpur Sahib, the majestic and serene gurudwara founded by Guru Tegh Bahadur in 1665, in  Rupnagar district.

Anandpur Sahib

However, after coming all the way we could not go back without visiting Shimla, so after a day's halt at Chandigarh we again started for Shimla the next morning.

Pinjore Garden -
Halted at the Pinjore Gardens for breakfast. You can see we were there around  9.45 am in the Anti Clock  displayed here. Some of us had ‘puri bhaaji’ at this restaurant with a bright roof.

Pinjore

 Shimla -

In Shimla, the Summer Capital of British India we took local tours to see some far off places, like Kufri, Naldehra and Fagu but mostly walked around and enjoyed the old world charm of the place. Below are pictures taken on The Ridge. The Christ Church, built in the Neo Gothic style in 1857, is the second oldest church of North India.

Christ Church

The Ridge

Viceregal Lodge, today's Indian Institute of Advanced Study

The old wooden skating rink has survived

Naldehra Golf course

An interesting anecdote

Fagu

The Way Back -

We stopped at this interesting eating joint enroute to Chandigarh

Guess which ones are the mannequins

Nothing like home after such a long trip

     This is the route we took for Chandigarh-Manali-Jia-Chandigarh 
                                                                                                 

Chandigarh to Manali 

Entire trip we were on NH 21; this highway goes right across the Bara Lacha Pass (4853 mts)  in Lahaul & Spiti district of HP and into Jammu & Kashmir.

Chandigarh--  25km--  Kharar—32km --Ropar or Rup Nagar—29km-- Kiratpur Sahib (till here we were in Punjab) –18km–Swarghat (HP) –32km--Nauni—8—Bilaspur—11km—Ghagas (turned right after crossing the bridge over  the beas)—14km—Barwana—19—Sundernagar (had watermelons)--25 km—Mandi  (turned right , left goes to Palampur)—19—Pandoh (passed the pandoh dam, very picturesque)—21—Aut (in between is the Baheshwar Mahadev temple) (the hanging or suspension bridge comes after this temple towards Kullu)—40km—Kullu—40--Manali

Manali to Jia, Palampur

Manali to Mandi same route.   Mandi—55km —Jogindernagar—37km (midway on the right is the turn to Billing for hang gliding; 25km from the highway)—(also towards Palampur, Baijnath falls on the way) –Palampur. (Mandi to Palampur –NH 20) NH 20 goes up to Pathankot in Punjab.

Palampur to Chandigarh 

Palampur—32km—Nagrota Bagwan—12km--Mataur—4km—Kangra—18km—Jwalamukhi Road—20km—Dera Gopipur—17km—Bharwain (turn right for Chintpurni  3km; we didn’t go )—13—Mubarakpur—4km—Amb—32km—Una—18km—Nangal—23km—Anandpur Sahib—10km—Kiratpur—29km—Ropar—32—Kharar—25km—Chandigarh