Manali

Day 27 – Jispa to Manali – 20 Sep 2018

The drive from Jispa to Manali via Rohtang pass was expected to be a shorter one compared to the previous ones. However, the ascend to Rohtang was a real deal breaker. The NH was closed and vehicles started taking a short cut to reach the top which was a very steep climb. I did scratch the underbody of my car couple of times trying to pull off a slope at a very bad road. And that was the fifth time the underbody was scratching the ground in last two days. But none of them turned out to be bad and those were all just the underbody protection rubbing the ground. 

Once we got through the slushy bad patches of roads and reached the top, things changed all of a sudden. The other side of the pass was a complete change for our eyes – the barren landscape switched in a moment to lush greenery!  Ever since we crossed Zoji La pass in Kargil, sighting anything other than brown shades was so rare, and we could suddenly realise the relaxation green mountains bring to our eyes.  And the sight from top of Rohtang pass, just WOW!!!

Our previous visit to Rohtang was during the start of winter, and we were expecting a snow filled landscape this time as well to revive our old memories. We had even told our daughter that she might get a chance to build a proper snowman here! But to our surprise it was greenery all around, with lovely herds of sheep grazing everywhere!

Coming down from Rohtang was very easy. It was pretty crowded at Rohtang and also during the journey down the pass. Colourful parachutes floating all around, gurgling sounds of Beas river and the chirping birds made the atmosphere so lovely! Nature was calling, and we did feel like para-gliding or stopping to click pictures, but we decided to head fast to our stay and relax, because it is really time to revamp and reward ourselves with a rest day! We had our lunch at one of the restaurants on the way to Manali from Rohtang, because we felt we had our food at the same place in our previous visit. We were all the time trying to relate everything we see with what we had seen before at this place. Indeed, it brings a real joy to make a revisit to a place which holds special place in memories!

We reached our hotel in Manali by 4pm.  And thus, 4 days of some real adventure and lifetime memories come to an end. It is time for some new experiences. :). It has been 15 days since we entered the state of Jammu and Kashmir and what we feel now is a feeling of completeness. A feeling of wanting to be here again and again. A difficulty to digest the things we saw and experienced in these two weeks. Kashmir, is a real paradise on this earth!

For those who plan a trip to Ladakh, one major point I want to highlight is, Ladakh is not a weekend destination to be flying in for a long weekend and then returning back on a Sunday. If you are planning to enjoy this place, you really need proper time for yourself to settle down, proper travel time between destinations and also proper time to relax and enjoy things. Otherwise a trip to Ladakh would turn out to be such a disaster.

And those who want to travel with kids, I can confidently tell that there is nothing stopping you guys from doing this if you have planned yourself pretty well. You should have atleast one week, and the courage and confidence to face any situation and act accordingly. And to summarise on the altitude sickness, I am sure the experience is going to be different for each one of you traveling to Ladakh. For us, it did give tough times, we just chose the better option and did what would be right for us. Also, the key to our trip was, we didn’t rush anywhere. We took enough time to travel, stay and enjoy the places and got ourselves acclimatised. All the best for those who are going to take up a trip to the Himalayas. 🙂 

Day 28,29 – Manali – 21,22 Sep 2018

After Goa and Jaisalmer, this is our third stay where we are going to stay for three nights and I had a reason for choosing Manali as a long stay place.

1. Car service
2. Relaxation after continuous drives
3. Some time for our daughter to run around after few days.

The first day, first thing I did after waking up was to empty everything inside the car, including all luggage, and take it to the Maruti Suzuki service centre in Manali. The mechanic did a thorough check of oil levels, brakes, shock absorbers and most importantly the underbody. All looked just normal and good. And he added, “this is not how usually cars be when they come from Leh”. That guaranteed everything to be well and good and a green signal for our remaining journey to Nepal and then Bhutan. After that I took the car for a foam wash and interior cleaning. I had to wait in a long queue for the car wash. However, the wash and the cleaning was a much needed one. I reached back the hotel around 2 in the noon and then stayed in the hotel for the rest of the day playing with daughter.

We thought of going for sight seeing next day as we had one more day in Manali. Daughter was pretty happy, as we had one of the most spacious stays of our entire journey, and did not complain on not going out. Rather she seemed to be excited getting more time indoors than outdoors! We chose to eat mostly at the in-house restaurant, because we just wanted to be wrapped in the blankets and watching tv most of the times, without doing anything specific! And more importantly we were able to breathe easily,  and roam around without too much of additional layers of clothing, which looked to be the greatest of all blessings! We did spend time reviving old memories of the taxi drive from Shimla to Manali, spending time along the shores of Beas river, para-gliding at Rohtang, and a visit to the Hadimba Devi temple and a walk inside the nature park!

We got up the next day to see that it was raining heavily. It kept on raining the whole day without a stop. We heard from the hotel guys that it has been raining from night and it has also started snowing at Rohtang. There was no way we could go out. However we were relieved about our timing, if for another day, we could have been even stuck at Rohtang! In the night, we decided to go out for some shopping as we had  not got out of the room after reaching Manali. Since we had visited Manali before, there were already no elaborate plans to explore around, however a plan to para-glide if time permits, had to be dropped because of the rains. We had a quick drive around the city in the rain, and did not forget to peek at the hotel where we had stayed on our previous visit, we felt even more younger now! We did some shopping of woollen caps and shawls, and some souvenirs, however we couldn’t stay out for long because of the rain and cold. We returned to the hotel soon and then slept off as the next day we had to travel to Ambala. 

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