Day 17 – Srinagar to Sonamarg – 10 Sep 2018
It is time to bid good bye to the serene greenery of the Heaven on Earth, and embrace some real Himalayan adventures now! We were so excited to start our ascend towards the dream destination of every traveller – Ladakh! A road trip to Ladakh is definitely a stuff of dreams, especially when you are driving your own car with your family! The landscape you are going to experience when you are on a road trip on this side of the country is something you might not see anywhere else on the globe. Snow capped to barren mountains, high altitude passes to cold deserts – Ladakh has it all! This part of the trip was my nightmare out of all. I have done enough research before deciding to include Leh in the route map and now it is the time to see how it goes.
- TOTAL KMS: 55 Kms
- TIME TAKEN: 1 hour 32 mins
- AVG FUEL EFFICIENCY: 18.1 Km/L
- ROUTE: Kullan
- NHs: NH1
- TOLL PAID: Nil
- HOTEL STAYED: Hotel The Villa Himalaya
I had decided to do the ascend to Leh in 3 days with night halts at Sonamarg, Kargil and then Leh. On top of several other things, now we had one more thought worrying us, the punctured tyre.
We spent some time cycling around the gardens of our stay in Srinagar in the early morning, and then had a very good breakfast at the same place. As we were about to leave, we could even stock some apples from the orchards. I did some test drives on some bad roads around Srinagar to see if the previous day puncture fixing is fine and also to see if there are other problems with the car.
We had a quick view of Srinagar’s Hazratbal Shrine from outside, and then had a delicious lunch of Kashmiri Kebabs and finally set off to Sonamarg. I did drive a little harsh on bad roads to make sure the car is doing good and the tyres are good enough for tough times that are yet to come. Even if I had a thought of changing the tyres of the car in Srinagar, I dropped the plan at the last moment and decided to take a risk. I was not ready to replace my Michelins for something lower. There are a lot of tyre shops and petrol pumps before Sonamarg in case you want to get a check before you start the ascend. All tyre checks and petrol fillings should be done before Sonamarg.
The drive to Sonamarg was very easy and we reached there in less than 2 hours. Our stay Hotel The Villa Himalaya was a small boutique hotel on the banks of the Sindh River, and hotel staff gave us a really warm welcome.
We were awestruck to open our hotel windows directly to the fierce flowing Sindh river with some sweeping mountain views in the background. Sonamarg was really a “meadow of gold”!
The evening cup of coffee in the balcony of the room had a divine feeling with the golden hue of sunset reflecting on the snow clad mountains and the river! There were steps from hotel’s garden to the river, and we winded down to the river banks and spent some time hanging our legs in the ice-cold water.
As we were relaxing in the lawn afterwards, we were delighted to see the hotel staff playing cricket in the backyard! It was a perfect setting for cricket reminding of our childhood days and me and Insha joined them for a fun filled sport time! There were times where the ball went missing in the bushes of the meadows, and we were all eagerly searching for it, and once it was even taken away by the ripples of the river on a high sixer! The folks did not give up and rushed along the river banks to follow the ball, and finally caught it at some easy spot and we continued the game till late evening!
It was really very nice to experience a relaxed mountain lifestyle, as the hotel staff really made us feel at home! To add to the ambience, a beautiful and clear arc of rainbow adorned the blue sky above the playground!
We had our dinner at the hotel itself, and quickly dove into a deep sleep because of the tiring cricket workout!
Roads N Dreams 