The Half-Big Trip

October 2008

Manali had always beckoned me, and with Aarti having been there thrice already, I felt that it was high time that I made the trip as well. It had been a strenuous year, with quite a lot of workload, forcing us to put off our plan for "The Big Trip" (Manali - Leh highway) till next summer. The idea was to simply drive up to Manali and spend our Diwali break there, relaxing and exploring the hill-station. However, wanderlust bitten as we are, we landed up driving up till Baralacha La! Had it not been for my business obligations, we might as well have gone up till Leh. The route that we ultimately took was Delhi - Chandigarh - Swarghat - Mandi - Aut - Kullu - Manali - Palchan - Rohtang - Koksar - Keylong - Jispa - Darcha - Baralacha La - Jispa - Keylong - Koskar - Rohtang - Manali - Solang - Manali - Naggar - Malana - Chandigarh - Delhi.

We started off from Delhi late in the evening after office and without any ho-hum reached Swarghat late in the night. The roads leading upto Swarghat are one of the better roads in Northern India. The next morning we took off for Manali and reached by mid-afternoon. The drive was surprisingly quite smooth, with the average speed on the higher side, enabling us to cover the distance in just under 6 hours.

Manali is quite the global village with hoards of visiting Israeli & European tourists. Thanks to them, it has some amazing cafes which serve delcious food - oy favourites being 'The German Bakery' and 'The Johnson's Lodge' on Circuit House road and Il Forno on the way to Hidimba Devi temple. Apparently, Manali is also known as the honeymoon capital of India, as is evident from the numerous newly married looking couples thronging the mall road! The iconic "Honeymoon Inn" across the Beas is of course their favourite place to stay! When we reached there, the next natural step was to search for a nice place where we could stay put for the next 7 days. This was not as easy as we'd thought it would be! None of the hotels seemed to please us - some were right on the Mall, some dirty, some too expensive! Finally, after a 4 hour search, we eventually ended by staying at Palchan, 10km away from Manali towards Rohtang, at the Whispering Rocks resort. The place was just what we had hoped for, a secluded place, with a nice view and clean rooms, and since it was a low tourist season, we managed to bargain for a massive 60% discount!

I would have to break now to mention more about the two most amazing places to eat in Manali - The Johnson's Lodge & Il forno. The former is well known for it's delicious Trouts while Il Forno's specialty is wood oven baked pizzas. here, on the cover of the menu, you will find a special sign, mentioning that they do not serve ketchup with Pizza. Apparently, the owner, an Italian lady, has spent years explaining to her customers that pizzas are not supposed to be eaten with ketchup. As they say, she is from Naples, and her pizzas are from heaven!

The next day was spent loitering about in Manali, beginning with the customary visit to the Hidimba Devi temple and lunch at Il forno. The high point of the day was the discovery of a small waterfall a km away from our hotel with it's own private beach! It was as if the scene was pulled off 'Cast Away', the movie. We regretted our decision not to bring our camping gear, for the place had excellent camping opportunities. The evening was spent at the hotel drawing up plans to go further towards Leh.

We wanted to catch sunrise at the mighty Rohtang and the only way to do that was to leave very early from our hotel at Palchan. We left the hotel at 4, for which we had to get up at 3, which basically meant that we did not sleep at all that night! After a really cold drive to the top, we reached just in the nick of time to watch what was truly an amazing sunrise. The windy pass was at its pristine best, primarily because there were no littering tourists around! The sight of the sun rising over the peaks towards the east was sufficient to instill warmth in our body and soul. After an hour or so, we decided to proceed towards Koksar, where one enters the Lahaul valley. The landscape becomes absolutely differnt beyond Rohtang. The greenery of the Kullu valley disappears, and is replaced by a brown, barren landscape. We were accompanied by the Chandra river till Tandi, which also has the last petrol pump on the Manali-Leh route. It is imperative to top up the tank at this juncture, lest one wishes to buy sub-standard black market fuel along the way. The confluence of the Chandra & Bhanga rivers at Tandi forms the mighty Chandrabhaga which flows through Udaipur and then towards Punjab and J&K, where it is renamed as we commonly know it, Chenab. The road towards Keylong was good in patches... it is very difficult to make any comment on roads in these areas. The climate forces the road to be tarred over and over again quite frequently, so the same road could be marvelous in May but un-drivable in September! The drive till Jispa was long and bone rattling, as the part of the road was yet to be tarred. We were exhausted on arrival and received quite a shock when we got to know that the only decent hotel at Jispa, Hotel Ibex, was closed for the winter! We were quite disheartened to hear that, however luck was with us as there was another little known guest house, newly constructed, whose owner was kind enough to let us stay. We had reached there at lunch time, and the simple daal, subzi & rice to us seemed heavenly. The late afternoon was spent sleeping & relaxing, a slight drizzle started towards evening which forced us to stay indoors. We packed off early that night, after a light, simple & delicious dinner.

We left for Baralacha La the next morning at 8, looking for Deepak tal all along the way. It is quite strange that this picturesque lake is not marked on the major maps, and since you hardly meet people on the way, it's difficult to know the exact location of the lake. However, as it eventually turned out, it was adjacent to the road and impossible to miss. The scenery here turns from barren to desolate. The next major town is directly Leh, with plenty of army camps strewn in between, which at this time of the year also bore a desolate look. The ascent to Baralacha La starts at Zingzing bar. One can actually see the pass as it criss-crosses to climb up a single mountain, and it takes roughly an hour to cover this stretch. It is here that you actually realize the pains that the Border Roads Organization (BRO) take to build and maintain such roads. The feeling of patriotism comes deep from within and gives a high headed feeling. The mountains cuddle the road and you are one with them here. Thankfully, the road had just been paved at most of the places, thus the climb was not as strenuous as the drive from Koksar to Tandi. As we reached the top, we found the Suraj Tal, which we had eargerly been waiting to see, completely frozen over. As expected, the pass was completely empty, and devoid of even a single living soul. It is here that we decided to finally turn back. A part of us wanted to go on, the Morey Plains, the Tanglang La, the Gata Loops, all beckoning to us, but we knew that it was too big a risk to take at this time of the year. We did know in our hearts that this was just the first of the many times in our lives that we would be standing at Baralacha La!

The drive back to Koksar was uneventful, but the feeling of having covered our dream route at least half way was amazing. We both could not stop smiling for a long long time that day. The night was spent at the only available accommodation at Koksar, a PWD guest house, with Aarti reminiscing of the last time she spent a night at Koksar with her parents, 15 years ago!

After a hearty breakfast of paranthas, we hit the road again back to Manali. The sorry state of affairs at the Rohtang pass during mid-morning is very sad. Trampling tourists, frolicking and littering garbage around the place makes one feel bad for a place with such pristine beauty.

We decided to spend the rest of our days on the trip at "The Johnson's Lodge". This way the delicious trouts would be at a stone's throw distance away from our room! Early afternoon saw us checking into our room, which was luxurious but obviously bang in the middle of Manali. That evening was spent at a quiet waterfall near Vashishtha, an old temple village near Manali. At night, we took a walk downtown Manali to check out the dishes at more restaurants, and what a waste that was! More than money, we had wasted our appetites eating at some random joint, when we could've had a delicious dinner at Johnson's Lodge.

The next day, we planned to drive up till Solang valley, however the crowd there egged us to move a little ahead from there towards Dhundi, on foot. We had taken our "little master", plus had packed lunch from the hotel. A km or so down the road, we took a detour to the river and picnicked for a couple of hours. Later we returned back to Manali to spend our last night there.

We packed our bags early, to leave for Naggar the next day. After a short trip to the Roerich Museum, we moved further down to Bhuntar, from where we took the road further east towards Manikaran. It was supposed to be a short detour, but the road kept on getting more beautiful and so we kept on going. On reaching ahead, we got to know from the locals that there's an operational road almost up till Malana now. For the uninitiated, Malana is a popular village where till some years back, high quality marijuana was grown. This was supplied to Manali as well as exported all the way to Amsterdam! Obviously, since all the activities were illegal, it bode well for the place as it was quite a long hike till there. We took the detour and went close as we could to Malana. Having chai at the base of the 2km trek to Malana that remained, a local came up to us and asked, "you here for some shopping?". The gleam in his eyes made it ample clear what he was referring to - and we politely declined. We then started our drive back, reserving Malana for some other trip. The rest of the evening was taken to reach Bilaspur where we rested for the night.

The next day was going to be a long drive back to Delhi. However, as picked up Varun, a close friend, from Chandigarh on our way back, the drive was fun all the way!