Manali Trip

Manali Trip

My friend Nidhi called me up for lunch at her home. As i reached (Kasauli just 3 km away from my home)she started to complain - "we have ruined our holidays only 3 days left. Why is our life so boring ? We are procrastinators... we should have gone to Dharamshala with Rahul (her cousin) atleast .

I suggested her to call him up as he told a day earlier that he was at Chandigarh... so there was a possibility that we could catch up at Chandigarh and travel along with him. He works at Dharamshala so we thought it would be easy for us to stay at his place as we had a low budget for travelling that time.

But unfortunately he was already off to D'shala. So we got pissed off . "He could have atleast informed us " -Nidhi said in low tone.

An idea sparked in my mind. I asked what if we pack our bag and leave for D'shala right now? She was amused by this idea and said "ask my mother she will not allow us".

Now the problem was to get our parents' permission. A hard task to convince them. It was already 2 pm.They were like "look at the clock it's 2 pm and it almost takes 8 hours by bus to reach D'shala. By what time you will reach Chandigarh and hence D'shala ? It's not easy. You will probably get a bus by 8-9 pm from Chd. & night journey??? Dismiss this idea". But somehow we got successful in convincing them. Although they were not happy at all.

Next problem was of vehicle. We had no personal vehicle...so the idea was to travel by bus only. & every traveller know that waiting for bus is a time consuming task. Much patience is required. So we rushed for kasauli bus stand and reached there by 3 pm (approx) . We took a bus to Kalka & probably reached there at 5pm . It took a lot of time to Kalka from Kasauli because of bad road condition. There Nidhi called our one more friend Shushant. He also joined us for the journey.

At kalka we talked about our plan. Shushant said what if we go to Manali instead of D'shala. Since we had a low budget so we could stay at our friend's restaurant. We were confused now about which place to go. So we decided to reach Chd. atleast and then depending upon the timings of buses to both the destination we decided to choose the one whose bus will go first.

We took a taxi from Kalka & reached Chd in 45 minutes. There we inquired about timings of the buses and the timing of bus to Manali was 6:30 pm. So we paid for the tickets at counter and got our bus. Three of us were very happy. Took a nice seat and it was such an awesome feeling that finally we are out of our home. A little bit guilty also because we lied to our parents that we are going to D'shala but were off to Manali. A little fear that if something happens to us then we all will never be able to bulid that trust again.

But never the less we were delighted and happy. Finally bus started and so our journey. Although we couldn't enjoy the view as it was a night journey. Resting our head upon each others shoulders , talking like crazy...that moment was beautiful. We didn't feel uncomfortable on the uncomfortable seat of bus even for a while. We were so excited for this trip.

We travelled through 3 districts i.e. Bilaspur, Mandi & kullu. As we entered Kullu district we could feel the cold weather. Then Shushant called up Sandy (friend whose restaurnt is in Manali) and told him to pick us up at Manali bus stand.

We reached Manali by 3 am. Chilled weather , we were literally shrivering. We were supposed to call Sandy one more time. & there we go.... my phone's battery was nil so as Nidhi's. Then Shushant tried but no network coverage.

We were looking at people's faces. There were about 7-8 people who got off at Manali stop. Then we had left no other option than to convince someone to lend us their phone for making a call. An awkward task...but we made it... Nidhi asked one of the two girls who also seemed to be travellers from some other state.

So we waited for a while for Sandy... he arrived within 30 minutes (a sigh of relief) and took us to his restaurant in his car.

We all were too tired so just freshened up in our room and relaxed on cozy bed and talked whole night. Out of joy, we could'nt sleep that night. But forced ourselves to sleep at 4 am since we had to explore Manali on next day without wasting a single minute.

(So that's how we reached Manali instead of D'shala)