Visiting Kasauli?

If you do not know, Kasauli is a beautiful hill town situated in the district Solan of Himachal Pradesh. It is located at a very convenient distance from Chandigarh and it takes about one and a half hour to reach kasauli from Chandigarh. That is why this place sees many Punjabi tourists flooding the hill town during weekends. We happened to visit Kasauli during the long weekend in month of October. Though blogger space hosts a lot many posts about things to do in Kasauli and places to visit; we had not encountered any posts about red flags before planning our visit. So in this post I am rather sharing things one ought not to do in Kasauli.

1. Avoid stay at Kuthar :-
I had searched for a stay option on airbnb and tumbled on a 1 BHK kind of homestay in Kuthar village which is listed as 17 km from Kasauli. Now it was mostly my bad that I fell for the nice photography and the decent pricing. We had started our journey from Una and we took the diversion from Baddi towards Pata road to reach Kuthar. It was a very narrow, curvy road and we had started having slight premonitions. But we were convinced that the difficult journey would lead to a beautiful destination. But Ahan! When we reached the place, I felt utterly dismayed to see the stained floor and damp walls plus the location was nowhere close to scenic. We were hungry so we did have lunch. Lunch was good though. A home made meal with veggie, Rajmah, Rice and Chapati. We had already made up our mind to check out of the place and head to kasauli  and rather stay in Chandigarh after spending time in Kasauli. Although we had prepaid the tariff in full through airbnb; Me and husband decided to let go of the money and headed out after lunch.

So moral of the story is that if you are among the Ones Who Like To Strike a balance between comfort, budget and luxury; I would suggest you to not get duped by the price of Satyashram in kuthar hosted at airbnb. Beware!!

(Only good thing about the whole episode was that owner refunded us 40% of the tariff)

2. Avoid visit on long weekends :-
After lunch we headed out from Kuthar towards Kasauli. As we reached near Garkhal junction, traffic was bad. It must have taken us around two hours to cover a stretch of around 3 kms. I was actually wondering how the working locals must put through such ordeals of heavy traffic jam. But then I was told that during the week days, traffic is not that bad. It was a long weekend. So people were just pouring.

So moral of the story is that if you like to spend more quality time and avoid rush, its better to avoid visiting during long weekends.

3. Do not expect to see everything in a short time:-
Although, many people who visit Kasauli are happy staying in a good resort and strolling on the mall road; there are a few like me, however, who like to explore all the spots on their checklist. Christ Church, Monkey point, Gilbert trail and Sunset point are the few recommended spots you would find on every travel blog post. We however could not visit any of these. Given that we reached Kasauli in the late afternoon and we were to head to Chandigarh at night; and also because there was no choice to take any diversion but to go where insane traffic led us, we parked the car in the paid parking near mall road and decided to explore the mall road. It was as vibrant and bustling as any other mall road of a hill town.

We ate the much recommended bun samosa. It was nice and should be given a try I would say. We reached the trail end of the mall road and kept walking down the paved stairs. There was this point we reached where there was beautiful view of sunset, a small park with swings and a maggi wala vendor on one corner. It was a good spot to sit and spend some time. The day was a little foggy. So sun was playing hide and seek. We clicked pictures and sat for sometime. This spot was meditation point. I googled about sunset point and found it was very far. But I was happy with our discovery of meditation point also. Christ church was also far. But on our way back from meditation point, we discovered Baptist church. It was closed but we clicked some good pictures. Then on the way back, we had uttapam at a shop whose name i don't remember. Heading further back, we bumped into old town cafe and ate choclate brownie with ice cream there. It was heavenly. I would recommend everyone to hault  at this cafe.

So moral of the story is that try to have at least one full day to explore around since most of the scenic spots require walking and are advised to be visited before sunset.

4. Avoid wearing uncomfortable shoe wear:-
Last but not the least, wear comfortable footwear. Whether be it a stroll on the mall road or the nature walk, Kasauli will need you to walk in its streets. So wear comfortable footwear.

This concludes our short trip to kasauli and our message to you of what not to do ;)