I have this never-ending love for mountains. Natural scenic beauty, views once captured with your eyes, you will never forget them. Snow covered peaks of mighty Himalaya’s on one side, lush green forest on the other, there is an unforgettable whiff of freshness in the cold air
Destination: Chakrata (Cantonment town near Dehradun, Uttarakhand)
Distance from Saket (DELHI) to Chakrata: 336 km
Travel time: 7-8 hours (with intervals for refreshments)
Do not use Roorkee and Haridwar route because bridge construction work is going on here, you will found heavy traffic there. The bridge work will be finished by 2020. Haridwar Kumbh Mela will be start from 2021
Journey Route:
This is the shortest route and the long highway
SAKET (DELHI)- GHAZIABAD - MURADNAGAR - KHATAULI– MUZAFFAR NAGAR –DEOBAND – NANGAL – GAGALHERI – CHHUTMALPUR – FATEHPUR – KHUJNAWAR –SANSARPUR – KALSIYA – BEHAT – MOHIDINPUR – HERBERTPUR – AMBARI – KALSI – SAHIYA – KALIANA – CHAKRATA
CHAKRATA ALTITUDE:
FEET: 6949
METER: 2118
THE WANDERERS:
1. Sunny Singh (me)
2. Karan Verma (Kuku)
3. Sanjay Singh (Sanjay)
4. Rahul Arora
5 . Sandeep Singh Kainth
The Rides:
1. ROYAL ENFIELD CLASSIC 350
2. ROYAL ENFIELD THUNDERBIRD 350
3. NINJA 300
4. DOMINOR 400
Chakrata is a small cantonment town in Dehradun district in Uttarakhand. It is situated between the Tons and Yamuna River, at an elevation of 7000–7250 feet, 98 km from state capital, Dehradun and was originally a cantonment of British Indian Army.
The area is known as Jaunsar-Bawar, belonging to the Jaunsari tribe, which still has a marked presence in few surrounding villages. Chakrata is an access-restricted military cantonment, and foreigners and civilians are restricted from visiting there. Notably, it is the permanent garrison of the secretive and elite Special Frontier Force, also known as Establishment 22 (called "Two-Two"), the only ethnic Tibetan unit of the Indian Army, which was raised after the Indo-China War
This trip requires 3 days to get the utmost enjoyment. And fortunately, we got a chance because of election holiday and we have managed to take one day off i.e. Friday. All of three were very excited. We have started planning our trip. We have packed our bags with essential things a night before. Just need to remind, be light on your packing as it’s a road trip.
We were ready to go Chakrata!!
We accelerate our bike to start our journey at 5:30 am from Saket (DELHI). At about 6 o'clock in evening we reached Chakrata. One of the most isolated and beautiful region in Uttarakhand and is largely untouched by the modern world and a delightful place. The very next step after reaching there is to find the good and affordable stay but our bad luck; we did not find an OYO stay. We start asking the people for the hotel suggestion and luckily, we got a great deal low on cost and high on services (3 people got a RAJA HOME STAY hotel for Rs 1400 for 2 days).
I would suggest if you are on a trip always try local cuisine, it gives you great feeling and experience of being a locality.
After freshened up in the hotel, we had Momos and Vegetable Soup at Chandana's Special Momos. The snacks refreshment was a treat to our empty tummy. Now we headed towards to look for tasty dinner. And I must say “Sher-e-Punjab” Dhaba is good choice in terms of taste, aroma, and money. As we just had snacks so we got our food packed and returned back to our room.
Now it’s time to explore Chakrata, We got up, took bath and got ready to travel around and Lokhandi and tiger fall was our first destination to roam as per advised by a hotel staff. We thought of going Tiger fall first but because of low temperature or almost freezing one, we dropped our plan. Hence we set out for Lokhandi.
While heading towards to Lokhandi, we have experienced so much snow that our bike was like controlled by wind. It’s like we are approaching in zigzag path. Frost was very frozen; there was too much snow on the road. So we decided to take a halt there. We have already reached almost 8.2 km ahead from Chakrata . We found a very nice resort called Green Heaven Resort there. We actually had lot of fun playing in snow which is scattered on road nearby resort We had almost spent 3 to 4 hrs. by making balls and throwing snowballs on each other. It was actually a thrilling and adventurous experience. We are doing madness like a child sometimes do. After this hilarious activity, we went to resort for refreshment. While having our classic Indian breakfast I.e. tea and Parantha, we came across to meet two new people who are also on road trip to Lokhandi. These two people named Sandeep Singh Kainth and Rahul Arora are like us. We have found that we all share same vibes for road trip and can be good co traveler. They have left Delhi on the very same day we left from Delhi in their bikes Dominar 400 and Ninja 300. But we not lucky enough to go to Lokhandi this time because the roads are block due to heavy snowfalls and low temperature. Still we were happy as we enjoyed and made new friends.
We clicked some photos and shoot videos with each other to make our journey rememberable. We all 5 came back together to Chakrata and had dinner together. And we headed to our respective rooms for sleep.
The next day, we started to head back from where we started I.e. our home Delhi. On our way to home, our journey is joined by one more person called by Nitin Prakash who is lagged behind from their two friends due to mechanical issue in his bike. While riding Nitin shared his experience that they all three is going to Delhi from Roorkee in their Royal Enfield and Harley Davidson Bike.
We reached Delhi by 9 pm. We all were exhausted and starving. We Stopped at Kitchen Square for Dinner. To make this memorable, we clicked selfie after dinner. At last our journey ends there, we went to our respective places by saying good bye to everyone.
Over all a very good experience we had.