We took an awesome and memorable 10 day road trip (17th May 2019 - 27th May 2019) from Chandigarh to Amritsar via Himachal Pradesh. These are the notes taken every night from that vacation. I will publish them one day at a time for the next 10 days.
21st May 2019 Day 5 :
As we woke up in Manali, we knew that way to Rohtang pass and even Marhi is closed. So the place we can go is Gulaba tourist spot and Solang Valley.
After breakfast we decided to go to Gulaba first. The google maps shows a Gulaba viewpoint and Gulaba tourist spot separately. It was confusing so we decided that we will keep driving till we hit the barrier where they check permits for Marhi and Rohtang pass. We were told that the barrier will be closed today as it's a tuesday and Border Roads Organization will be doing weekly maintenance work on the road.
We got out of Manali and there are stores on both sides of highway giving away dress and boots to play in the snow. We chose to not take it as we were told by hotel reception that there is no snow in Gulaba.
As we drove to Gulaba the views on both sides were spectacular. The traffic was sparse, which was confusing, as Mall road was jam packed yesterday night. We were wondering as to where are all the tourists, that we saw in Manali the last night.
After a couple of stops near waterfalls and To see the snow capped mountains, we reached Gulaba tourist spot. The drive was fairly easy and we went at luxurious pace soaking in the beauty.
Richa and Reyansh took a horse ride to the spot which was 1.5 km away while I chose to walk. The horse owner said there is still a bit of snow. Once we reached the spot, we realised that the snow was almost ice and very very dirty. Reyansh touched the snow but we couldn’t go in as we didn’t have shoes to negotiate icy snow and honestly it was just too dirty. We came back to our car and drove till the barrier. Finally at the barrier there was clarity that the permits to Rohtang are issued on hpkullu.nic.in. So if anyone ever wants to take a self drive, that's the place to get permit from.
We had a few Maggie noodles on a shop for which we were the only customers. The views were breathtaking and the air was fresh.
After that we decided to visit Solang valley. Reyansh had to take medicine for motion sickness, and he fell asleep. Once we entered the valley we realised its a mess as all the tourists from Manali were there. They have activities like paragliding, all terrain vehicles, cable cars etc. Reyansh was asleep and we were not interested in joining such a huge crowd so we drive right back and moved towards Kullu.
As one drives towards Kullu the highway is in parallel to BEAS river and one can sign up for zip lines across beas, or for water rafting on the spot. We decided against rafting as they won’t allow Reyansh on the raft due to his age. They had paragliding going on as well, but we wanted to do paragliding in Bir. So, We went to Dhakpo Shedrupling Monastery.
After the monastery we decided to visit Kullu market as we had taken a bypass from Kullu on the way to Manali. Once in Kullu we decided to get the car cleaned as all the dust from highways had made the cabin unbelievable by dirty. Richa visited Tibetan market but it wasn’t as good. Me and Reyansh got the car cleaned. There was a walnut tree in the yard and Reyansh plucked a couple of them.
We then had dinner and decided to sleep in Kullu for the night. We need to now drive to Bir tomorrow morning and hope to be there in time to visit the local monastery and also do the paragliding.
Signing off Day 5.
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