Romba romba dhanyavaadh manali :-)
Unexpected trips leads to awesome memories
But this time it was a perfectly planned one , traveling through 3 states & a Union territory and finally facing off against the severe cold and the last minute run to the airport while returning to catch the flight made this trip, a memorable one.
This blog will be more of kind of a photo blog(pBlog ?) containing more of images and lesser text.
So this was a team trip with my 32 colleagues, we started off from Chennai February 21 morning. I had a OnePlus5T and , oh boy , this phone had a killer camera and even resisted severe cold.
This was our plan , reach Delhi (One evening) — Kulu(River rafting alone) — Manali (Stay 3N/3D). India gate was the only place on our itinerary for the first day & places to see in Delhi list. So we had a quick lunch near India gate and was walking down to the traveler bus, where we saw some graffiti and #people started clicking photos, here are a few. Later we learned that the graffiti place was made for the Jio ISL football advertisement featuring Virat Kohli, check the ad here .
We reached India gate by around 6PM, where there was a huge crowd in-spite it being a weekday. We split into small groups and my group was the last as we would make frequent stops to click some pictures / portraits . There was an array of food to eat from around the sides of the gate. We tried a new variety of poori and that was not that good , it lacked spiciness. Spot photos was a killer business there and there were many such people shouting at their own business, showing some sample photos of people shrinking the India gate between their two fingers (Perspective view) and such sorts. I never knew the history behind the place and later wiki-ed to know that it was build in loving memory of the soldiers who died in the WW-I and several other wars Indian men have took part in on the side of British.
Finally after some clicks and food for thought(check foodsOfManali) we started towards Manlai, having planned to break for dinner late that night.Having some fun and frolic in the bus, we took a break in Punjab in one of the “asli” Punjabi restaurant called “70mile Dhaba” , hmm ‘t was okay-ish. We tried all foods there , Kashmiri to misi roti and from Masal dosa to Panner butter masala.
The next day, early morning around 4.30AM we touched the Himachal Pradesh , Jio welcomed warmly with a Roaming free message pan India. Btw, the curvy hill route just began and we just followed the greenish river “Beas” uphill 😃 Kullu& Manali were 70Km apart where Manali was at higher altitude. We stopped at Kullu for “River rafting”, as it was just a month after the winter season , Beas had meager flow of water and we(ok, me 😏) have been imagining Nayanthara ❤ from Kaadhal cricket initially, thought this would be a boring experience. BUT, once the rafting guide started his Go-pro and oared off the rafts with splash of water on all of us people and then came many a swirls in the river en-route. The rafting was a 45minutes one about 8Km’s which included jumping off the raft in the depth areas and struggling to move the raft as it got stuck between the stones. I only remembered the Goundamani — Senthil comedy here. Find it here. We had some competition between the rafts on how much we splash the water on the persons on the other raft. The raft guide taught me how to use an oar and splash.
As the water was cold , once we finished the raft, we went straight to get eat some hot noodles , bread omlets , tea, et all, food for cold ‘t was. Between that we got the rafting video from the guide who shot it on Go-pro, more on that later at the end of this blog.
Finally, after the food shops run out of raw materials, we started off to Manali around 7PM in the evening and reached there by 11PM. The temperature went sub zero and it was too chill to hang around in trousers 😜 The night was pitch black and we were waiting for our hotel cabs to pick us, as no tourist vehicles are allowed inside the Solang valley, that’s were we stayed for the next 3days. We were pretty sure that we were surrounded by the mountains and everyone was eagerly waiting to see the snow capped peaks, I took OP5T out and switched to manual mode and made the necessary settings and shot it, could have been better.
We, finally reached the resort had some great dinner , and had a very nice sleep as we had to rest ourselves because the next day we planned for paragliding.
As we entered into our 3rd day of the trip and everyone turned excited as we would be paragliding that day. It was quite a hefty amount for the 10minute thrill, but it was totally VFM and one must definitely take these adventure sports once in their life time. I’m very much afraid of heights but somehow gathered all of my courage and went up in the rope car with my pilot towards the boarding point (?) form there we must glide downwards on air.
Few minutes before the take down, my pilot was like don’t stand still , run, run and run, i said “TK bhaiyaaa” and started running down. Finally, moments after the take off , it was BLISS. I looked around 360 degrees and it was a complete view of snowy mountains all around.
After 10minutes or so of wandering in the air , I touched down and there gathered two people showing me the photos of me when I was in air. I totally bought into his plan and got photos and videos from him, more on this later towards the end of the blog.
The paragliding fun ended that noon and post lunch we had played some fun games in the resort and later that evening we started to go for snow trek. We choose ATV’s for travelling half the distance and the rest on foot.
We trekked for about an hour through snow after the ATV drive, finally reaching a temple and we did one amazing photo shoot there and stayed there till the sun came down. Finally while coming down we took one amazing shot of bulldozer, that too later on this blog. We came down and had an amazing camp fire that night.
The next day when we woke up, it was all raining cats and dogs, later this all cats and dogs turned to white snow flakes and this continued all through the day.
This snow fall lasted all through the day and blocked us from moving any where nothing but the resort. So we made use of the whole day and started playing various games like cricket and Frisbee. We played all through the day and the members of the resort were so surprised and told us that we were the only group of people who enjoyed the snow fall this much and even took snaps of us playing for their record.
We even made snowman and his sibling , haha.
The very next was out last day there at Solang valley and as the roads were fully covered with snow , we started so early and was to reach the Delhi airport by monday morning 6AM which was 17hrs journey from Solang valley sans breaks / stops. We reached foothills of Solang valley where we parked our bus and started hastily.
The driver very much understood our situation and drove with utmost precaution and being quick and finally reaching on time to catch our flights on monday early morning. Got a chance to snap the sunrise from 35000ft(as said by Indigo).
I was very much amazed how technology played a vital role and was creating many jobs. The rafting guy , just transferred the Go-pro video by swapping the memory card to phone and using ShareIt to transfer the same to us. The photographer at touchdown point during paragliding, didn’t hesitate when I said my phone only supports only USB type C and the next minute he took an USB adapter and plugged from DSLR to the phone, just WOW. Technology is changing lives everywhere.
Pictures speak thousand words, ain’t it ? I have categorized the images I took in Manali under several categories and posted it on Instagram, you can check it here, #manaliSeries .
The next monday everyone returned to the usual , happily and sad. Until the next trip, adios amigos or rather ,
“Romba romba dhanyavaadh manali :-)”
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