Day 1: Delhi to Manali...well, no, Bilaspur...well, no, maybe we should settle for Nalagarh...or maybe for a temple in the middle of nowhere!
We've been planning and replanning this trip for a long time now, so maybe it's not surprising that so many things went wrong on Day 1. After all, you know what they say of the best-laid plans of mice and men...
Rations for the stay at Lossar and our trek
So to start with, we planned to leave Delhi right after church around noon on Sunday, and gave ourselves the somewhat ambitious target of making it to Manali by the night. (Ha ha)
Of course, it didn't quite work out that way. Instead, we left home around 3:30, with a hired Innova carrying a driver, and two couples with three kids between them, and our Bolero with four people.
It was a fairly uneventful ride through Haryana and Punjab, punctuated by a beautiful sunset...
Just out of delhi
too much football
just after karnal
looks like a beach, but its actually flooded fields
nearing ropar
...until after dark when the drama first started. By the time we were nearing Ropar around 9 pm, it was fairly obvious we weren't going to make it to Manali for the night. But huddling over the maps at the dinner table, we thought Bilaspur was a reasonable target.
dinner time & discussion of our night halt
About half an hour after we started out from the dinner halt, we had a diversion. There was some work being done on a bridge and the police were directing all traffic towards Nalagarh. Everyone was tired, kids getting cranky, and we wondered whether maybe we should just settle for a night stay in Nalagarh. Even as we were checking out hotel options there, the Innova had its first puncture -- a back wheel.
Innova's first puncture
The driver changed the tyre with the assistance of our brand new headlamp (which truly came in handy!). Then we moved barely ten km, before...
The second puncture
It was the same wheel, the stepney, which gave way.
!@#$%^& !!!
After some hurried consultations, the driver and I took the tyres in the Bolero and went off to try finding a repair shop. That was around 11:00 pm. Meanwhile, the others tried making themselves comfy in (or on!) the Innova. Since the driver had taken the keys, no A/C available, and it was a hot, breezeless, but thankfully moonlit night.
the following picture say it all
time passes by
the kids have had enough
It was a nerve-wracking wait, stretched till 3 pm, with no contact with the Bolero. Had they sprung a puncture as well? How long would we have to wait here? When the kids started crying with frustration, one of the dads headed out determined to find some shelter or the night, even if he had to sweet talk his way into someone else's house! Finally he came back with the news that there was a temple nearby, they had an open, pillared space which had working fans (thank God!) So here's our first "hotel" for the night...
the temple courts turn into our shelter
Meanwhile, I had driven 40 km in the Bolero, hunting through the hills for a repair shop. Actually, there were a whole lot of shops, but either they were shut, or didn't have what we needed. At one place, we managed to open the tyre, only to discover that the tube itself had split into two. So now came the search for a new tube. With a cement factory nearby, there were many trucks on the route, and accordingly many truck tyres available, but nothing for the Innova. At one point , we even considered using the Bolero tyres on the Innova! Anyway, after 3.5 hours of traversing the foothills along with a whole bunch of trucks, buses and jeeps also trying to find their way after the diversion, we ran into a huge traffic jam after Swarghat and finally gave up.
Thankfully, on our way back to the stranded Innova, we spotted a small board: "Riverview Hotel - 4kms". We took out some of the luggage, asked the driver to stay with his car, and piled everyone else into the Bolero...oh what a squeeze!
It still took a lot of driving around, (evidently, the locals think 10 km = 4 km) but finally we managed to find the hotel. No one was up, and no one responded to our desperate banging on the door, but thankfully woke up for our phone call. There was absolutely no sign, of a river, or any sort of view, but by then we were just grateful for a bed!
Day 2: Finally to Manali...(coming up! And yes, we hope there won't be such a big gap in posting next time