uber cool scales rohtang Hello Bhpians,
Here is short travelogue of my recent visit to Manali.
Vacation from 4th to 7th nov. Ah great, finally three days to complete all pending household work, says my wife. Oh no I am not going to waste this vacation doing household work (me muttered). Did you say something, she says. After gathering some courage I said, How about going to Manali instead. After a minutes silence comes an aye from her side.
I clambered to the System got a hotel booked at manali, and she began dumping clothes into the suitcase. We'll have to leave at 4am in the morning I said. Our lil one was watching in confusion all the while, and once she realised that suitcase was being packed she too sprang up in joy, not because she knew we were going somewhere, but to meddle with all the items that were being put together. November 4
Finally we hit the bed by 12:30am, woke up at 4:00am and were finally heading to ring road by 6:15am on our uber cool.
The route suggested by the gps (faster time) was panipat-ambala-pinjaur-bilaspur-nalagarh-kullu-manali a total of 580 kms .We reached dera bassi by 10:am, the roads began to get worse from pinjaur to bilaspur, and not to miss the large no of trucks we had to deal with. Some stretches of Bilaspur-Manali road was good but there were bad stretches here and there.
All throughout the way I was enjoying the handling of the car on the curves and uphill stretches. The only problem was with the pot holed roads where I had to slow down quite often. We reached our destination by 10:30pm. November 5
This day we visited local sightseeing places such as Vashisth, Nehrukund, club house, and spent some time at the mall road.
By evening the fuel guage was close to quarter mark so I had to fill her up. That’s when I noticed that the front left tyre was almost flat. This tyre used to give me problems earlier on, it losses air faster than the rest of the tyres, and I had got it checked the day before we began the journey. But the tyre service centre failed to find any problems with it.
I enquired if there are any puncture shops nearby and was promptly directed to a few, but all of them were closed due to Diwali and was stressed to know they would only reopen the day after. Luckily I found a shop which was half closed but the puncture wala had already left. Two girls were sitting inside the shop (probably the owner’s daughters.) They said if I want to fill the tires then I can do it on my own. With no other option I parked the car on the side of the busy Kullu-Manali highway, and started filling up the tyre. Before I could reach for the other tyres there arised a traffic jam. Two policewallahs showed up and asked me to scoot off. I headed to the hotel parking and checked the tyre. It was alright for the time being.
All together this day was quite uneventful and we later regretted for wasting the whole day in Manali. Next day we had planned to head to rohtang. November 6
Next morning I came to check the tires and found the tire to be flat again. With no other option I changed the tire with the spare one. We left the hotel premises by 9:00am, and were looking to get the tires checked, but none of the shops were open. Now I had to do the rohtang circuit with no spare tire and the rest of the tires probably under filled. To my dismay the road to rohtang was so pathetic and by now I was getting worried. A flat tire at this stage would be anticlimax.
After about 20 kms from Manali the roads and the scenery turned awesome and hoped to remain for the rest of the journey. The road was freshly tarred but work was still being carried on. Now we realized that we should have spent more time here rather than doing the local sightseeing.
Every now and then the scenery used to change and am sure your jaws would drop in disbelief. After another 15 kms the scenery became even more picturesque but the roads turned to trails with sharp rocks, mud and ice. We could see the sign board “sorry of inconvienience double laning work in progress BRO”. The speedo never crossed the 20 Kms mark , first and second gears were fighting against the gravitation and rocks. I scraped the bottom on three occasions against the rocks, but luckily no issues cropped up. This was the time I wondered what the Hyundai engineers were thinking when they made this car. An additional 10mm of ground clearance would have done wonders.
The total distance was around 54kms and it took us almost 5 hrs to cover it. Rohtang pass was closed therefore we spend some time in the snow had the famous Maggie. One could try their hands on skiing, ATV riding and stuffs like that here. The only problem is they charge exorbitantly for a very short ride.
By 3:00pm we were heading back to the hotel. Now the bottom was scraping even more while negotiating the puddles and rocks. I guess the overall weight of the car shifts to the front wheels reducing the front ground clearance by a huge margin. Add to those downhill roads, especially when roads are no more roads but trails. The famous steering column rattle was audible on rough stretches, the passenger seat began rattling and some kind of creeking noise also cropped up, I suspect it was from the suspension. We were crawling at many instances to save the bottom from scraping. At some point of time I regretted for putting my uber cool to such turmoil.
By 6:15pm we were at Manali we headed to our hotel and began to pack up for our long journey back to Delhi.
Statistics
Total kms covered-1200 approx
Total fuel consumed- 80 litres approx
Mileage:15 approx.
Total Driving time:27 hours approx
Here are some snaps clicked by my cybershot.
Last edited by somu_john : 12th November 2010 at 13:31.
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