Ladakh 2009 – Day 1 – Delhi to Bilaspur
As i wrote in the earlier post things usually not go according to the plan. The plan was to start on the 17th of Aug and cover a lot of places.
It rained for 3 days continuously 15th, 16th and 17th. Only on 17th evening we saw some hope of finally starting our trip. But by then we got the news that the roads in the Spiti Valley were washed out and more rains are expected.
Thats when we decided to scrap our original plan and take the other "safer" route of Delhi-Manali-Leh. And now the first stop of our little adventure will be Bilaspur and not Shimla as originally planned.
So at 4am, on the 18th of August, i got up and got ready to finally move out. i dont have any pics for that moment cos everything was packed in Waterproof bags, as it was still a bit cloudy. At 4:45am Sallu turned up at my house and at 5am we finally started.
The clouds actually turned out to be good for us as they made the drive that much cooler. The sun didnt came out for till Karnal i think. And thats when we made out first stop at the, now quite famous, "Zilmil Dhaba", where we had Aaloo prantha and Tea for our breakfast.
We reached there around 8:30am, which was quite good considering we had covered almost 150kms of the planned 420kms in the first 3-4 hours. I guess i should thank the NHAI for this, the road was excellent all the way. There were minor bad patches, but most of them were there cos there are again expanding the road !
So after the really good breakfast, we were on our way and were planning to do a good long strech when the rains caught up with us ! Actually i should say, we caught rains. It was so amazing to drive to the clouds. And it rained pretty heavily for about 15-20 mins. We stopped at a roadside "general store" as soon as it started raining. We had our raincoats, but we thought we should take some rest while it rains and hope its doesnt rain too long. Which it did, and off we went again. But it was interesting, we were not chasing the clouds again ! The clouds were moving towards bilaspur, just like we were.
The good thing about this phase of the drive was that we were finally hitting the mountains after driving some 350Kms in the plains. And its so much fun once you enter the hill. The drive suddenly takes a 180 degree turn. Much cleaner, less traffic, no more "seepdy overtaking" ( you wait for the truck in front of you to give you the sign to go ahead and overtake him ! ), and you have to be very careful too.
20 kms in the hills and we caught up with the rains again. Call it luck or coincidence but the moment it started raining we were 100meters away from a closed shop with a nice shed in front of it. And that shop was right next to a small dhaba. We parked our bullets under the shed and had our lunch at that small dhaba. The food was quite ok, simple black daal and tawa roti. and the cost of that for 2 was Rs 75, including the bottle of Sprite !
This time it didnt looked like the rain will stop so easily, so we took our raincoats out finally. And off we went again, once the rains calmed down a bit. There was some 30 odd kms left and it was quite fun to drive in the rain and that too in the hills !
Around 4:30-5pm we finally reached Bliaspur. Below is the map for the whole trip of the day
We decided to stay at Hotel Lake View, an HP tourism hotel. Nice rooms and not too costly, 880 for an AC double bed and it was the first good hotel that we saw just before Bilaspur. I know its too high for some of the "budget travelers", but we wanted some good rest after the long journey and thats what we got, a nice room, an excellent balcony with a grand view of the lake. AND it was sunset time !
And here is the result of that, some nice sunset photos !
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
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| From Ladakh 2009 - Day 1 - Delhi To Bilaspur |
And the whole album is here.
