4-2 Trip - Part 2

We left for Amritsar again, and reached the temple area for a little bit of sword, kashmiri sal and shawl shopping, while some of us quickly stole back to the temple to capture its beauty, lit up at night. [I once again got chided for not covering my head.] By the time we reached Porn’s relatives’ place, it was 9.30pm and the poor people were waiting for us to have dinner [we had promised to get back early and help aunty cook!] After a sexy dinner, we used their comp to download some snaps into Sara’s ipod and pampered their two verrrrrrrry cute sons.

They had meanwhile cleared the drawing room, put in mattresses and carpets for us to sleep. Twelve tired and boisterous girls dozed off in the blink of an eye, resolving to get up at 3.30 am. You know the ways of Beau Monde – we snoozed the alarm and slept till 4.15 am. Then we rushed to get ready, while the legal inmates of the house slept through the racket we created. We were ready to leave at 5am, woke up aunty, passed our love to Chandan and Abhinandan [the boys] and left with good advice from aunty.

At Pathankot [which we reached after a 3 hour journey], we had breakfast at a very scenic inn and had parattas and curd. [By then, parattas and curd had become our dhaba favourites]. We started on the ghat road immediately and reached Dalhousie at 11 amidst some puking and nausea.

Some of us walked around the place looking for decent and inexpensive hotel to check into. After 1 ½ hours of checking hotels that resembled dungeons, attics, etc., and avoiding men who kept following us to market their hotels, we found a cute hotel perched on the road. We almost gussed it thinking it was too expensive when our driver took us back saying we could get off-season discounts. We finally took 3 rooms, housing 4 each, at less than 200 per head.

We changed yet again into jeans. It was raining on and off, and the weather was becoming greyer and colder by the minute. We had lunch at a chut restaurant called Golden Vaishno Bhojanalay at the market place. We then took the qualises to Bakrota Hills, Lakhar Mandi and Khajjiar - tourist spots. Bakrota and Lakhar mandi were gen spots from where you could catch a good view of the valley. Khajjiar is supposedly a sanctuary. It turned out to be a large expanse of grassland and the only animals we saw, were horses which were being made to take tourists on rides [and one horse which ran out of control]. All through the drive to Khajjiar, there was hail, and the meadows were filled with hail when we reached it. By the time we left Khajjiar, all the hail had melted, making the meadows damp [but not our enthu, of course!]. Some people dressed up in the traditional tribal snow-women clothes for snaps too. Unfortunately we had not seen snow, and many in the group were quite disappointed. We came back to the market place to do some shopping [the same kasmiri embroidery filled sals and sarees] and had dinner at a very pee-place. We went back to the hotel at 10pm and crashed immediately after that. Next morning, we woke up hoping that it had rained somewhere and snowed somewhere. We had a late breakfast at Golden Vaishno Bhojanalay [yes, no prizes for guessing - we woke up late again] and after a fruits-man was kind enough to tell us that it had snowed all night, and a place called Diankund was likely to be filled with enough snow for us to play in, and assured by the driver that Lakhar Mandi itself would have snow, we traveled the same path again, in surprisingly sunny and cheerful weather. To all our delight, Dalhousie, that quaint and scenic town nestled on a few mountains, was filled with snow. We spotted patches of white quite soon and before we had travelled 3km, we saw sheets of snow. We stopped at a spot where the qualises could move no further [they started skidding down] and played for a good 2 hours. We threw snow balls at each other, made snowmen and igloos, clicked snaps and made movies, danced and got leached at… those three hours were finally what we remember most of the whole trip! I had been hesitant to face Manali kind of weather, but the trees, the beauty of the hills and the snow in sunny weather all made the trip worth all the money and journey discomfort, as also the beauty of the Golden Temple.
We then got back to the market for lunch at Golden Vaishno Bhojanalay yet again. After a quick trip to Panchpula, supposedly a spring, but a miniature waterfall, with a minute bridge, we left Dalhousie to Pathankot at 4.30m. We reached Pathankot at 6.30pm and proceeded straight towards Pilani. We stopped for dinner at a dhaba, stopped at a place called Haveli [I would say it's a costly eating-cum-socializing place for the not-so-refined rich] for sweets and chaat, stopped again when the drivers wanted to have dinner and reached Pilani at 9am.
We were twelve very dirty girls, who had not bathed in 3 days and 4 nights, but very happy girls, who dragged ourselves back to the familiar 8th block in Meera Bhawan, to be greeted by the faithful Baby.

PS: I had a horrible experience too. We were walking down a road, when a bus came down. We all moved to the sides of the road, and I intelligently went and stood near an electric pole, thinking the bus wouldn't come that close. I suddenly heard Abina scream, and I turned around in time to be butted by the bus. I once again got butted by the door which was open and lost balance. I caught hold of the door of the bus, which luckily stopped moving as people in the bus realized something was wrong. Otherwise, I would have fallen down probably eight feet and as Puppy said, had a fracture!