Sandeepinlife’s Weblog

May 6 , 2008
Panipat Junction!
janshatabdi has now long left the slums dwelled at the outskirts of Delhi and is now standing at this station
” Sahil , mana kyun kar raha hai “
the voice of kansal reminded me of sahil talking to his parents on the cellphone about our arrival in chandigarh

and also arranging a camera for our trip . kansal was keen on having dinner at sahil’s but sahil was somehow not

int. and actually if i would have been at sahil’s position my reaction would have been quite same , so do not

blame sahil ..
Train has started to move again..

“three Kings!”
“six more to add !”
“seven!”

Such voices from the rest of the gang ( they are playing bluff) along with the evergreen sound of Indian Railways

are the only two sounds i am hearing right now and offcourse the outside green fields provide a welcome change

from our normal delhi life ( Ah! i can be poetic too!!)

We six , me , ankit ( nashadi ) , ankit kansal ( kansal ) , shivanand ( shiva ) , sahil and manish are going to

Manali , rohtang pass , kulu to start our summer vacations and also to get respite from the scorching delhi summer

, to have our first trip together as friends. i must say we are extrememly lucky to have pulled out this tour when

all the plans had failed . we will miss you pondie!! and others who could not make it to the trip.

Earlier in the day , at about 2:30 i had finished my packing , Kansal , ankit and shiva had already left to buy

the tickets to train , so sahil was the only one left still packing . Manish was also ready . We quickly wrapped

up the remaining belongings of sahil and were finally ready to start, sorry Ravneet!

” jaldi karo . lot of traffic on road and you still have not even took an auto ” were the only words that were

swirling in my mind , when we were finding the auto . finallly somehow we made it to the station ,and we now were

quite comfortably seated in our seats and now now i am the only one who is readind this novel ” Path of Daggers “

by robert jordan , while the rest are busy playing bluff.

till now , this is all.

May 7, 2008 11:20 pm
just came back to the hostel room after having a cool softy in the chilling but very pleasant weather outside and

am now watching the final moments of the IPL match . The day had been quite long and lived upto the expectations

of all of us ..
Yesterday we actually did have dinner at sahil’s. The food was damn good considering the food we were getting in

our mess for such a long time now . so after we had completely satisfied ourselves , we got ready to start our

journey , a tough journey , on a simple local bus ( as all the tickets of the delux buses were not available ) and

what could have been the worse we got the last seats which are the most difficult to travel on hilly areas .
somehow by 10 , we were moving toward manali . the journey was not at all easy with a bumby road , a crackling bus

with widow panes doing their bit to increase our agony ( wow! ) and a completely drunken man shouting at kansal

for a complete misunderstanding .
After lots of efforts , we finally managed to sleep.
The moment i woke up , i saw mighty mountains on one side and the beas river flowing on the other side , my half -

sleeves were providing me no comfort from the cold breeze blowing despite all the windows of the bus being closed

. i quickly changed into my track suit , but the outside view was quite fantastic , everybody was enjoying it ,

but the Zooming in speed of our bus and the railless side of the road towards beas was giving me jitters!!

Finally we reached Manali at around 8 , quickly checked into a hotel , OK types .. After two hours of rest , we

sett off to see Manali.

First step was Hadimba temple . it is a temple made of four terraces of wood and then an aluminium canopy on top

representing the typical architecture found here and btw if anybody of you do not know , hadimba was the wife of

Bhima and gave birth to his son , Ghotodgaj .There for the first time i saw an animal being butchered alive , a

sort of tradition that is continuing even in the mordern times .
There we took snaps climbing on small cliffs in the nearby National park full of tall , sky towering Deodhar

trees.

After that we went to Club House, had typicl himachli food and also did the river crossing thing ( one of the most

daring thing , that looked very dangerous at the starting but turned out to be very simple ) from there we went to

maharishi manu temple ( the only temple of manu in the whole world , and for those who do not know who this dude

is , he is the great law giver in the hindu society who introduced the cast system in the society and is

responsible for various practices that we follow in our daily life ) , it wa about 1.5 kms from the club house ,

the road was verey steep and one had to use his full power to get to the top and on the other hand autowallas

were switching off their engines and just guiding their way down the hill , thus making easy bucks!!. From there

we went to the Vashishth temple where springs of hotwater mixed with sulfur are spontaneously evolving from the

ground . we did not took the bath ( actually did not have extra clothes for that ) but most of the foriegners were

quite involved in that activity.

Time was now almost 6 and we were dead tired from the day’s activities and were feeling quite sleepy after moving

up and down the streets leading to the various temples , ordered dinner in our room only , played cards ( we are

best at playing bluff ) and went outside for the ice - cream ( it is freezing out there ) , so many couples

walking hand in hand is the common sight anywhere in the manali and i do not know whether i cherish it or envy

them .

” Go to sleep now , taxi at 9 :00 tomorrow “
these words from kansal now forces me to finally put the pen down and say Good Night…..

May 9 , 2008 12:43 am
With ” tu hi meri shab hai ” in the background and the rest five deep sleep , it gives me a perfect oppurtunity to

pen my thoughts of a fantastic dayy , marked with the craziest things that i had never even imagined…
The day began as expected , we all , but ankit and manish , were very lazy ans since there was only one bathroom ,

we were more int. in coozing in our beds and letting the other person spent as much time in the bathroomtill the

taxi was at our doorstep and ankit and manish got all psyched up , and we had to quickly dress up without taking a

bath and a breakfast , and we set off for solang valley in our Qualis.

Solang valley is a valley which offers sports like paragliding , motorbike rides and other lots of starnge

sports. paragliding was expensive and was not as adrenaline thumping as we had imagined , so we tried out a ball

thing in which two persons were made to sit in a giant ball facing one another and the ball is rolled from atop a

small slant hieght . ma and manish were the first two to go , actuallli it was more of a ride on those giant

wheels in fun parks , but it was fun and quite a new experience .

After that we had breakfast , and since i am feeling quite sleepy now , so will wright about the remaining things

on the bus . anyway we are going to do rafting today and i am damn excited about it .
Good Night

May 9 , 2008 8:30 pm
It is raining outside and i am placed quite comfortably im my seat , but since the road is quite bumpy ( common

for the remaining ride ) i am dropping the idea of writing again , although i do want to write badly about the

wonderful but the last day of our trip .

May 10 , 2008 12:10 am
the bus has stopped by a roadside dhaba thus providing me another oppurunity to write .
let me start from where i left . after having breakfast at

May 17 , 2008 11:46 pm
first of all about the last entry , when i was writing the bus again started to move and suddenly switched off all

the lights thus leaving me no chance to even write something , so it is completely uncomplete entry .and about

the complilation of manali trip , i used to write something about our day in our hostel or in train or bus , so

ithought it would be appropriate to put the things as it is in the blog ( btw i have tried to be quite artistic in

the diary which had actuallu made it quite funny )
and about the remainder of the trip ( which was actually the best part of the trip ) i leave it to kansal to wtite

a big comment on the rest of the trip and complete the compilation.