Thursday, 24rd September, 2009 – DAY 3 – Darlaghat to Manali.
“Another beautiful morning dawned,
Another beautiful place called,
We set out to answer that call,
With our engines blazing all along.” – Yours Truly
Today the intent is to reach Manali. Within minutes after we took off I noticed something was wrong on my rear wheel. Luckily there was a mechanic shop nearby where I could get it checked. The issue was my chain guard was projecting out of its place and the rear wheel was grazing against it. He fixed it within minutes. I also asked him to apply some lubricant over the chain which we were supposed to carry but you know …we did not. In fact did not carry a single spare part or tool kit apart from the standard kit that comes along with the bike. A big gamble considering for miles we may not find anything at all in the next few days. But both of us we just too excited to think about all this. Back at the mechanic shop, the lubrication was done and off we went.
For some distance I was riding slow and had Ram in my rear view mirror all the time. But suddenly he disappeared. I stopped and waited for a while, he was nowhere to be seen. I sensed something was wrong and went back to check and here we go the First fall of the trip. Credits: Ram.
Apparently he went way too much towards the side of the road and skidded over the gravel. He was waiting for me to help him lift the bike up. And Only then I remember to click. Damn I thought, missed a perfect shot with the Ram and bike on the groundJ. Luckily no major wounds, so we just laughed about it and rode on.
We paused quite frequently to enjoy the view and click more snaps. We were least bothered about the timelines. We didn’t care if we could make it back on time as long as we have a good time.
We stopped at a small road side place for our breakfast at Bilaspur.
This lord was enjoying the view as well.
Nice catch Ram !!!
Below is what I was trying to capture when Ram caught me above.
We were treated with some breath taking views enroute.
As we moved further the towns that we passed by became smaller and smaller. But there was one thing that caught my eye riding in these hills in the morning. No matter how small the towns and villages were, every single one of them had schools and you could see many cute kutties (children in tamil) with their uniforms and school bags walking and dancing their way to the school. It was good to see the importance given to education even in these remote areas.
We reached Mandi. There we met two more riders Rahul and oops … sorry forgot the name of the other guy. They were from Chandigarh ans were riding till Rothang.
Chatted with them for a while and we parted our ways.
Me : O jee.. main aapka ek photo kheench saktha hoon?
She: no response..
Me : jee ..aap se hi pooch raha hoon… ek photo kheenchloon?
She: Kyun jee…
Me: Yuhin…
She: silence
Me : Han ya na. Kuch tho boliye.
She: Han.
Voila. I took a few snaps of her with the baby, thanked her and went away.
At about 4:00 we reached kulu. Time for Lunch. Our lunch break took longer than usual. Thanks to the restaurant guys who took nearly 45 minutes to preapre our order. As usual we jus clicking in the mean time.
The restaurant was housed right on the banks of a river. I could also see some rafting going on this river.
Manali was pretty close from here and was decided to stop there for the night.
Near manali
We reached manali at about 7 P.M. There were a swarm of agents trying to get tourist to their hotels. We were not quite sure which one to choose as we were too tired to check the rooms one by one. Once again Youth Hostel came to our rescue. They had a franchisee at Manali and without further hesitation we booked a room and checked in.
To our surprise they had Wi-Fi as well. For 500 bucks a night, this was quite a steal. Wow. Time to upload more pics for Family and friends.
The Journey Begins
Day(-1),0
Day 1,2
Day 3 <<<<
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
The Journey Ends