Journey to Leh

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22nd June 2010 300 KM
We started our journey from hot box to fridge. 2 more friends joined us in Chandhigarh that made our total to 9. We hired two Scorpio so that we can save our car’s life, I’ve heard a little too much about the road to Manali. I guess all said and done it was really an amazing drive, Himachal Pradesh was one of the best drive that you can get. You’ll be traveling about 25 - 35 Km along the river side and a single mistake on road can be fatal. We saw a hanging bridge which was really fun and a little scare considering the fact that we are on bridge which is shaky!! I had a lot of expectation out of Manali but weather did disappoint me (ooty is cooler than Manali). But the Mall Street was really good as you get a lot of things for throw away price and also you can shop till 1 Am in the morning.

Road - 2 out of 5 (Should have been 1 but the driving experience itself is amazing)
Weather - 3.5 out of 5 Really (was expecting better weather in Manali)
Lesson learnt - Never expect too much and you’ll end up disappointed.

23rd June 2010
We started our journey from Manali at around 6 AM. We were all excited after seeing some snow far away and started taking some pictures. After our photo session we started our journey with expecting to cover around 220 KM.
Our biggest surprise was the traffic jam from Manali to Rothang, after looking at the jam few of us started walking from half way and reach Rothang before our Car did!! We were initially excited to see the snow but latter it became due to the crowd in Rothan, I really don’t understand why there were somany people on a week day. We stopped our car a little further and took some pictures, we were behind our schedule again due to the traffic jam. Roads were really bad (guess was not expecting that many people).
Buy the time we reached the next town it was 3:30 PM, so we stopped for Lunch (very limited option), By now we were all tired due to the road that we were traveling in. We reevaluated our target and decided to reach Jespa.
Road - 1 out of 5 (Road was really bad, had enough of traveling next to river for the whole day!)
Weather - 4 out of 5
Lesson learnt - Should always start early or else will get stuck in the crowd.
24th June 2010
We did reach our target late in the evening, it was a perfect weather. After having our dinner we decided that we will leave Jespa early so that we don’t damage our schedule. In the morning after a lot of struggle we all hit the road early, it was really an amazing drive in the snow. After driving about 80-100 km, we went into a really core snow covered area. We were praising the picutrisque of Surajtal, then came the biggest set back till date (no prize for guessing), we ran into a snow stop. We infact had done few road clean up’s in our previous trips, we thought it would be a familiar conditions. After getting into snow and at an altitude of 15000 ft, we realized how tough it is to even walk. After cleaning up for almost 3 hours we had fight with people to clear the traffic for us to keep going. Due to the snow stop we were not able to make to our target, we had to do an unscheduled stop at pang. We did consider driving in night but lot of people adviced aginst due to rough road. Pang was really cold and we had to settle for a tempreory tent for our night stay, I had to put all my cloths on due the extreme weather in Pang.
Road - 3 out of 5 Due to beautiful sight!!!
Weather - 4 out of 5
Lesson learnt - Plan for the unforeseen problems

25th June 2010
Preious night we had decided that we will leave Pang early as we were already late by a day, as per plan all of us were awake on time. Another setback was waiting for us, this time it was the flat tyre which took 1 hour, after fixing our care we drove nonstop to Leh (finally). We then hiried a room near to Tibetian market. After resting for while we all took a walk to look at the market near by. You can do a lot of shopping!!!

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