Day 5: Manali to Delhi

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Alarm ar 5 am. We were ready by 6 am. We packed breakfast, banana, frooti and sandwich. Driver tied the luggage on the top rack ans bid adieu to our rooms with beautiful views. I can compare these views to those that we had in the Terrace hotel in Switzerland. There only the hotel lobby had this view.Here our balcony itself had this view. We were all set for this long van ride to Chandigarh. Time is critical here since we had to get to the train station before 6 PM. We got out of the Manali area very quickly to our surprise. This had taken only 30 minutes compared previous 2 hours. After this the ride was so smooth that we reached the 'lunch' place for the breakfast itself (around 9:30 PM). We ordered methi paratha, punjabi style. With the packed items, we finished out breakfast. By 11 am, we crossed the Mani area. The ghat road ends here in a way. We were in Bilaspur by noon and close to the outskirts of Chandigarh by 1 PM. We could reach the city by 3 PM. The driver suggested an authentic punjabi thali restaurant on the way - Haveli on the way. We stopped there for lunch. It was quite good with tall lassi glasses. We were so full by end of this meal. We still had about 90 minutes to kill. We headed to a new mall which is very popular here 'Elante'. We spent some time there and then headed to the train station by 5: 15 PM. We unloaded our luggage, tipped the driver and headed to platform #1. It was so congested, hot and humid. The train was 2 minutes early. It came from Kakla headed to Delhi. We had a plan to get in and place our luggage on the top rack. During execution we were not close to the entrance that would put us close to our seats. We had to go against the current to get to our seats. Still, we managed to keep our luggage on the top rack. The train left on time stopped in Ambala, Kurukshethra and Panipet. The attendants were constantly feeding us with food. We refused all the packaged meals since our lunch was quite heavy. By the time we reached Delhi it was 10 PM. Our tour co-coordinator was planning to meet us outside with the placard. Since the arrival platform was changed from 16 to 1, it took him another 15 minutes to find us in Platform 1. After loading all the luggage in the van, we reached JeePee hotel by 10: 45 PM. After a warm welcome we got to the hotel room and settled by 11:15 PM.

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