As soon as we were permitted to talk at the end of the Vipasana Meditation retreat people started to gravitate towards those they felt connected to. I found myself in a group of 8 poeple and 6 of us decided to go to Manali together. I already had my bus ticket to Manali but since there were 6 of us that was enough to hire someone to drive us via jeep. Much safer and also would give us the opportunity to stop when we felt like it. The drive was anywhere from 16-22 hours to travel the 470KM and started at 1am regardless of mode of transportation. It took us 16 hours. We arrived at 5:30pm. What a ride. We went up, down and around several mountains and drove through valleys and went through at least 3 passes including the infamous Rohtang Pass. Rohtang literally means pile of corpses due to the number of deaths trying to cross this pass in bad weather. The time to cross this pass is from June to mid Sept. At other times there is snow and landslides. I have to admit it was scary when I looked down to see how close we were to the edge of the cliff only a foot or two at times. I refrained. The driver was good, experienced, patient. This is what he does for a living. I felt sick from the bumpy ride but also from going up and down to those high and low altitudes. The 6 of us had a good time together trading places every now and then and being silly due to lack of sleep. We comprised 5 countries, Canada, Australia, Spain, Norway and Denmark. The views were magnificent, this is one road trip not to be missed. I will do it again on a future trip. The views alone are worth it. Half way through the trip my phone battery died and couldn’t take anymore pic’s sorry I missed the Rohtang Pass. But please google it to get an idea of what it is and how it looks.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 14:13:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015