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It felt like ages of planning before I finally hit the road! I took the flight of freedom. Finally!
My very own trip. My very own planning. From booking the bus tickets to booking the hotel room, and coming up with the itinerary, I did everything single-handedly. And I swear it felt amazing!
To be so responsible, so be so sorted and so independent.
Each and every person should do this pretty often!
I still remember going up and down the map on Google to shortlist the Hotels in which I'd like to stay.
First I booked the bus tickets so that I am absolutely, doubly sure about the dates of to and fro of the journey. Because everything else just falls in place.
This was a month prior to the date of journey. If you're booking too late, you don't get the nice seats in the AC Volvo apt for an over-night journey!
After a week of getting the bus tickets done, one fine Saturday I sat to book the hotel.
I checked on www.booking.com, because I was getting a lot of ads! And I found hotels at amazingly discounted prices. On top of that, it was the only site which was allowing me to choose to pay at the hotel. I didn't have to pay a penny while booking! Still, I booked two different hotels just to be on the safe side. And guess what?
Hotel 1 called me just two days later and said it was a courtesy call to confirm the booking. Again the next day he calls and asks me to transfer some advance. I said I won't because that's the deal I signed up for! But I assured him that I won't cancel. Ultimately, after like 10 days he called up and said somebody's booked the whole hotel, with advance payment, and so he has to cancel my booking!
And the worst part was, I couldn't figure out any way of communicating with booking.com regarding the same!
I thought, "Thank God, I have plan B!" I called up the second hotel I had booked and they confirmed my booking. This was also with the same website. The super courteous owner then calls me up 10 days before the trip and gives me the same damn excuse of a group of travelers booking the full hotel with advance payment and he even tries to help me book another Hotel which belongs to his friend.
I look it up on the map and see that it's somewhere within the woods, which was not at all preferred by me.
I gave up on this fraud website www.booking.com and went back to the old school one - www.makemytrip.com.
Apparently, my destiny had better plans for me! I had some offers on my app which got me a discount of around INR 4000. I booked the very lavish Hotel Sandhya. Breakfast was complementary and the room was huge, not to mention the view!
For two consecutive mornings, I've been waking up to this:
If I were to talk of the Volvo Bus ride by HRTC, it was as good as it can be. Seats were not very comfortable but yeah, manageable. I mean, you cannot obviously expect the quality of that of a business class Flight! We stopped at a decent Dhaba with clean washrooms for dinner. And the next stop was in the morning at around 7:00 am, at Sundernagar:
My very own trip. My very own planning. From booking the bus tickets to booking the hotel room, and coming up with the itinerary, I did everything single-handedly. And I swear it felt amazing!
To be so responsible, so be so sorted and so independent.
Each and every person should do this pretty often!
I still remember going up and down the map on Google to shortlist the Hotels in which I'd like to stay.
First I booked the bus tickets so that I am absolutely, doubly sure about the dates of to and fro of the journey. Because everything else just falls in place.
This was a month prior to the date of journey. If you're booking too late, you don't get the nice seats in the AC Volvo apt for an over-night journey!
After a week of getting the bus tickets done, one fine Saturday I sat to book the hotel.
I checked on www.booking.com, because I was getting a lot of ads! And I found hotels at amazingly discounted prices. On top of that, it was the only site which was allowing me to choose to pay at the hotel. I didn't have to pay a penny while booking! Still, I booked two different hotels just to be on the safe side. And guess what?
Hotel 1 called me just two days later and said it was a courtesy call to confirm the booking. Again the next day he calls and asks me to transfer some advance. I said I won't because that's the deal I signed up for! But I assured him that I won't cancel. Ultimately, after like 10 days he called up and said somebody's booked the whole hotel, with advance payment, and so he has to cancel my booking!
And the worst part was, I couldn't figure out any way of communicating with booking.com regarding the same!
I thought, "Thank God, I have plan B!" I called up the second hotel I had booked and they confirmed my booking. This was also with the same website. The super courteous owner then calls me up 10 days before the trip and gives me the same damn excuse of a group of travelers booking the full hotel with advance payment and he even tries to help me book another Hotel which belongs to his friend.
I look it up on the map and see that it's somewhere within the woods, which was not at all preferred by me.
I gave up on this fraud website www.booking.com and went back to the old school one - www.makemytrip.com.
Apparently, my destiny had better plans for me! I had some offers on my app which got me a discount of around INR 4000. I booked the very lavish Hotel Sandhya. Breakfast was complementary and the room was huge, not to mention the view!
For two consecutive mornings, I've been waking up to this:
It was an eye opener for me, because from the next time, I'll either book a hotel from MMT, or Air BnB, or OYO! And for all you guys, please go for a website that has branded itself well. And is responsible enough, even though it might be a little expensive!
If I were to talk of the Volvo Bus ride by HRTC, it was as good as it can be. Seats were not very comfortable but yeah, manageable. I mean, you cannot obviously expect the quality of that of a business class Flight! We stopped at a decent Dhaba with clean washrooms for dinner. And the next stop was in the morning at around 7:00 am, at Sundernagar:
We reached Bhuntar at around 8:30 am. The initial plan was to take a local bus to Kasol from Bhuntar, to absorb as much of Himachal as we could! But overnight bus journeys are unexpectedly tiring. Trust me, I'm not lying! So, we booked a cab which took us to Kasol within just an hour!
Wanna see how cool that drive was?!
Tired souls had an early dinner and slept off in anticipation of the next morning to be bright and eventful and it sure was!
Day 2 was kept for a 4Kms upward journey to Gurudwara Sahib at Manikaran.
It took us, amateur trekkers, an hour to reach! But that included halts every 5 minutes, to take a picture of either the clouds, or the trees, or the hills, or the river, or even the winding asphalt road we were on! Everything had us in awe for the bright, natural colours and the tranquility.
After spending some peaceful time at the Gurudwara, we took a local bus back to the Hotel and had lunch there. Being lazy Bengalis, we ended up taking a nap post lunch!
The evening had us roaming the hilly roads of Kasol again. I really gave my 500% into searching for things I would like to shop from the Kasol market but unfortunately I didn't feel like bringing back anything apart from the natural beauty!
For dinner we visited the Evergreen Cafe, which was totally full. We were offered a table to share with a group of four friends and that wasn't bad either!
The energy in Kasol is such that you feel you know everyone. You feel there's friendship and comfort in the air and in every soul around you.
Next day was the check-out from the hotel and we had again booked a cab but this time to Kullu and not Bhuntar. Because, the bus timing was that of evening and Kullu has a better bus stand with better AC Volvo buses.
We reached Kullu around 1:00 pm in the afternoon and we had nothing to do! So we used our GPS to find the nearest restaurant and it took us to a small multiplex kind of a building. To kill time, we bought tickets for the movie 'Toilet'. It was worth the 2.5 hours, I must say!
For the next 1.5 hours, we were roaming the streets of Kullu and that experience is the best one of my life!
I will never ever forget the stroll around the very beautiful hill station of Kullu! We left only because it was time for our bus to arrive. And, we left with a heavy heart.
Even though the city is where we have to live,
given a chance, the hills are where I would love to dwell!
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