Summary of my Summer vacation trip to Manali

Hey guys, I am back from a fantastic trip! I experienced so many things that it is hard to tell everything briefly. I visited North India for the first time in my life so it was a totally new experience for me (this is one reason why I enjoyed even more). This trip was like an all-rounder experience for me because I got almost everything that I had expected from it. From the time I got up in MY bed on the day of starting till I again slept in MY bed after return from trip, I was in the mood of trip. Although I badly fell sick the next day after I landed up at home this trip is a memorable one for me. All the people are memorable for me and especially I will remember the tour guides- Nilesh, Mangesh, Atul, Pradeep and Akash. They didn't leave any opportunity to entertain us.

I got a lot of first time experiences in this trip. While I summarize them for now, I will add a day by day account in the next few days. To start with I got to interact with a group of unknown people and got to familiarize with many of them by the end of the trip. It was possible only because of going with a tour package organized by Kesari. While we were visiting so many places around, Kesari made sure that we enjoyed some evenings together. The people who shared experiences with me are

The dancing we did together, the games we played, the camp fire, and orchestra were all fun to mingle and learn about people.

- The Nature I saw:

Although I got to see nice Nature of mountains and water around our Pune city multiple times, it's a whole new experience when the constituents of the Nature change – this time I could see a different set of nature: snow-capped mountains in the middle of normal mountains, dense forests of tall Deodar trees, many water bodies, ever flowing Beas river, water falls and a lot of ghat roads. I really experienced it when we went through the dense forests from one stop to another stop and while going to the snow point. At places including the hotel where we stayed, I saw different trees like apple trees, cherry tree and rose tree(!). I am still wondering how a place can have such a range of nature in one season. It's truly amazing.

- Life in mountains:

Not only the main sightseeing of the trip was good, but also the journey was very good. When going to Manali from Shimla, we got to see the life of people of Shimla living on the edges of mountains all the time going up and down heights for their daily chores. Even shopping in Shimla was a unique experience. We had to take two lifts to go to the mall road which was at a higher level! I had never imagined that such a huge city can be built on mountains and that too 'on the edge'. (!) I even heard my father say “My perspective of 'living on the edge' has completely changed”. The mountains are their life and I could not believe their main work was farming. They do step farming which is also a rare sight and I have seen it for the first time.

- Himalayan animals:

Earlier, I have read about mountain animals quite a few times but seeing them live was a new experience. I got to see the Barking Deer, Brown Bear, Tibetan Wolf, Sambhar, Himalayan Tahr, Snow Leopard and various birds including the Himachal state bird Monal, all in the Himalayan zoo. Living on mountains, these animals become so strong that it will be difficult to tame the animals but I could see them (!) Later, many times I even got to see the famous animal Yak about which I always read and heard as “Y for Yak” from my young days. Like Horse rules the kingdom of riding in mountains, the Yak rules in the snow.

- Adventure sports:

In this trip I got a chance to do many adventure sports some of which I never got an opportunity and some which I got but did not do. At Naldehra, I did three sports, two being new – Flying fox, Bamboo bridge, Burma bridge. At snow point, I did snow bike, mountain bike, yak ride, tyre ride and skiing. And later I also did paragliding, rolling balloon at Solang valley and ended it with a fantastic river rafting at Kullu. I have done river rafting before but this time it was amazing and much better. I enjoyed mainly due to these.

-Snow experience:

I was always longing to see snow, but I never got the opportunity. This trip fulfilled my wish although I could not see snowfall. It's OK that I couldn't see snowfall, but the only sad part is that the snow was not clean at all with a lot of human and animal interference in nature. So, I could not play snow fight seriously, which I was looking forward to but I could make a snowman. As I told earlier, I did many snow rides which were amazing so you can understand that although the snow was dirty I could have a nice time. The views of snow mountains are truly amazing.

- An unexpected Hail storm on the last day!:

I was very sad that I couldn't see snowfall but on the last day of our stay at Manali, the unexpected hailstorm made up for it. I loved the way ice was falling from the sky like shooting stars. Seeing the hailstorm was also a first time experience. I had always heard from my parents and even friends and in fact it had apparently happened in Pune also but not in our area. So finally I saw it. I had a chance to play a snow fight no no... ice fight. All the children in the group were out in the open enjoying the ice fight as soon as it stopped. We also ate several fresh cherries from the cherry tree in the Sterling resorts.

- So many Temples:

In Himachal, I got to hear about new Gods and Goddesses. We went to four Temples and one Church during our trip. I thought I would be bored but no, it was a totally new experience in seeing the new temples too. I was even more surprised to know that the church we saw at Shimla was second-oldest in the whole of North India and also shocked that the Gayatri mandir was over 5000 years old built by the Pandavas. We saw the Vaishnomata mandir, Gauri-Shankar Gayatri mandir, Hadimba mandir and Vashishta mandir.

- Equally wonderful return journey:

While coming back (Manali to Delhi), we had equally and some times much more beautiful sights of nature than when we were going to Manali. We had a stop at Chandigarh, the most well planned city of India which gave the feel of being in some city abroad. This was where we went to the Rock Garden. This was another experience. I always try to make stuff out of waste material and to see, the whole garden was made out of “waste material”. I enjoyed that area a lot. At Delhi unlike during onward journey, we went through the megacity and it was awesome. Sadly, I had to say bye to all the new friends I made.

Suhas

20 May 2013

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