We had gone on a short trip to meet relatives in London, and I had a great urge to see Scotland. I mentioned this to the relatives, and was so politely and decently informed that I must have not done enough research. Scotland is a fair distance from London, and requires some amount of planning (and a few days) to enjoy thoroughly, and of course, this was the start of winter and it would be nice and cold. So, Scotland was dropped; I was unhappy :-), but one cannot argue against solid logic.
So now the search was on for an alternative, we needed to go out of London atleast once, and Dover Castle had been seen by some friends of my relatives; so Dover was the best (and actually only) possible place to go to. I had heard of Dover before (not specifically the castle though) - it is the place where the English Channel tunnel starts on the English side; in addition, Dover is the closest port to France, and must have been the first place to be attacked by any invader. So much for history, Dover Castle it was (for want of a better alternative).
Around a month back, I had written an article about the first day of a visit to McLeodganj and Dharamshala. This article is about the second day into the same trip. Given that we had covered McLeodganj on the first day, the objective was to cover the lower parts of the Kangra Valley and Palampur (and eventually there were a fair number of places that we covered, some good, and for some we wondered why they were there on the tourist map). As usual, there was the discussion about the taxi fares, and eventually we settled (when I say settled, it means that we accepted the quoted rate) on a rate of Rs. 1300 for taking us around.
After a quick breakfast, we got into the taxi for what seemed like a long day ahead of us. The journey was through a hilly road, but nothing too steep nor too rough. The drive was through a beautiful environment, given that the rain had made the whole countryside full of greenery. You just have to look at a photograph to appreciate how green a hill and the valley can be. After a short drive, we reached the first location on our day journey.
My visits to places are normally more comfortable journeys, maybe I am getting old and don’t feel like roughing it out any more :-). So, I planned a 3 day trip to Dharamshala, and the first thing I looked for was how to get there. Not a bus, not a train, but a flight. I found only one airline that served this route, and that was Air Deccan. Booking a month in advance, I got 2 return tickets for Rs. 9000, out of which more than Rs. 5000 was the tax component. In this case, if you are going to Dalhousie or Pathankot or Dharamshala and want to go by air, then book in advance since the ticket price shoots up drastically as you reach the desired journey date (in my case, when I enquired around 15 days before the flight about re-scheduling, I was told that the ticket had gone up to Rs. 29000).
So, any plans of changing the journey date were abandoned, and I got a bit busy in asking people about the place and places to see, and about the weather, and so on (this mind you, after I had already been there in college on a visit with friends). Once I learned some information (none of which I used to any great degree), it was time to head to Delhi Airport. The flight was late by 30 minutes, par for the course. And then the bus took around 20 of us to … we can’t be going in that small plane !!! .. it was, for the first time in my life, I would be traveling in a turbo-prop plane, and seeing the propellers rotating instead of the pleasure of a normal jet. The feeling wasn’t entirely too pleasant, but the flight was decent. Another thing I never cared to find out was whether this was a direct flight; it wasn’t. It first headed to Pathankot, and after a 15 minute stop, headed off to the Gaggal airport. This was a very small airport, and I think the flight I landed on was the only flight that comes there, and there were a lot of security over there waving big automatic weapons, so I did not try taking a photo of the airport :-).
We negotiated with the taxis, but there is apparently a union, and for a journey of around 30 minutes to the Club Mahindra Resort of Kangra Valley, none of them was willing to take less than Rs. 300. Eventually we gave in, and took a taxi. The journey was as we expected, on narrow roads resplendent with lush greenery on either side (due to it being the rainy season), and we finally reached Club Mahindra around 1:30 in the afternoon. After a quick lunch and a short break, we took a taxi from the Resort with a pre-planned package for the First day.
It was in the middle of summer, and neither me nor the spouse had the luxury of being able to take a holiday on the same day. So, combining Friday with a Saturday and Sunday was out, and as it turned out, it was not much of a long holiday since we only left Saturday evening (work intruded and we decided to go rather than cancel).
As a prequel to this decision, we spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out where to go. But given the luxury of 2 days that we had, it was very difficult to think of going to hill stations other than Mussoorie, and going to Mussoorie in the middle of the summer with the jam-packed tourist season was not exactly very pleasurable, and more important, Mussoorie was where we had gone last. So I opened some books like the Outlook Guide to nearby places and also a website called AroundDelhi.com. In the meantime the spouse was getting a trifle impatient at my indecision in recommending places.
I first thought of Neemrana, but no rooms available. After a bit more perusing, I finally settled on a place called Shiva Oasis in Behror. Made a booking for Saturday night, so cost me around Rs. 4000, a trifle expensive I thought. (more…)
