Exhilarating trip to dhanolti

Hi friends,

I am a fan of ghummakkar but only recently I decide to share my experience with you all. This is about my travel experience to Dhanolti, near mussoorie around 02-oct-09, Gandhi Jayanti, holidays.

since last many months, my family and friends were planning to chill out to some great relaxing place, where our phone shall not work… after much thinking we decided to go to lansdowne… I spoke to couple of hotels and resorts but could not availe a single room… then my bro-in-law told me about his bro-in-laws visit to dhanolti and that he was mesmerized by the amazing views of valley and snow clad peaks from the room balcony atop a hill.

I searched for many hotels @ dhnolti and after lot of research I found the location, features and price of HotelCrystalPalace, Dhanolti to be best. Honestly, it has the best location and you know when you reach there and compare with other hotels enroute.

to start with, we were 3 couples and 2 kids… all of us were working and due to emergency office calls it was not certain.. who all will travel and who will not…in all this mess we had to cancel the Innova booked for the trip… so, finally when we all decided at midnight that all of us are travelling we had to drive down to dhanolti on our own in 2 cars.  Though all of us were reluctant to go in 2 cars ..we had no choice… finally, we started from gurgaon at around 02:00 am 02-oct-09 and drove to Dhanolti till 02:00 PM all the way through ghaziabad..meerut bypass..muzaffarnagar bypass…roorkee pypass..hardwar…rishikesh bypass…narendranagar…chamba… kanatal…dhanolti..

We took numerous sutta..Tea…nature breaks and after lot of resistance from other friends I made to breakfast at har-ki-paudi@hardwar… I must tell you the puri/kachori subji was fingerlicious and was worth the effort and then we took another break after that for tea..

It was quite hot until we started uphill from rishikesh …narendranagar onwards as now we could sense the cold breeze amid breathtaking views of valley and hardwar city…

We were all very tired by the time, 02:00PM, we reached our hotel and everyone was awestruck by the location and confirts of the hotel. everybody seemed congratulating me for booking such a nice place. to our surprise the rooms had airtel DTH TV and bathrom had uite a big and nicely done dressing area… they had a fragrant soaps and conditioners in the bathroom. which took us for a surprise..

kids and many of us were quite happy to see the vegetable farm all round hotel.. we saw.. cabbage..caulifower…red broccoli…ajwain…etc saplings.. some of us with the help of the farm owner cut few cabbages… kids were very happy in the fields… 

after quick round of tea and few snack we all took a nap and ordered lunch only by 05:00 PM … we took a view of valley from the terrace and it was just awesome…

Next day we woke up and took brunch n started towards TehriDam…… the drive from chamba to Tehri dam upto the administrative office was full of twist and turns and sight of the tehri reservoire was awesome…. sadly we were little late to get the permission to see the actial dam rather than just only reservoir and exterior view… so we took few pictures and spent time from the viewpoint just near the administrative office…. the view was truely exhilarating and the site awesome… it was looking so magnanimus and vast… its truely worth viewing and also sad to learn that tehri town is submerged many feets below in this reservoir.

While returning we saw one old road which would go to old tehre whihch is now submerged .. we stopby and had a quick picnic where kids enjoyed in shallow clear water near the submering road… opened the car hood.. started music and opened beer cans to make merry…. there were few natives fishing out there… surprisingly tourist travel;ing saw us picnicing and they kind of  thought this is the view and picnic point and soon in few hours there was lot of cars parked and enjoying… after dusk we started back towards dhanolti… the breeze were cold and we soon had to roll back the car windows …. we all were so overfilled with excitement and joy of tehri dam site and were discussing the same….

Nights on the hills are amazing on one hand and very dreaded on the other as in the night there is pindrop silence… it was dark and breeze, very chilling… we had to get our woolen caps and shawls to sit out in the night to enjoy such an awesome darkness….

Next day, it was raining very heavily.. we started after breakfast… hotel manager was very curteous and helping and advised us travel via mussoorie-dehradun on our return journey… This raod was good but driving had to be slowed down due to heavy rains…. my wife was overjous by the site of surfing clouds… and the natural beauty… the wild gets truely green if its raining and you literraly enjoy traveling… but I had to be very carefull also…

we were running late as we could not speed up due to rains and thereafter due to traffic… we could reach delhi only past midnight around 02:00am…

no all that we have is cherished memories and desire to go back again sometime soon…..

Last but not least… dhanolti is worth going only if you enjoy nature and avoid crowd…. it has no market… no crowd….