New Year 2017 bash at Big Shimla Carnival

Here I come with another adventurous trip. We thought to make a short travel plan and it was unplanned one ☺ Me and my husband decided to make a short trip to Shimla as it is the nearest hill station and recently it had its first snowfall of the season on 25th December so we assumed there may be snowfall again on New Year eve. Most of us had already been to Shimla many a times but I hope this blog will take you through more adventurous, tragic and unexpected journey ☺

Instead of driving to Shimla by road in car or by Volvo bus we preferred to go through Train. Personally I thought that train journeys are little bit comfortable. The travel plan was for dates 29th Dec-01 Jan. We booked the Tatkal tickets for train Howrah-Kalka express from Old Delhi.

It was supposed to leave around 8:45 pm on 29th Dec from Old Delhi. But the train was delayed by 9 hrs due to fog in these high winters time. So we cancelled this train and book other train Himalayan Queen which starts from Sarai Rohilla station at around 5:30 am and reach to Kalka around 11:00 am.

On 30th Dec we booked Ola cab at 4:00 am and reached early and waited at station for almost 1 hr.
Finally, our train arrived at the right time and we got seated ourselves. We booked 2S tickets. It was a little bit torture for us as it was early chilled morning and the 2S coach windows are not enough to stop the chilled waves. The train reached its final destination Kalka on 30th Dec at around 12:00 pm. The chilled waves were gone and now it’s time for sunny afternoon.

There is a taxi union at the right side of Exit where you can book the taxi. The toy train booking was full so we had to travel by taxi to Shimla. We booked a taxi for Rs.2000/- to Shimla. The taxi took around 4 hrs to reach Shimla.

We booked Uphaar hotel(near Mall Road) only a day in advance. Around New Year there were no good hotels available. The hotel expenses were Rs.5000 for 3 days/2 nights booking. The only good thing about this hotel is that it is near Mall Road.

The taxi dropped us under Auckland Tunnel as the taxis are not allowed on Mall road without prior permit. We had to walk with our luggage for almost 30 mins till hotel. We actually didn’t know at that time that there is a lift also near tunnel from where we can go easily near Mall road.

This was one of the adventure to walk at a steep height and our legs were crying :) Finally, we reached our hotel at around 5:00 pm. After collecting keys of our room we took rest as it was a really tiring journey.

30th Dec

The Shimla Carnival was going on at The Ridge at Mall Road.

Shimla Carnival

The Ridge is an open area where the New year celebrations were planned. We had some dinner and went to enjoy the Punjabi songs DJ night. The crowd was amazing and all were just lost in the music and beats. All of us were dancing on the rocking beats. The DJ session ended at around 9 pm and after that we started roaming on Mall Road. The shops were closed except a few restaurants. There we met a taxi wala who was asking if we were interested to go Kufri.

Then we both decided to go Kufri on 31st Dec the very next day. He then also told us that he will took us to Narkanda as well in the same package where we will be able to see the snow. So we booked his taxi for Rs. 2500/- for both places and the time decided was 9:30 am to start our adventurous trip. His number is: 09816206772 just for reference purpose.

Indian Flag standing high

Enjoying at Mall Road

The Mall road is the main shopping area of Shimla. There are many government offices like Indian Post, BSNL. There is a beautiful church on Mall Road which is one of the main attraction there. There is an old Shimla library on Mall Road. The whole view of Mall Road is awesome.

Church at Mall Road

31st Dec

At around 9:00 am we started walking towards Auckland tunnel as our taxi was waiting there. We started at around 9:45 am from Shimla and after driving for 1 hr the taxi driver ‘Prem Sharma’ stopped us at Dawat restaurant where we did our breakfast. After having our breakfast, we resumed our trip towards Kufri. The driver bhaiya stopped the taxi near an amusement park called ‘Hip Hip Hurray’. This is a place where you can enjoy fun activities. This is sort of a picnic spot but a very beautiful, artistic and creative place. The park was divided among 3 parts:

a. Adventure Park which includes Ice Skating, Reverse Bunjing Jumping, Zip lining, Burma Bridge, Ladder.
b. Amusement Park which includes the normal adventure rides.
c. Game Zones which include some video games for children.

Hip Hip Hurray

We chose the first option excluding Ice Skating. The Ice was artificial on which we got scared to slip down so we avoided it. We did other remaining activities like Reverse Bunjing Jumping, Zip lining, Burma Bridge, Ladder which cost us Rs.1000/- for two persons.

After enjoying our adventures and clicking a few photographs we started moving back to taxi parking where Prem bhaiya was waiting for us. It was around 2:00 pm. We get seated ourselves in taxi and started driving towards main Kufri spot. Within an hour or so we reached to Kufri. There are two ways to see all spots in Kufri either on your own foot or through horse ride. We chose second option as we didn’t have enough time and energy. The horse ride for a person costs Rs.500/-. We paid Rs.1000/- and our horse master ‘Pinku bhaiya’ started our horse trip towards all Kufri points. It was also an adventurous ride as the path was very narrow and horses were running here and there. Whole time we were just saving ourselves from being fallen down :P It was around an hour ride and then we started 15 mins walk as the horses were not allowed from where we were dropped.

Horse Riding

The main view of Kufri will look good only in case of snowfall. There was not even a little bit of it after 25th Dec snowfall due to bad weather and heavy sunshine. There is a Nag Devta Mandir on that place. Kufri is just another picnic spot and like an open ground. The yaks standing there and you can sit on those yaks for Rs.50/- and get yourself photographed like I did :P

Yak for Photoshoot

Also there is a telescope point which shows you 10 points including Chanchar House (3 idiots), India China border, Kuch Kuch Hota hai summer camp, Fagu Top Durga and Shiva Temple. Maa Shera wali temple, Hotel Fagu, Kyaari village(Richest and beautiful village of Shimla), Sheetla Maa temple, Vaishno Maa 2nd Temple, Pandava Kund, Manu Hrishi temple. This all cost Rs.150/- per person but we negotiated up to 100/- per person.

Kufri Nag Devta Temple

Kufri Telescope Point

After seeing all the points, we had some Maggi and momos. There is always a different taste in Maggi when we eat at any hill station. May be because of the weather there ☺ Then we started moving back and called to Pinku bhaiya(the horse master) to take us back to Taxi stand where Prem bhaiya was waiting for us. Now we were set to drive towards Narkanda where Prem bhaiya told us that we can see the snow. We have to reach there as soon as possible to avoid the late evening jam as it was 31st Dec night.

Narkanda from Kufri is around 64 kms away. It took us around 1.5 hrs to reach there. It was not a crowdy place. We saw camps, tents, some people were dancing and enjoying the last day last weekend of 2016.

Behind the tents there is an open ground where we finally found some snow melted on the rocks. We were not lucky to see the live snowfall. That’s a little bit of satisfaction for us, ‘Something is better than nothing’ and here it proved for us ☺ We were there for 30 mins only as it was evening time and we had to return Shimla as early as possible. So we started clicking photographs on snow. It was an awesome view and seriously we didn’t want to return back ☹

Narkanda

We started our journey back to Shimla through Google Maps app to see the status of traffic jam. There are two ways either go through Kufri or go through Mashobra. We found that there is a huge traffic jam of about 2-3 hrs on normal Kufri road so we took another road from Mashobra to Shimla.

As I have already mentioned earlier that this trip is little bit adventurous and tragic as compared to other trips so here it is. Our driver bhaiya was driving smoothly on the left side following all driving rules and we were in our lane. We were about to reach Shimla in another 15 mins. While driving in the middle a sharp curved turn came and at a sudden from the opposite direction a car came at a very high speed and got crashed into our car ☹ We were shocked. Our driver bhaiya suddenly applied the brakes otherwise today might be possible that I am not writing this blog for you.

We were in the mood to celebrate our New Year eve and then all of a sudden it happened. I saw this accident with my eyes. Our taxi was damaged and as I was sitting beside the driver’s seat so I got some minor injuries. Still we got out of the car and caught the culprit, called the police and helped our driver bhaiya to complete the Insurance related formalities. Some taxis were passing by so we took lift in one of the taxi and dropped us near Auckland tunnel.

We don’t want to ruin our New Year celebrations so we anyhow went to Mall Road to celebrate the evening. I know it sounds very uneasy that after our accident how can we go happily to celebrate the evening. My husband was saying that we should go to hotel back but I said no instead of it we should celebrate our upcoming new year and should not spoil our mood.

The people were dancing, hooting all over on the Mall road. We went to Sagar Ratna for some dinner. After having our dinner, we went back on Mall Road and waited till 12:00 am to see and celebrate New Year celebrations. As soon as the clock hands stuck on 12 the crackers started shining all over the sky, youngsters started shouting ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR’ and started dancing, taking selfies. After around 30 mins we returned to our hotel and took nap.

DJ Nights at Ridge

Punjabi Tadka Nights

1st Jan

We planned to go to Jakhu Temple. God saved our lives and it was a New Year first day morning so we thought to thank the God personally ☺ Now we have two options either go by Taxi or go on foot. It’s a 30 mins walk but not on normal plain road. It was a steep road.
But I motivated both of us to go to temple on foot. We started at 9:30 am and reached to temple by 10 am. It’s a beautiful temple with a big statue of Hanuman ji.

Hanuman ji Statue

You will find a lot of monkeys there who will be doing some naughty activities, drinking water on their own by opening the tap, eating the chana from our hands. But we need to be very cautious from them as in front of us they stole and splited the bags from many people. Seriously we were scared ☺ Not much crowd so we got the darshan very easily. After spending some 30 minutes in the temple premises we started moving downwards to our hotel. It was around 11 am.

We tried to book Toy train tickets but our bad luck we didn’t get any. All trains were heavily full so we thought to do taxi. We packed our bags did the breakfast and checked out from our hotel. This time we took the lifts near Mall Road to reach main road. The lift cost Rs. 10/- per person plus extra Rs. 10/- for luggage. After taking lifts we reached to main road and went to Taxi Union office to book a taxi back to Kalka to catch our train. T

he taxi was booked in Rs.2100/- We got seated ourselves in car and started our journey towards Kalka. Our tickets were booked in Himalayan Queen in CC coach which was already standing at Kalka station.
The start time was 4:55 pm and planned reach time to Sarai Rohilla was 10:40 pm. We got inside the train and seated ourselves in our respective booked seats.

We had our dinner in the train only and slept for a while. The train reached to Delhi at around 11:45 pm. We then booked our Ola cab and returned back to Noida at around 1:30 am.

Finally, we reached our home safely. And we were satisfied that we enjoyed our New Year celebrations. Thanks to all my blog readers for your patience ☺