Trip to Palampur – Day 1 - Dharamshala

The trip began with we planning to meet at Madhuban Chowk at around 10 PM. Manas’s flight got delayed and he reached home after 9PM so he said he couldn’t reach before 11. Vikas had to leave his office by the 8 PM bus but he got stuck with his TL and missed the bus (Vikas had in fact not told his TL that he had to leave early and due to that he got delayed). I and Ashish were the only ones ready to reach on time. I and Vikas had planned to meet at ISBT and go together thereafter but being fed up with his 10 mins I decided to go alone. Manas said he wouldn’t reach before 11:30. Ashish said he would be reaching sooner so that I don’t have to wait alone. I reached at around 10:30 PM. Ashish joined soon. Manas came around 11:20 and finally Vikas reached around 11:30. I was the common point between the 4 of us so I introduced everyone to each other. We were going to a hill-station and Manas and Vikas had come without sweaters. Manas was in a T-shirt and a red lower which I began to call as ‘lal nikkar’. Finally we started our journey with Manas at driver’s seat, Vikas in front while me and Ashish at the back. Vikas was given the front seat as he knew the way and was our designated guide for the entire trip.

I and Vikas hadn’t had our dinner so I suggested we stop at Murthal for dinner. Everyone agreed to it but Manas seemed to have other ideas as he stopped somewhere before Murthal and we had our dinner there. We ordered parathas. The parathas were brought with a good amount of white butter on it. I don’t like the butter so I scrapped the butter as much as I could and gave it to Vikas who ate it happily. While ordering the next paratha I asked the guy not to put butter on my paratha. After finishing the dinner we started towards our destination (the initial destination was Palampur but now it had somehow changed to Dharamshala).

We were to go via Panipat, Chandigarh, Ropad, Una and Chamba. I slept soon after we had started after dinner and kept on alternating being falling asleep and waking up. Manas drove non-stop the entire night while Vikas gave him company.
It was pretty cold and Manas refused to close the window. I asked him numerous times to close it but he refused many a times before finally closing it; but opening it at every toll booth. So I was forced to take out my jacket to keep me warm. I gave the other sweater I had brought to Vikas.

We reached Una at around 6 AM. We had a cup of tea and proceeded further. We reached Dharamshala at around 10 AM. We were to look for a hotel to stay. As we entered the city we took a wrong turn and had to come back the whole narrow hilly road which was around 4-5 kms or more. We started looking for a decent hotel to stay in and reached hotel Pong View. We liked the room and we made the hotel guy put 2 extra beds in the room. We settled in there and did the morning chores. Then we ordered breakfast. I wanted it in the room while Vikas wanted to sit outside in the sun. We went with Vikas and sat outside and had our breakfast. Vikas called up Nitin – his college friend – who lived nearby. We finished our breakfast and started playing cards as we waited for Nitin. We were playing Seep Manas and Vikas were partners while I and Ashish were partners. The game was great fun. Manas & Vikas were leading when Nitin arrived. We postponed the game and got ready to visit some places.

Nitin took us to Macleodganj. There we went to Bhagsunath temple. I and Manas didn’t go inside as we hadn’t bathed while the others went in. Then we proceeded towards a waterfall which was an attraction there. First we went down where the water was flowing. We sat there for sometime enjoying the view and having the snacks and drinks we had brought with us. Then we went to the waterfall. It was a nice view where people were clicking snaps. We too clicked snaps. We were all hungry so we ordered magi. It was the worst magi I have had for a very long time. While other s managed to finish theirs I and Vikas left ours. Then we came down to Macleodganj. There we had some food (mine was lunch while others had some snacks :)) at an Italian restaurant.
Then we went to visit a mela. It was the first time I was visiting such a mela (I have been to Kumbh though). It was so crowded I can’t tell you; it felt like we were in the crowd of something like a house full in an India-Pakistan match. The others had the enthusiasm to take a ride (jhula) while I just stood there thinking of when we would leave. Finally we left the mela in sometime. Nitin had met his other friends and stayed back while the four of us came back.

We decided to have dinner before we went back to the hotel. We chose a place for dinner and ordered our drinks and then the main course. The restaurant looked good but the service was pathetic. It took them close to 2 hours to serve us our dinner that too after we threatened to leave. The food was good though but we had enough of that place. And in between we had an argument with regards to the next day’s plans. I wanted to finalise a tentative plan as to where we would put up in the night. I was in the mood of going to Palampur after we returned from trekking so that we could spend more time in Palampur (which was the place where I wanted to come) but considering that Manas would have to drive after doing the trekking I suggested we might stay in Macleodganj as well. Vikas wanted to stay atop in Triund at night; his plans were to have a drink at night and wake up early to enjoy the sunrise. Manas said he cannot finalize anything and that things would be decided on the spot. Ashish refrained from saying anything. Things were heating up slightly between Manas and me but it was usual between us :).
Finally we came back to our hotel. We decided to continue the card game we had left in the middle. Vikas protested as he wanted to sleep but we forced him to play. He seemed to be sleeping as we played. As we played we saw a wasp flying in the room. There was a tubelight outside; so we decided to open the door and close the light so that the wasp goes out. We managed to get rid of it. We resumed playing. Suddenly we saw that there were 3 wasps flying now and the light outside was switched off. One of the wasps came towards me and I jumped of the bed. As I leaped off the bed my foot got hit to the side of the bed. It pained a little but my focus was on the wasps. We thought of killing them but decided against it as we feared there might be more wasps. So we decided to cover up in blankets, close the lights and sleep as we had to go trekking the next morning. And we fell asleep.