Duration : 3 days, 2 nights
Starting Location : Chandigarh
Destination : Kasol (H. P.)
Mode of Travel : Bike (Rented from Chandigarh)
Route : Chandigarh -> Mandi (H. P.) -> Bhuntar (H. P.) -> Kasol (H. P.) -> Bhuntar (H. P.) -> Mandi (H. P.) -> Chandigarh
Background
When you want to go on a long bike trip, you tend to turns towards The Himalayas. No matter how many times you have seen the magnificent Himalayas, you always want to visit again. So when we (Me and my friends) started searching for another destination for our biking adventures, we turns towards Himalayas, or Kasol specifically.
We, 6 of us, started from Lucknow on Friday night. As always we booked bikes online well before our travel date from Chandigarh.
Day 1 (Chandigarh to Kasol)
We reached Chandigarh roughly on time, as per Indian railway standards ;), and headed straight to get our bikes, 2 Himalayan – 1 Desert Storm – 1 Avenger. I was excited to drive Himalayan for the first time. We got bikes without much hassle and started our journey around 12 PM.
I had traveled on these roads on multiple occasions so nothing new for us as far as journey is concerned. I was enjoying driving Himalayan, great pickup and good handling.
As always, we haven’t booked any accommodation in advance and when we reached Kasol, it was already very dark. It was tough getting some accommodation in late at night and we were lucky to get river side tents in Kasol Camps, or we thought so!
Camp’s location was awesome, hardly 50 meters from river Parvati, it was a dream location. We booked 2 tents and settled besides river for private bonfire and some food. Now started the sheer display of poor hospitality from Kasol Camps staff. We gave money and they promised bonfire for 5-6 hours but fire just lasted for 20 min or so. When we asked to get more wood, they simply refused. When we reminded our deal of 5-6 hours, they had no answer and started blaming us for making a scene.
Somehow we just ignored this and get back to our dinner. Now they started packing chairs! Why they served us food when they want to pack up dinner table? Again we had a fight but to no good. They were there to make money and they know they don’t get too many repeat customers, at least not us anymore.
Finally we decided not to let their poor hospitality ruin our trip and enjoyed full night. But again, camps location was really awesome.
Day 2 (Kasol to Kheerganga)
We haven’t planned on trekking to Kheerganga in advance. Just after talking to few locals and travelers, we decided to give it a try. We were on strict timelines as next day we have to trek down from Kheerganga and head straight to Chandigarh, that too reach before 7 PM there as bike owner won’t accept bikes after that 🙂
We got up early and got ready. Decided to have breakfast outside Kasol Camps, due to last night’s adventure 😛
After breakfast in local cafe, we headed to starting point for trekking. It was a dam building site 😉 We parked our bikes along side road in front of a local shop. There we cam to know that there are two routes to Kheerganga, one through the jungle and other alongside river. We decided to go through jungle while climbing and while returning back, pick up riverside route.
Trek was very tiresome. As usual we haven’t planned anything booking in advance so we needed to reach top in time so that we can book accommodations. As accommodation were limited and we can see too many trekkers. We decided to split team. I and Pranjal Tiwari went ahead, without any bags, to book accommodation and rest of us, our doctor Kshitiz, Sunny, Himanshu Pandey and Ankur Nishad, took all the baggage.
Trek was nice and nature was at her best. Few waterfalls, proper jungle and few risky corners build by humans without any support or so. We walk for few minutes and then sit down to catch breath and enjoy nature.
We all, specially Kshitiz, were struggling the most with continuous climb. But along the path, had some fun with camera too 😉
Finally we reached at top and this magnificent view welcomed us 🙂
I and Pranjal already reached well before us and booked 2 rooms so we were glad that our decision paid off as till we reached, prices were too high. We settled down and relaxed for a bit before proceeding to explore the area.
Real beauty of Kheerganga trek is a hot water spring at top, where lord Shiva is said to have meditated for 3000 years. No matter how much tiring experience you had, once you step in to that hot water pool, you will forget everything. Just so relaxing and calming. Its so hot that you have to slowly adjust your before jumping in.
After a nice warm bath, we headed for adjacent Shiva temple to offer our prayers and get some blessings.
Temperature was dropping quickly and wind was chilling. There were too much rush and dinner places were limited so we quickly had dinner in open and came back to get a good night sleep, or we thought so :). We were shivering with cold full night and waited for morning eagerly.
Day 3 (Kheerganga to Kasol to Chandigarh)
We all welcomed next day morning and started packing our stuff. We want to leave early as we had a train to catch from Chandigarh that evening.
On returning, we decided to take riverside path and it was full of adventures. There were few land slides which we crossed carefully.
Soon we crossed mighty river over a bridge and headed for a small village. We haven’t eaten anything from morning so we took some apples from locals.
Rest of the descent was not much eventful and soon we reached back to dam construction site where our bikes were parked.
We drove non-stop from Kasol to Chandigarh that day to reach Chandigarh by 7-8 PM, before our train departure time.
I again got into one incident. My bike got punctured. My cell was dead and i didn’t had any money. Lucky for Me, Ankur Nishad was behind me so I found him dragging his punctured bike. As no mechanic was there in nearby area so we hired a mini truck, put bike on it and then searched for petrol pump. After fixing his bike, we drove at furious speed and reached Chandigarh. There itself we got lost and searched bike rental place for good 35-40 min.
Afterwords
Overall it’s around 300 KM, which we covered in around 7-8 hours, with many obstacles, but as always its all well if it ends well 🙂 We get to Chandigarh on time to catch our train. Once we found our seats, everyone dozed off to wake up next morning, still tired 😛
