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Saturday, March 2, 2013

First time in snow.

Himalaya had always been an attraction to me. Now, that I have come to Delhi, it is fairly near than from my home, in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. Last Friday we heard that there had been snowfall in Manali. This again raised our spirits to go for a trip to Manali. Our spirits had been raising frequently all winter but many things kept us away from going. Having got a PhD position abroad, my friend said that if we won't go now, we won't be able to go anytime. Therefore we decided to go out for the trip on the same weekend. He got some information about the bus services and one day before departue we changed our destination from Manali to Chopta which was relatively less visited by tourists.
Thursday night we called 'Dada', our third friend who is doing his doctorate in IIT Roorkee and told him to come to Roorkee bus stop on Friday night. He told he had to go to lab on the weekends.  said that I knew he wasn't going to go to lab. He laughed and found the time to come. Of course he had to take permissions from his guide by telling him that he was going to Delhi to meet his cousin.

Friday evening after the lab hours we packed our sweaters and spare clothes and went towards Srinagar (Uttarakhnad). Dada joined us in Roorkee. We reached Srinagar in the morning and enquired about the bus stand to Chopta. People told that the way to Chopta is blocked by snow and that we could reach there by another way via Rudraprayad. At Rudraprayad we got a jeep up to Ukhimath. There we came to know that the way was blocked even from here. The jeep driver told us that he could take us to a place called Bend from where the snow starts and where we could even find small rest house.
The path was scary as there had been a lot of landslides. We even talked of walking the way back down. As we were reaching Bend the rain started. Going up higher and higher the rain drops falling on the jeep window were becoming gel-like. Soon the gel-like drops turned to feather-like snow flakes. We were in the snow fall.
Stopping at Bend we quickly ran for shelter in the small hotel (It was like a small shop that served food) because we had cotton sweater. The hotel owner gave us raincoats made of polythene) It was safe to walk in the snowfall now.


We kept our luggage in the small room which they provided and walked up the road. Its hard to explain further. The photos can tell a much better story.