As soon as I de-boarded the train, the first thing visible was army tanks in huge number, so much so that one entire railway track was occupied only with tanks.
At around 2 PM we started our journey towards Mcleodgunj and within the first 5 mins we realized that its going to be very difficult to handle this adamant driver. Anyways we ignored the fact and reached Mcleodgunj at around 4.30PM.
The first thing was to have
lunch. This time I had pre-decided each and every restaurant we were going to
eat at. So we went looking for SEED CAFÉ. After walking around 1 km from the
main square we reached this small & sidelined café. There was nobody in the
café at that time we took one table and the view from the café is just amazing.
Fog was playing hide and seek against those huge lush green mountains. All
fatigue was gone in just 5 mins after sitting there. We ordered some Italian
food and started enjoying the music and view.
Seed Cafe |
After spending an hour there,
Rahul said let me call the hotel guy to check for the route to hotel and to
our shock the manager informed that there has been no bookings done from Expedia against our name. We tried calling
Expedia around 50 times, but no one picked up. After
paying full money in advance they didn’t even bother to inform/block the room
at the hotel. There we were, in the middle of the busy Jogiwara road, with no room and almost all hotels being sold out.
At the back of Seed Café there
were few hotels so we went to check in each one of them, just to try our luck.
Finally we got a room for one day in Hotel Moon River. I literally loved the
room as it had green and refreshing view from the balcony.
We decided to take a walk along
the market and trust me it was a very good experience to walk around the lively
and colourful market having shops of antique/junk jewelry, colourful shawls and woollens, trekking/camping
materials, food stalls/ restaurants and what not. I just loved it!!
After spending 2-3 hrs shunting
in the market we decided to have dinner and there were so many good options in
Mcleodgunj. One can easily get confused where to eat and where not. Finally we
decided to eat at Clay Owen at Main
square. The ambiance was rustic with clay walls, wall hangings made out of wooden clogs, bamboo
shades to hold the bulbs emitting yellow light, open ovens to make wood fired pizza, Tibetan style seating and the soft relaxing music being played at the
backdrop. All this made it a very relaxing and soothing place to have dinner. There is a small sitting area in the balcony of the restaurant also where one can enjoy the dinner. We
ordered some thai curry & rice +
khotey momos both of the dishes were delicious and till date I regret not
ordering Waffle with ice cream and Chocolate sauce, as it was looking so
tempting and every single table on the restaurant had that dish. Anyways
we summed up our dinner with that thai curry and rice.
We spent our rest of the evening
roaming around the market area, observing people and chit-chatting amongst ourselves and soon we were off to bed to get a good night sleep.
The combination of cool breeze and bright sunlight gave a refreshing start to a new day full of excitement to complete the trek (Triund) which was left unfinished last time as we took the wrong trek and had to return from the jungle at the night. But first we started-off with some local sight-seeing, which included the Church, Dal Lake (dont go there) and few other points.
The combination of cool breeze and bright sunlight gave a refreshing start to a new day full of excitement to complete the trek (Triund) which was left unfinished last time as we took the wrong trek and had to return from the jungle at the night. But first we started-off with some local sight-seeing, which included the Church, Dal Lake (dont go there) and few other points.
For Triund one can start trekking
from Dharamkot itself/ or hire a vehicle and go till Golu temple and start the
trek from there. It is not exactly a trek, but a hike to a fully carved stone path, with a
lot of broken stairs. If you start early then it's doable in
one day (to and fro). The only troll is the huge broken stairs which drains some energy out
of you. There are two midway cafes on the route where you can get tea and basic
stuff for eating. Lot of horses (carrying various stuff) climb up the hill
along with you. One need to be careful of them, as one of the horses which
overtook me got misbalanced while climbing and fell rolling down into the
valley.
You will find 4-5 small shops
selling almost everything you might need during the night stay at top of the
hill. They even arrange tents and sleeping bags, but it’s better to carry your
own as availability of those depends on the number of traveller staying there. During
the right season the entire hill is full of tents so much so it becomes
difficult to get a place for your tent. So the place is fully crowded if you
are looking for secluded place for trek then this is definitely not the place. If
you want to trek further, one can go to LAKA Glacier (8Km up and down from
triund) or till Khabrotu (4 km up and down from triund) those must be less
crowded.
Triund Trek |
My Camp |
Sunset At Triund |
Though our driver wasn’t
interested to go to any of the places we wanted to see. He tried his level best
to spoil our mood and negating to drive to each possible place. It’s a lesson
learnt for lifetime whenever I will go on such trips I need to ensure that I
get a good driver with bearable attitude.
As a result I was in fully attentive mode and was tracking our car's movement(through GPS) to each kilo meter driven, as I was afraid he might take us to some notorious place.
Rest of the journey Later..
Beautiful pictures. Thank you for your descriptive post. McLeodGanj is known as "Little Lhasa" or "Dhasa". It is a must visit for travellers who love to spend their time amidst nature.There are many tourist attractions and to know more, explore McLeodGanj places to visit.
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