A drive to remember

Hello, friends. We are sorry for the lack of updates after we reached Manali. We had very little time and very long distances to cover. Hence, the negligence towards our blog. But, now, we have finished our target, reached our goal and also reached our homes. So, we will now endeavour to upload all the information and pictures as soon as possible.

Day 13: 17/9/2011:

Waterfall on the way from Manali to Chandigarh

We started from Manali at around 7 am after having our breakfast and changing the spark-plug for one of our bikes that needed some mending. It was a lovely morning and we decided that if the weather and roads support us, we should try and reach Delhi, which is about 500 kms from here. So we set jet-setting off along the lively river Beas, enjoying the most beautiful, scenic and picturesque environment ever! The early morning fog swirling on the river was an arresting sight. Kullu is 40 kms from Manali and the river stilled and slowed down a bit here.

Finally, after crossing Bilaspur, the ghats gave way to the National Highway and we crossed the border to enter Punjab from Himachal Pradesh. Thankfully, it wasn't raining at all and we could move faster. Until now, we had enjoyed the wonders of nature in it's full glory: the high altitude desert, the rivers, the valleys, the various-coloured mountains et al. Now was the time to enjoy the wonders of man's innovations. The National Highways were so good, we just zoomed past everything in a jiffy. We crossed Chandigarh, ther capital of both, Punjab and Haryana states (Manali-Chandigarh: 310 kms) and continued towards Ambala.

Lunch-break!

Lovely roads! :)

We reached Ambala at around 7pm. So, we had already entered Haryana by now. Amabala to Delhi is 200 kms and since the roads were fantastic, we thought we'd probably finish it and reach Delhi tonight. We started towards Delhi and crossed the holy ground of one of the most important battles ever fought, Kurukshetra.One of the imporatnt things about this road is that on this stretch of road, there are lots of Vaishnav (ergo, vegetarian) dhabas which are open all 24 hours a day. We had a brilliantly fulfilling dinner at one of these dhabas.

However, after dinner, we were quite tired. So, we decided to call it a day and stay at Karnal (85 kms before Delhi). Here, we stayed at Hotel Star near the bus depot.