"Sometimes all you need is good friends and a full tank of bike"
The quote says it all. Same happened with me for this incredible journey from dehradun to shimla to kufri and back to dehradun. when its the final year of your graduation and you get a long weekend, however you couldn't go home when all your friends were visiting their hometown. Sitting in hostel on 1st Oct evening when you get a call from your seniors of law batch who also have their final year, sharing a thought for a road trip to shimla and asking you to join in.
When you have a bike in your college days, you can never afford to say No for Road Trip. The instant plans are the best plans which are made. Next morning when you are up and ready to leave by 7 am in the morning and you don't get an update from the seniors breaks your heart into tiny pieces. Waiting for 30-40 mins to get the call back from them after calling them for almost 5-10 times at 7 am. Me and my junior(Divyansh Jaiswal), we went back to our bed to have some sleep, as sleep is the constant thing you can enjoy in college time. Suddenly, getting a call at 9 am that "Get Ready, we have left from our home and reaching your place in 10 mins" said Bedi Ji (Anuj Bedi, one of the law senior). We were all geared up for the trip, we only knew the destination but not the route and the conditions. Our first stop was at Paonta Sahib Gurudwara which was around 60 km from our place "Nanda Ki Chowki". Taking blessing from god is also important when you are going on a long routes like this. The highway was really great from dehradun to nahan which is about 84km of stretch from our shelter in Dehradun. October is the winter session in hill stations and when you going high on altitude you can actually see clouds touching you, but this time it was fog with hardly 5 metres of visibility ahead. From nahan to solan is another 87km route, highway on the route was so smooth other than a patch in between when we had to cross jungle area. That patch was having so many pot holes and this made our speed to reduce from 80-90km to 30-40km and took around 1-2 hours to cover that area. Solan to shimla a stretch of around 45km is when you can see a good crowd moving to and fro of shimla and being a delhite we could witness and easily recognize alot of cars from delhi going to shimla for the long weekend. It took us around 8-9 hours to reach shimla, we started to search for a hotel and going from one hotel to another we found a cheap hotel "Sasta, Sundar aur Tikau". Travelling this much distance on bike is a hectic task, and then it was time to have some party tonight but guess what...it was 2nd Oct (Gandhi Jayanti) which is a dry day that brought dryness on our face. However, we managed to get things worked out by asking the manager, "Is there any setting, we are thirsty" the manager took it in other way too. In the end we got what we were looking for a bit expensive side but still affordable for a day along with good food we munched on.
Next day, we planned to go to kufri a 15 km ride from shimla, it was indeed a chilling ride. On this route we saw alot of localties with Yark, where people can pay to get a photograph clicked with the Yarks. On reaching kufri we have to climb to the top point known as "Mahasu Peak" where we had to ride a horse to reach that point. We enjoyed maggi and other games as well on the view point with alot of photos over there. 20Rs maggi will cost you around 80Rs there, that's the surplus charge they take to carry and serve hot and delicious "pahado wali maggi" at that point. But being in hills if you don't eat maggi, then a void is left in the trip. The best part is while coming down from the mahasu peak, Bedi ji had a fear of riding his horse as the horse was not walking properly, that was the funniest part of the trip, he came down walking along with the horse. We went back to hotel, took some rest and then went to the shimla church famous from the "3 Idiots" movie and we were figuring out to see Rancho's house too. It's always fun in roaming around the cities like shimla in night as well, you get to see good food joints and explore the famous mall road as well. When these two, Bedi Ji & DJ, went to explore more about shimla. Me & Sethi ji(Aadep Singh Sethi, 2nd senior of law) we went to have our daily routine food of chicken with the settings, being punjabis is also a fun. We went out for walk post dinner and enjoyed clicking alot of photos.
Third day, we started to move back to our home in dehradun. It took us 4-5 hours this time to cover the entire distance as moving down the hills always take less time.
By afternoon we reached back with alot of memories and pleasant road trip covering a distance of 461km in 3 days and passing by Paonta Sahib, Nahan, Solan, Shimla, Kufri & Back.1
