Sometimes a random call can turn into a road trip that becomes one of the best part of the life. Same happened with me back in 2013 winters.
Sitting in my hostel and wondering about the semester exams. There came a call from one of my friend from delhi - Sneh. "Hey buddy, Where are you? I came to Dehradun for an astronomy session and I am free tomorrow. Lets plan and go out somewhere" Said Sneh. Winters in dehradun are always pleasant & cold, the hilly areas near dehradun always turns into snow covered terrain. There we thought of different options and concluded it by finalizing "Chakrata" to visit. He was accompanied by his another friend and they were on 2 bikes, guess the bikes ? Let me tell it was Honda CBR 250cc & the other one ?, it was Hero Passion Pro. The journey started in morning 9am, when they picked me up from my hostel and we headed up towards the destination. We took a journey of total 190km from dehradun to chakratra and back to dehradun. Sunny morning with sweating ride turned out to be a chilling route when we were reaching chakrata, 3-4 km before chakrata we were able to wittness snow on the sides of the road. On reaching chakrata, we could see the place was completely white and covered with snow. Scenic beauty and view from that place was mesmerising, standing at the view point and looking at the himalayas always gives me goosebumps. Photography being mine & sneh's passion we were carrying our camera and we started shooting each others photo as well as the view along with the video shoot of complete ride. We reached the chakrata cantt area and inquired from the localites for the route whether we can go ahead or not as that was the highest point of that location. Unfortunately, we couldn't go beyond that point and we started returning back.
As there is a saying, always take the road which is less travelled. We did the same thing this time and rather than going on the road from where we came, we went to the other road. And that was the biggest mistake which we did because that road was totally snow covered with almost of 1-2ft heights. We started moving on that road but our bikes were slipping on snow.
3 People, 2 Bikes & 1 Snowy Road that was the story which was being created there. We were pushing the bikes on the snow because the moment we accelerate, the rear tyres started slipping and rather than moving ahead it was throwing snow on us. It took us almost 4-5 hours pushing our bikes to cover distance of 3-4Km. When our bikes were slipping how can we expect any other vehicle to go on that road, then we saw an alto car on the same road and the travel companions in that car were pushing it to cover that road. The relaxing point came when we saw a Maggi point on that road. Maggi Points are like the heart of mountains when you are hungry and can't find anything feed yourself. Totally exhausted, we all sat there and had our maggi with that awesome view of snow capped himalayas, we relaxed there for almost half an hour to regain the energy and hit the roads again to kick start our return journey.
So sometimes a small mistake can give a better experience as well as can take all of your energy. Riding back with the body ache & completing the trip of 190 Kms in almost 9-10 hours, we reached back to my hostel area & on reaching there we had proper food on that day.
Bidding adieu to the friends and reaching hostel and sharing the complete day with roommates was even more fun and definitely made them jealous about the trip. 1
