Road Trip 1 - The Great Himalayan adventure - Part 1

Before I take you through a great adventure in the mountains let me put some points for you to set the expectation

• This is not a nature photography related post wherein I will show all the nature related pictures.
• Words and photos are not enough to describe what I saw but I will try my best. You have to be there to experience it.
• This post will only cover my journey (road trip) to the mountains and mountain life and stuff I saw.
• This road trip will be documented in parts
• This post will have a lot of videos and photo pleasure and you have to follow the series to see and feel what I saw and felt.

It was a random Tuesday night when my wife came home and said "let's go to Tirthan" for a small getaway while we are in India and the plan was set. I did a lot of research about the place and things to do but guess what there is hardly anything to do here. It’s a place to trek, do fishing and to relax. I decided to visit this place for the same reason to RELAX.

We were in total 7 of us (me, my wife, Mum in law, bro in law, Neeta (my wife's childhood friend), Neeta's mom and Neeta's niece) and we hired a Toyota Innova (car) 7 seater and we started from Delhi at 5:00 Am. We took the GT Karnal highway (NH1) and reached Punjab by 12:00 noon. We took an hour break in-between at Amrik Sukhdev which is a very popular road side Dhaba at murthal. If you are visiting Delhi I will strongly suggest to visit this place and try the food there (specially Parathas).

I am sure looking at the photos above you must be tempted to have the parathas yourself. So we started from Karnal to Punjab and it took us 11 hours in total to reach Tirthan valley with lots and lots of breaks in between. This place is hard to find since it is deep inside the mountains but the "google god" knows this place well. Just put the name in google maps and it will guide you straight to this place. We took national highway 21 from Punjab towards Mandi and from Mandi straight to Tirthan Valley. See the videos below of my Journey to Tirthan valley.

Let me take you on a road trip to Himachal Pradesh.

   

You know you have entered Punjab when you see vast open corp fields and tractors

   

Leaving Punjabi and climbing towards Himachal Pradesh

   

Towards Himachal Pradesh

   

Climbing up towards Aut tunnel

   

Towards Aut tunnel

The AUT tunnel on the left (we went straight for Tirthan Valley)

This is a 3 km long tunnel inside a mountain which connect this road to Aut hill station which starts right after the tunnel ends. 

  
Leaving National Highway and going towards Tirthan Valley

There were two places in my mind to stay in Tirthan valley, 1., Raju's Cottage and 2. The Himalayan trout house. I went through the reviews of both the resorts and decided to book The Himalayan trout house because 1.. The food there was amazing per the reviews and 2. the feel of the rooms are very natural. The place is run by Christopher Mitra and his wife Shefali Mitra and they are an amazing host. We loved every moment of our stay at this place. Check out the photos below

Mud house in which we stayed

View towards our left side

The Food

Let me begin by saying that the food is a bit expensive BUT that’s the premium you pay for getting fresh cooked, yummylicioius food at that heights and so deep inside the mountains (yes everything is prepared fresh after taking orders). The kitchen is run by the master chef Prem and the restaurant is managed by Raj and Krishna. Anil is the overall supervisor and is one man for all needs (plumbing, carpentering, electrician etc etc).  The restaurant has a very cosy feel to it and is designed and decorated with a lot of artefacts.

In middle - From left - Raj, Anil, Amrit (BIL) and Krishna (below) and Chef Prem next to Krishna

Activities

As I mentioned above that this place is for people who just want some time away from the hustle and bustle of the city life and want to spend time in the lap of mother nature without WIFI. You can go trekking in the jungle and on the mountains or do fishing. For all these activities you can have guides arranged by the resort. 

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