These photo looks so calm and serene yet the story behind it is so stormy and turbulent-
Initially, We planned a trip to just Manali for some treks but because of the snow (and our poor planning ofc), the treks were closed off by the authorities. The next day after some sightseeing, We stayed at a hotel at 11,000 feet at Sissu for the night. In the morning while taking a shower, I got an idea in my mind. I asked Pawan, oye Spiti chale ( wanna go to spiti ) and he is an adventure freak ,he just said YES. (We never say NO to unplanned trips xD) now for the non-travellers-
Any sane person travels to Spiti from Manali via the Atal Tunnel. This is because of two reasons-
1) the distance is shorter.
2) the roads are well maintained.
But, in March the roads are closed off because of the heavy snow.
So the only way to reach Spiti was via Shimla. The route to Spiti from Manali is 1/3d of that from Shimla via Manali!.
It was natural for me to vacillitate between the two options- head back home
Or take the risk of driving my rusty old Wagnor on unknown roads for about 400kms.
The mind said no but the Adventure worm inside us said ( LIve your life boiiiss ) and thus our new journey began.
We set a deadline to reach Kaza ( spiti ) in just two days. we left Manali that morning itself and travelled through broken roads, super heavy traffic and never-ending sharp turns. We were only able to cover around 250 km on our first day, thanks to these roads. The next day we covered 236 km from Kasog to Pooh .
It was at Pooh that we first realished that maybe we were pushing our wagnor a little bit too far. The reasons to quit were plenty-
1) we were driving an old and decrepit car
2) the road were treacherous.
3)the nearest fuel pump was 210 km awy from us. Our car had only 10 L of reserved petrol.
Yet again, we decided to leap forward.
We had to cover bout 150 km to reach kAza, a task we thought we could manage easily. But a surprise was waiting for us, and it wasnt Pleasant one .
After Pooh,we were welcomed by shooting stones(loose stones that fall from the mountains at very high velocity) I could see Yarmraj himself whenever I saw these stones rolling towards us as if we were their only target.
Dashing and dodeging all this , we pressed forward and finally reached our final destination.
