Day 1.
The time was 6:45 pm. Nine young men were slowly assembling near Connaught Place. Their purpose... to usher the new millenium atop the snow clad Himalayas. Thier destination Manali - the abode of Gods...Devbhumi.
Indranil is the shortest in the group....but that doesnt stop him from having lofty ambitions. He thinks he is a class apart, listens to boyzone and western classical music with the same passion and has this yen for branded designer labels.
Sanjoy is the rebel without a cause....tall dark and lots of attitude.Likes to wear boots, rides a yezdi and the life of any group. Surprisingly the only married guy in the group.
Raja the efficient secretary from Arnab’s office is the outsider. He is from a village near Chennai. Soft spoken and unassuming he hides his emotions well. But cant resist the lure of snow eight Bengali co traveller notwithstanding.
Arijit is the normal nine to five guy who just wants a break form his daily routine. He still misses college life and thinks life is great when you are with old friends.
Arnab the oldest in the group is the eternal optimist who thinks life is basically pretty boring unless u try to liven it up with some moments worth dying for.
Roop is the nice boy of the group. Always trying to say the right thing at the right time , always smiling and trying his best to fit in sometime successful sometime not.
Decent chap but not much of individuality.
Dashu is gentle giant with a penchant for cooking and gossips. Nowadays he is daydreaming about the girl he is supposed to see when he goes home.
Amit is the cool & casual civil engineer with plenty of wisecracks and jokes to liven proceedings.
Suman is a bit of a character. He is the typical Bengali traveller with his muffler wrapped around his head and tied neatly near his left ear, hands in his jacket. He walks in small determined steps, speaks little and smiles a lot. Nothing much is known about him beside that.
So now that the travellers have some flesh on their bones lets embark on
our journey. The Bus to Manali finally took off around 7:30 pm hurtling
through the mist ridden highways. First stop was at Karnal around 11 pm
for dinner. The whole dhaba seem to be lifted from a ghost story.
Nothing could be seen five feet away from oneself, people emerging and
disappearing into the dense fog around you. Anyway we did enjoy the hot
paneer and roti served. The bus soon roared to life as the passengers
came back and we resumed our journey.
Day 2.
The fog delayed the bus considerably and our nine intrepid finally reached their destination next day afternoon. It was a bright sunny day with glorious blue sky creating a perfect backdrop for the mountain peaks around with their gleaming snow crowns and majestic beauty.
After considerable value engineering the group finally decided on Hotel Diamond. However unlike its name the hotel is pretty modest in its appearance and facilities. Indranil seem slightly annoyed by the choice of the masses but choose to go along as a favour. A quick bath and change of clothes later the group came out for lunch. Nine hungry men did made one restaurant owner very happy that day apart from showing three chickens the stairway to heaven.
Time to visit the reigning deity of Manali - Hidimba Devi, mother of Ghatothkach. The actual temple is made of wood and resembles a pagoda. The deity is a metal engraved face placed ingeniously below a rock so that visitors bend their heads to see it. Lights lit up the structure as it became dark. The whole temple complex is inside this wood full of tall pine trees. The spotlights along with tall columnar tree trunks around did create an ambience worth experiencing. Two majestic yaks were standing in front of the gate with their owners urging ppl to sit on them and snap a pic. Suman didnt want to miss this opportunity and promptly climbed one of the yak. Soon everybody followed and yaks got blinded by flash lights. It was fun.
How to end a millenium? Any ideas guys? Hmmmmm. Hey whats that?....... Millenium party Rs 200/ head dinner and dance.....shall we? Why not? Tickets got booked. Time to lift our spirits up. Old Monk with coke seems right for the occassion. So nine men raised a toast sitting inside a cozy hotel room in Manali....Y2k here we come....clinking of glasses and bottoms up. Bottomline after raising the spirits eight Bengali and one Tamilian went to enjoy a party hosted by a Himachali. Big hall. Wooden flooring cleared for dance. Bhangra music bellowed from a sound system at the corner. A bonfire happening in the lawn outside. But not much of a crowd. Anyway we got a reputation to uphold. So after a few more pegs just when Arnab and Arijit was inching towards the dance floor the lights went off. @#$!@#$!
Anyway after a short session of antakhshari with some families near the bonfire the lights came back. Crowd not much to talk about.Mostly men that too drunk and middle aged. Two or three couples. And the nine of us. Anyway there is a time to dance and there is a time to criticise. So we did dance and were just feeling the mood when the lights again went off #@!@#$%^&. This time it was for a longer period. Dejected we finished the dinner. At least we can tell our grandchildren we had a candlelight dinner the last day of the millenium....:-). The light finally came around ten minutes before 12. So we had our last waltz or is it tango...or whatever shouting ourselves hoarse on the stroke of midnight. One confession. Sanjoy and Amit did manage to kick the ever smiling , over enthusiatic, one of its kind manager during the last dance on a bid to take revenge for the disappointing arrangements. He doesnt seem to mind that and kept on smiling.
Day 3.
A new dawn, a new beginning, a new millenium. Well since it hasnt yet snowed in Manali and the weather seems fine we decided to visit Rohtang pass. Its supposedly around 13000 ft high and covered with snow. As the bus drove up the mountains, binoculars emerge to see the surrounding peaks. The road slowly turned pretty treacherous. Its the stretches of solid ice on the road which caused a lot of hearts to skip some beats. So each time such a stretch appeared the driver waited till the whole stretch is empty, muttered a prayer and then went ahead. The whole bus wobbled up and down precariously everytime before reaching safely the other side. Arnab and Roop sitting on the driver’s cabin got a ring side view of this and still count their lucky stars that they are alive. In fact a pool over a river was damaged causing all the vehicles to cross the actual stream directly. Living la vida loca.
Reached Rohtang finally around 3:00 pm. A white carpet of snow greeted us. For ppl who are seeing snow for first time the sight is pretty impressive. As we went down the white slope to frolick in the snow a strange sight could be seen. Indranil along with a local ski instructor was giving his best shot to learn sking in ten minutes flat. Well it cost him 100 bucks but the unanimous opinion was that the money could
have easily been recovered if we took it from the ppl watching the performance being enacted in front of them by the duo. Initially Indranil was trying to ski leaning on the instructor and then when he was shoved from the slope he promptly fell down flat on his back. Sanjoy immediatly took some snaps of the prostate indranil to record the event. Then after lot of pulling he finally got up and again fell down.
This went on for quite some time after which the instructor scolded indranil for exactly five minutes and then departed taking his 100 bucks. Soon happy hour came to an end and nine very exhausted men reached their bus. After another thrill ride down the way finally the bus returned to Manali.