MANALI.a winter paradise 🏔✨

Hello friends, first of all wishing you all a happy new year 🥳 and may this year brings happiness and new opportunities into your life.
So on 1st of January me and my friend Gaurav decided to take a road trip to manali. It’s a small city in Himachal Pradesh. manali is famous for it’s beautiful valleys 🏔 and mountains. I wasn’t able to post it earlier due to resource credit issues.

This trip was an unexpected one, gaurav called me to wish me happy new year and while we were talking he just said we should go on a road trip. At first I laughed and thought he was joking but later he convinced me that he’s serious about it and tomorrow is also a holiday, as on 2nd January it’s Sunday. So I agreed to it. I packed my bag and went straight to Chandigarh sector 43 bus stand. Gaurav also reached there after some time. We meet up and then decided to visit manali. You can reach manali via road 🚙 as well as via air 🛫.

We decided to go via road. Via road its 304km one side from chandigarh to manali. We booked our volvo tickets and took our seats on the bus. Me and gaurav than started to talk about how we used to be back in the days and look at us now. Gaurav Gupta is my childhood friend. We both were in the same diploma college Dr Bhamrao Ambedkar Government Polytechnic Ambota and he was also my roommate. Currently I’m pursuing M.Tech in Transportation Engineering from chandigarh university and Gaurav is placed in Tiger Analytics. We started our journey from Chandigarh at around 11:45PM and we reached manali in 7AM.

resort in manali

The weather in manali was very cold 🥶. It temperature there was only 4 degree celsius and no shop in manali mall road was open. So we decided to direct hike towards hidimba devi temple. its 1.5km from mall road manali. You can also reach therir via car🚙. We reached their in about 20-30 minutes.

view on hike towards Hidimba devi

wild forest towards Hidimba devi

Hidimba devi temple was built by Maharaja Bahadur Singh, and this structure has stood quite some tests of time. It’s one of the many hidden gem of india🇮🇳. This temple is locally known as Dhungari Temple,also known variously as the Hadimba Temple. The people of Manali worship Hidimba devi as a goddess. During Navaratri the Manali people worship Hidimba devi. You can see a line of people outside the temple, but the crowd grows during the Navaratri period. Every spring, the Hidimba devi fair is celebrated by the locals.

jai ma hidimba devi🙏🏼

We visited the temple and did some meditation for some time. Then. We decided to click some pictures of ourselves to remember this beautiful moment we are in and to always cherish it.

https://instagram.com/__.thedarkhorse?utm_medium=copy_link

After successfully completing our visit to hidimba devi temple we went back to mall road manali. On our way back we saw some yaks, they were looking very beautiful in the morning.

Then we saw a shop titledbikes on rent. We immediately went to the shop and asked the owner about the pricing. We took a Royal Enfield 350 for 1000INR for a day. The bike company will only give 1 liter fuel and rest you’ll have to fill according to where you want to go.

We reached mall road manali. By this time most of the shops were open. We did our breakfast and decided to head towards solang valley. Firstly we filled fuel in our bike worth 300INR. In india the rate of petrol per liter is 95INR and average of Royal Enfield 350 is 20kmpl. We started our journey towards solang valley it’s 11km from manali

We started our journey towards solang valley. We reached solang valley in a hour. From there we decided to go Anjani mahadev . We reached anjani mahadev base camp in 10 minutes from solang valley. We decided to park our bike and then decided to hike towards anjani mahadev

The hike from the base parking to anjani mahadev is only 1.5km. But you also reach there via winter bikes. They charge 1500INR per person. As we were hiking we enjoyed some splendid view and clicked pictures of each other.

On our way we stop to eat some food. The owner of the shop was a simple hard working himachali guy who work there with his son. We chatted with them. And they eat our food. It’s was a nice experience knowing these people. These people really touched my heart.

We reached anjani mahadev in noon. In anjani mahadev Icy Shiva Lingam is formed from October to March. This manifestation of Shiva is due to the penance of Anjani, the mother of Hanuman (the monkey god of Hindu mythology) devised here. This place was discovered by Guru Baba Prakasprijima Haraj after God's vision. Today, a beautiful temple decorates the grounds and is home to the Holy Hermit (Sadhu), who is willing to welcome all.

It was a divine experience visiting Anjani mahadev. on our way back i made a new friend also. He was a cute little guy who loves to say hello to guests❤️

We also tried skiing ⛷ and i have to admit I’m very bad at this. But non the less I tried.

And here’s a pictures of our smiling faces ❤️

From there we went straight to Vashishtha temple’s hot spring
We reached there in 30 minutes. And enjoy hot water spring.

After this we head back to Manali mall road. We had our dinner in cafe 1986 with live band playing. If you’re ever in manali I totally recommend you to visit cafe1986. It’s a cool place to chill at. We enjoyed our rest of the evening there and then went back to chandigarh in the midnight.