Well, I’m back from a super vacation. Probably the wildest one I’ve had till date.
I can categorize the vacation into two phases.
Phase1 – A normal, easy trek organized by Youth Hostel Assosiation, India around the Dalhousie base camp.
Phase2 – Insane! 
Varun, Uttaran, Ozzy and myself boarded the Delhi train on the 21st. The journey from B’lore to Delhi was pretty uneventful. We played cards and chit-chatted a lot to pass the time. We also had an elderly couple for company and they taught me a few nice card games. Also a lot of interesting stories came out, particularly from Varun 
Reached Delhi. Cheezo joined us from Pune here. We had a whole day to kill, before our connecting train to Pathankot. So, we just roamed around Delhi like zombies and had a major foodie day, tasting all kinds of stuff. Sadly, our local boy Uttaran did not find his bearings right and he dint take me to the much promised ‘Parathe wale gully’ in Delhi, although the non veggies had a field day hogging at the Karim’s :-/ (they cooked for the Mughal Emperors).
Took the night train to Pathankot (don’t miss the awesome yogurt and aloo paratha here) and took the morning bus to Dalhousie. Dalhousie is a clean, cozy little town with amazing scenic beauty. The Youth Hostel base camp is very close to the bus stop. The most impressive thing about YH is that they are extremely well organized and keep time. You also get excellent 3 course meals, generously served. And piping hot tea.
We were joined by Cheezo’s friends Hemanth, Arvind and Mini at Dalhousie. The trek spanned over a period of 4 days, beginning with acclimatization on day1, when we had to get up at 5am and stretch our lazy bones with streneous exercises! Day2 was our trek to Kalatop. It was more of a hike than a trek. But, the surroundings were heavenly. Kalatop was the highest point that we reached during the trek.
Next stop was Khajjiar. This is called the Switzerland of India. It truly is an amazing place. Supposedly an asteroid has struck this spot in the forest and so we have a huge bowl kind of a region with a crater at the center, filled with water and absolutely no vegetation in this bowl except lush green grass.
The next day was our hike to Chamba Valley. The route from Khajjiar to Chamba is a photographer’s paradise. Uttaran and myself, being photography enthusiasts tried to exploit our cameras to get the best out of this place. But the beauty of this place simply cannot be captured by a camera. Nevertheless, you can check out some of the pics I took here. We reached Chamba, and roamed around this moderately big city. The next day we were transported back to Dalhousie Base and we say bye-bye to Cheezo and his friends. End of phase1.
We decided this trek hasn’t excited us enough and we wanted some real action! So after a lot of running around enquiring at the Himachal Tourism dept and some research on the internet, we decided to go to this tiny village called Coogti. The reason why this decision was unanimous was….bears! The guy at the internet parlour had been to Coogti village the previous year and he had taken some gorgeous pics of huge brown bears! We had a rush of adrenaline and decided we had to do this, despite warnings that the road to this place might be totally blocked because of snowfall. So we take a bus to Bharmaur, which is a mountain village enroute Coogti. The road to Bharmaur is very very scary! Trust me you don’t want to be driving here. Narrow road, deep deep ravine on one side and huge rocky mountain on the other side. Quite treacherous. Bharmaur is the last bus stop and there are no buses to Coogti, which is still 30 kms from here. So we convince a jeep guy to take us till Dhalaul where the jeep track also ends. We are still 6 kms from Coogti. Now we are in bear territory. So we start walking, trying to make as good a progress as our heavy backpacks would allow before darkness envelopes. I must say, this is one of the best sceneries I have ever seen. Absolutely untouched by any kind of commercialization and so pure and its all nature.
We finally reach Coogti after a hard 3 hour trek uphill, and the very kind forest guard let us stay in his house, gave us hot rotis and a cozy room to stay. We were extremely thankful to him. I’m sure we’d have frozen to death otherwise! Sadly, we were told that this is the time when bears hibernate and so we wouldn’t be able to spot any. We thought nevermind, this place is so awesome and totally worth all our efforts. Next day afternoon we left this place and started our trek back, and after a roller-coaster-ish bus ride, we reached Chamba. This was the 31st night. We caught a bus to Amritsar at 11pm and spent the beginning of the new year in a rickety old Himachal State Transport bus, shivering in cold! Spent the new year at Amritsar visiting Golden Temple, Jallianwallahbagh and Wagah Border, and returned to Delhi the next day. We had a full day to kill before our Rajdhani at 9pm. We were supposed to meet Prerna at Noida, but we ditched her and watched Madagascar2 instead.
This was one of my best vacations – thanks to Varun, Ozzy, Uttaran and Cheezo!
