Jispa – It may not be anyone’s dream destination but this place is no less than a dream.
Sometimes it happens that, even for a few days, you want to live apart from this daily machine routine (though it’s a very frequent thought for me). This urge of escaping is so intense that you just leave without thinking about a specific destination, without knowing where you want to go, how you will go, where you will stay, nothing!! You just want to be on a journey.
The journey is what really matters—from where you started and where you end up is all a matter of fact. Whatever you acquire or lose will only happen during the journey.
I sometimes think (metaphorically) that destination is an object which can only be attained by a person named ‘Journey’.
So, with this thought let’s begin our journey of somewhere.
Public holidays on April 4 and 7 meant that if we could take off on April 5 and 6, it would turn into a full week of vacation. Okay, so it was decided that during that week, we would travel to the mountains, but where exactly?? Don’t know, let’s do one thing and travel to Manali and then wherever the roads take us. Planning is done, seriously!!
Rather than the destination we had to plan more about the travel because this time we will be accompanied by a new travelling partner of ours, our Himalayan shepherd ‘Joey’. To take Joey with us we had to go by car, which was a thrilling experience for us too as it was quite a long journey.
Let’s Hit The Roads
With all the stuff by which we could think of to be fully self-sustainable (food, tent, water cans, camping stove and yes Joey’s food and accessories too) we started our journey on the 4th at midnight around 1 am, just as we were about to reach Kurukshetra it started pouring heavily so we decided to take the halt at a Dhaba till the weather got cleared, so we parked our car in the open area around Dhaba, flatten our seats and slept in the car itself.
Around 6 am in the morning, we woke up and by then the rain had also subsided, from there we started and stopped directly at Mandi (all because we took that halt and got the sleep we needed). After crossing Mandi’s long jam (which took almost an hour) we finally reached Manali at around 3:30 pm.
Manali or I should say Southern Souls, a new synonym of the place for us. Whenever we are in Manali, the first stop must be Southern Souls. So as per the ritual, we went there to satisfy our South Indian foodie soul and to meet with a wonderful host, now a very good friend of ours, Kranthi sir.
After this lovely get-together, we had to find a pet-friendly accommodation and we finalized the hotel Apple Flower, located in Old Manali, it was a fantastic stay with a very generous staff. We got the room on the 5th floor and the view from there was like cherry on the top, on one side we could see the Hampta Pass and on the other mighty Himalayan range of Rohtang Pass can be seen, just AMAZZZIINGGG.
Where To Go Now?
Early in the next morning, we had our Tea, Coffee with the spectacular Himalayan view and then decided to head to Rohtang Pass, with this plan we checked out from the hotel and headed towards the Mall road to enquire about the current status of the Pass, from tourist department we got to know that the Pass was not open yet, still, we decided to cross the Atal tunnel to take a closer glimpse of the snow-capped mountains.
Fate has something splendid chosen for us
As we crossed the Atal tunnel, we saw a lot of vehicles going right on the way to Rohtang Pass, we then decided to skip that route and turned left towards Sissu, and wow that decision seriously went well, with very minimal tourists we were enjoying the serenity of the Himalayas.
Then as we reached Sissu we thought why stop here when we could go even further so then we moved ahead and decided not to stop until someone stopped us. We were now super excited with the views and full of enthusiasm as things were going quite well for us, we were taking the right decisions.
Had to stop unwillingly
With all that excitement and joy, we crossed the Tandi, then Keylong and reached Jispa, Woohoo (feeling self-proud). There we stopped for a while at the Jispa milestone to click a few pictures and to stretch our legs.
let’s move ahead (let’s go to Baralacha La now) so, after clicking a few pictures we started our drive towards Darcha, as we reached the checkpoint we had to stop (damn, not now! We need to go further).
Baralacha La route was yet to open after 25th April, so we decide to stay somewhere in Jispa (our initial plan was to camp as we were fully equipped, but during nights, the temperature was going -14 negative), we were now looking for the stay, as it was not yet a tourist season yet. Lots of places were under renovation preparing for the season or closed.
Great view from the hotel room
Luckily there is always an option you’ll find in Jispa and that is Yak Hotel, great accommodation with all the essential facilities. Initially, they were asking RS. 1500 per night but after a little negotiation they agreed to RS. 1200 excluding meals.
To be honest, the view from the room was priceless, it was the best stay we ever had in terms of view, we could see the towering Himalayan peaks from both the windows and the sound of Bhaga River flowing by the side was a nature’s hymn. All together we felt like we were staying in our tent, pitched at the base camp of a summit.
An unforgettable day
The next day we decided to go for a hike by the side of the Bhaga River and spent some time in the lap of the mountains, we packed our day hike backpacks and started. We had to cross the river and that was really a dare to cross such a freezing speedily flowing water, but we managed anyhow (How? let me tell you just a small gag, Joey was afraid of water, after all, he was just a pup so first Surabhi crossed the river and empty her backpack on the other side and came back, then we put Joey into it, she then took him and crossed the river).
We had a great time there, playing fetch with Joey, clicking a lot of pictures, and videos and soaking in the mesmerizing views of the mighty Himalayas which imprinted in our minds FOR-EVERRRR. Just like that, we spent around 4 hours there and then decided to come back as the sun was settling down.
We then again went to the Darcha checkpoint out of curiosity, just to check if they allow us to go further but nope no luck there so, we had Momos there at a cafe and came back to our stay.
The journey is not over yet, these were only 3 days of our travel rest of the days are yet to be explored.…
Read here our next few days of adventure in JIBHI