I have already resigned from Adobe, the current being my last week in office. Because of this, I don’t have a lot on my plate and was heavily bored before I, in almost desperation for change, left for Kasauli last Thursday at about 4:30pm. Kasauli was there in a small ‘drive destinations around Delhi’ list that I maintain- I ‘picked’ Kasauli from that list, mainly, because driving there would be a 2-day trip which was all I was looking for in the crude summers.
The (really vague) plan was to reach Kalka (which is about 300kms from Noida) by 10 or 11pm, crash at a cheap hotel (which I was to find after reaching Kalka), leave for Kasauli on Friday morning, stay there that day and leave for Noida very early on Saturday morning. I did reach there at about 10pm on Thursday. Before leaving Noida, I had hurriedly SMSed myself a list of phone numbers of a few hotels in Kalka hoping that this list would help me later in the night to find a decent place to stay- using that SMS, I found a cheap-cum-okay hotel room for six hundred bucks.
Next morning I left for Kasauli. It is about 30kms from Kalka and as I had already read somewhere on the travel forums long ago, there is absolutely nothing to see or do in Kasauli! The mall road is very short and there is a place called Monkey Point which, again, gives just a usual view of the mountains (one another possibility might be that the place may not have appealed to me as much because I was there at about noon when the sun was up). There are other spots as well, such as Lover’s point and Sunrise (and Sunset?) point but I didn’t have the motivation to go to these places. The best part of Kasauli as a tourist destination, however, is that it is not as crowded as are Mussoorie and Nainital, probably because it is still not that popular.
In the mall road, I found a Pink Floyd t-shirt, which I had wanted to purchase from a very long time, for just 350 bucks- it wasn’t exactly peak season for the hill station because of which the bargaining part with the shopkeepers was hassle-free. After that, I lunched at a very popular restaurant called Shan-e-Kasauli or something- the food was genuinely awesome. I dropped the idea of leaving on Saturday, left Kasauli at about 1:30pm (which means I didn’t spend more than 3 hours there!) and reached Noida by 9pm or so.
The driving conditions are good for almost the entire part. Still, the return drive was, by far, as uncomfortable as the one from Mussoorie. What happens while returning from somewhere is that you keep counting the kilometres left for reaching home and keep telling yourself to carry on for just so and so kilometres more- at least this is what happens with me. And then, the places you find near Delhi, except for the Himalayas, are just (below) average. What is, then, the point of suffering severe body aches just to spend a few hours at a place which wouldn’t be worth it? For this reason, I have decided to give the idea of solo road trips a rest for some time. The next destination, I hope, will be Leh sometime next year!