Roadtrip Day 36: Dharamshala - Bir - Mandi [Apr 13, 2021]
The day that made me feel like riding in Switzerland. Also a day that reinforced my belief in destiny & whatever happens, happens for good.
Because of party & some heavy drinking the previous night, I woke up late & a bit of hangover. I got ready to leave only by 8:30 or so. While Praveen, the owner of the homestay where I stayed, insisted on staying one more day, I realized that my trip is already very elongated & if I intend to do Nepal, NE India etc, I should probably hurry. I have anyway seen Rakkar & Dharamshala before, so I decided to pack my bags & leave.
The place I stayed is Pahari Niwas Homestay in Rakkar village, very close to Ghommakad. Praveen, the owner of the place, is a friendly guy & I would totally recommend staying here. It is a rustic setup with a stream flowing nearby, a farm adjacent the place & some cattle. There is a local dog named Bagu who is very friendly. There is ample parking space as this is a homestay right in the village. You can reach Praveen at 9882817429
I asked Praveen as to how much to pay to which Praveen said, whatever I like to. I paid for Rs 250 through Phonepe & I did feel like I paid less. I dont think Praveen even checked the amount.
Praveen had to leave for the day as he also supplies milk to places nearby & I headed out thinking to stop somewhere nearby for breakfast. As soon as I was on the main road, I saw Ghoomakkad Rasoi . I always wanted to stay/experience Ghoomakkad & decided to have my breakfast there. I went inside to meet Alok & Sonali who were running the place. They later told me that it is no more Ghomakkad Rasoi & it would be renamed to The Fat Teapot (thanks to Sonalini for correcting the name of). Knowing that I am on shoestring budget & dont want to stuff myself, they custom created mushroom toast alongside some salad for me, for Rs 100. My first thought on entering the place was - this seems expensive but then since I started to have conversation with Alok & it was an interesting one (Alok & Sonalini relocated to Rakkar from Gurgaon to live a life in mountains) made me stay & talk with Alok more. I wish them good luck for their venture & would recommend to stop by if you miss the tier 1 city food in the mountains.
I started to ride towards Mandi at around 11:00 AM. I realized I was still hungry & the hangover made me have a tea again. I stopped at a roadside shop & after having tea, figured that I do not have change for the tea. The shopkeeper did not accept phonepe/paytm. A person there said he would pay for me. I thanked him & went to my bike. That is when, he asked if I wanted to eat & then offered me some beer (he has opened a beer bottle & hid it). I thought, just for the sake of experience, lets have some. I said ok & decided to drink a little. Now I realized that he was drunk but nonetheless, his generosity did made me feel obliged. His name is Chunnilal & I asked for a pic with him. I said I would send a link of my blog to which he said - dont send me any link. I then realized that how, people are scarred of links & they lead to scam etc. I took a pic, thanked him & continued my journey.
I soon reached Yole which was a cantonment area & from there, started the best ride of my life.
The roads were amazing. The views were even more amazing. I realized that I did not have to put any extra effort dividing my attention between the road & the scenary. It felt like I was one with the road, scene & the bike. For a moment, I thought, woh - thats like I discovered bike meditation. Or maybe, the previous day whisky hasn’t worn out till then. Whatever it is - I decided to enjoy the feeling rather worrying about the reason behind it. I also thought about destiny. When I had to ditch Saach Pass route to Manali, I was dejected thinking I missed out on a great experience. But then, I felt, whatever happens, happens for good. I would totally recommend riding on the route from Dharamshal to Palampur (if not Mandi). While Laddakh, Spiti etc are great places, the riding experience is full of adrenalin & (lets be honest) the roads are painful. But this road, is .. for lack of words .. orgasmic .. for a rider, is what I would say. While on the hills, you ride painfully slow on lower gears etc, the ride on this stretch was comfortably done at 60 kmph with some awesome curving/cornering. I also happen to saw some riders on this stretch. There was a MH number bike. There was a solo biker who was fiddling with his map wearing a poncho. I could not click a pic though. I wanted to have conversation but guess, destiny had other plans :).
I crossed Palampur market. Also crossed this prominent Bullet repair shop which is on the main road itself. It had name of the local riding club on it.
After Palanpur, the road continued to stay great & scenes fantastic as ever. I passed some tea estates. I stopped by to have sugarcane juice there just to click pics.
Soon I was crossing Baijnath temple. I was about to pass by but then, I happen to remember my conversation with CP’s (a friend) parents in Chandigarh where they mentioned 12 jyotirlinga & Baijnath (or Vaidyanath in pure Sanskrit) is one of them. I checked the place on Google & apparently, someone has said, it is NOT among 12 jyotirlinga. But googling elsewhere confirmed. So I decided to visit.
I took my bike in desginated parking area & I was charged 20 bucks. On asking for receipt, they said, it is only for cars & this payment is unofficial. I did not make a fuss. The place was surprisingly very less crowded & there was no ‘pundit menance’ which I had earlier experienced at Pushkar as well as Ajmer. I felt happy that most Jyotirlinga temple in India are kept free from this menance (I experienced no issues in Somnath either). I went inside, saw the Jyotirlinga, meditated a bit sitting on the side (this is my regular ritual to absord energies .. or just figure out if the place is conducive for me or not) & started back. There was a path to ghat nearby but I did not go there. Again relied on my instincts.
I continued further & came across a sharp U turn where it was pretty scenic & I clicked a few pics there.
I had put destination as Bir on my Google Map & I reached a place where I had to take left turn to go to Bir. I stopped & while I was fiddling with my map, a guy named Kuldeep Rathod, curiously asked if I am traveling all the way from Karnataka. It turned out that he works at Pune & Bir is his hometown. He had driven his car from Pune to Bir & has been working from home since May last year. He asked if I want to want to eat local Himachali food & I said a firm yes :). Next we were sitting at DFC (Dimple Food Corner) & had some local food/thali. First it tasted bland but by the time, I finished it, I was longing for more. I did not decide to eat more for the fear of feeling drowsy during the ride. Later, Kuldeep bhai also gifted me the Himachali topi, not to mention, he only paid for the food. The free food legacy had continued for me :). Kuldeep asked me if I want to do para gliding. Considering my shoestring budget, I said no. He gave me contact of one of his friend named Goli (9816925470) who would do it for 1.5k+. He also sent me his facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/Golithakurbirbilling/ . I told him I would mention it on my blog for anyone looking to do paragliding in Bir.
He also suggested to visit the landing site just to see the paragliding & then continue on my journey. I found the location on Google map & headed to the place. Bir reminded me of Manali with a lot of cafes & hostles dotting the place. At landing site, you can not park on a certain stretch as it might obstruct landing for gliders.
After stopping for 10 min, I headed back. At a crossroad from where I took left for landing site, I decided to go deeper into Bir, just to check the place (I got some internal calling maybe). I saw some tea estates & it looked like a good ride. I went around a km deep & figured that there is nothing much. I turned around & stopped by at a roadside shop for tea. I could see a lot of locals sitting there.
While I was sipping tea, one person there looked at my bike & we got into conversation. He asked if I want to paraglide & I told him about my budget. He said, he can offer it for free & that got me interested. He later told me that I would only need to pay for the car that takes me to Billing (it was 16 km uphill) & for the pilot who would be with me while gliding. I thought, maybe, my destiny wants me to paraglide & I said ok. Soon we were driving uphill to Billing.
On the way, I figured the person’s name is Shiv Singh. I forgot the name of my pilot. We talked about the cost of the gliding kit which was whooping 4L+ with flying hours of around 400. Quick math revealed that for each gliding session of 30 min, the cost of kit itself would be 500 bucks. The pilots train for like 5 years before getting certified for tandem flying. They deserve at least 500 bucks per session. The uphill car ride of 16 km would cost around 300 bucks at least. So that is like 1.3k bare bone cost. If they want to keep a margin, a cost of 2-2.5k look justified. But they seem to be getting lot of competition from other gliders plus the number of visitors have been dwindling. I felt sorry for them.
My first experience reaching Billing & while getting ready for takeoff, was, feeling of fear. I saw some folks taking off & it wasn’t that smooth. I had this nagging feeling what if the glide topples & you crash as soon as you take off. Below is how one take off before me looked like.
At this moment, I decided to trust folks & surrender myself to them & their mercy :). ‘Ab vo & bhagwan hi malik hai’ is what I said to myself & got ready to take off. My takeoff was pretty smooth & like how in the plane you realize after sometime how you have come very far from the ground, it was similar feeling for me. But as soon as I realized how high I am in the air, the fear kicked in. I suddenly gripped the side of the glide with all my might. I tried having conversation with the pilot to divert my attention only to figure that I might end up distracting him . I also realized it by answers that I was getting from the pilot, which were either yes/no or very succinct.
After like 20 min in the flight, I realized that we were not descending while folks around us were. At around the same time, I felt jolts & realized that we were going still higher. I was shit scared but I did not want to scare my pilot (or make him feel that I am which might just increase the overall scaredness of the group). I kept silent. After like 5 min of managing to fly at the same place (or going higher), we finally started descenting. Only I know how thankful I was to God when I realized we were descending. At some point, I was thinking of jokingly telling my pilot if they going to charge me more for increased flight time. But I could not muster courage to talk. Since this was a discounted flight, I was not given the gopro to record video. I had thought of clicking a pic on landing but with all the flight-fright, I was just relieved on landing & only remembered to click pic much later.
I was taken to the same tea shop where I had parked my bike. I would recommend Shiv & his team for gliding. They actually gave me a longer flight compared to other folks who took off later than us but landed earlier. Although I would have been perfectly ok if we would have landed earlier too. Shiv is reachable at 9882245816. While leaving, Shiv recommended visiting Jibhi & I made a note of it. By 6:00 PM, I left Bir to reach Mandi. I had decided to stay in a prominent Gurudwara at Mandi before heading to Manali next day.
I reached Gurudwara (details of it in next post) at around 9:30 PM. I was made to deposit Rs 200 & the room that I got, was ok (not great). I was first asked to take my dinner which I gladly did. Around the time, I discovered that my MI watch is actually missing & I was just wearing the band (the watch had come out & fallen somewhere). I tried looking it up around the bike parking area & inside Gurudwara but could not find it. Finally I attributed it to my destiny & decided to go back my dinner at Langar.
I was fairly tired as the paragliding was fairly tiring (or maybe too much of Adrenalin for the day). I was also a little skeptical of taking bath in common washrooms as this was a heavily populated Gurudwara unlike the one at Pathankot. I decided to call it a day at around 10:30 PM. The plan for next day was to get up & leave for Manali. I had also completed around 2.5k kms since the engine work & wanted to meet a mechanic to get opinion on my engine oil status.