First trip to Apple country via palace town and back

After getting in some work at dharamshala, we headed out to Mandi. Mandi, the land of palaces is most beautiful. Most amazing is Indra market which is a 2 level market above which is the road and in the centre is the garden which has a clock tower. Mandi has this annual gathering which sees big bollywood/Hollywood stars perform there. Unfortunately for us there was no performance for us to see. Just some palaces, prominent among being the Rajmahal palace which is a hotel now. Wining n dining Maharajah style was pretty cool.
We then headed out to Kullu via Palampur which has some amazing tea estates and there’s also the Lama college along the way which provides this most enchanting view, all captured in my photo album.
The road from Mandi to Kullu is very beautiful. Along the path flows the Beas which originates in Manali. Kullu involved a lot of work though we did visit Manali which is part of our market. Manali is situated about 2000 mtrs above sea level which means it snows here in winter something I really want to experience.
The tour ended with a trip to Ludhiana and a stay at Fortune Klassik, which was pretty fundoo. It also had me hitting the gym after ages. Felt great. The trip to Ludhiana was via Chandigarh, which meant a visit to the cellar, which is a nice little pub. There was also breakfast at CCD, something I’m desperately missing in North himachal. I also visited Friends Dhaba which had these butter rotis which were very different. Unlike the normal butter rotis which have a dab of butter in between the Roti. These Rotis had a little roti with a huge slab of butter in between. On top of it each dish had an equally large slab of butter on it. Sinful, you bet. It took me all of 5 minutes to clean the roti of all the butter. I’m rally not a health freak, but that much butter no way.
Then back to Jammu where there is loads to work to do, and of course the wait for a Sunday to myself.
States visited this month: J&K, Punjab, Haryana, HP, Maharashtra, Delhi and Cgarh (UT).
A long interesting and fun tour

Luv,
P.R.