46 HP-Backpack
A backpacking tour over 3 Passes in Himachal Pradesh ... using Local Buses & Share-Maxx'es.
A non-touristy route from South of GNHP (Great Himalayan National Park) over Jalori-Pass, then crossing Rohtang-La to Keylong in Lahaul and then West into Pangi Valley, almost to J&K border ... and then south crossing over the rarely used Sach-Pass to Chamba and Dalhousie.
The planned route shown as Google Image below. But ended up not doing the bit between Gramphoo & Losar over the Kun-Jum-La Pass.
Somehow all my treks have been mostly in Uttarakhand and all my bus-&-jeep tours mostly in Himachal Pradesh!
So this time too, I decided on a back-packing bus tours to areas of HP that I have not seen so far. Looking at HP map provided the obvious answer and thus the route emerged as shown in the Google Map along side.
24th July 2011: I reached Delhi by Air and caught the Howrah-Kalka Mail at 9:15PM from Old Delhi Railway Station. At 4:30AM reached Kalka and got into a connecting narrow gauge train - The Shivalik Express starting at 5:30AM.
Departing Kalka Station on Toy-train
The toy-train idea was last minute decision to re-do a similar journey, with my two kids, way back in 1988. In those days it was a steam engine, but now its a diesel one.
Was I wrong? ... in this old pic (click to enlarge) it looks like it was a diesel engine in 1988!
Reached Shimla at around 10:30AM and walked into a Hotel - Gulmarg Residency, and got a room for 1 night stay. Tomorrow will start the first leg to Jalori Pass. The diary-logs in sub-pages:
A collection of 4 Albums of all Pictures of this Tour are in this collection:
Looking back at the tail of Shivalik Express
Gulmarg Residency in Shimla
The actual itinerary turned out as:
24th July : Mumbai - Delhi -Kalka
25th July : Kalka -Shimla
26th July: Shimla - Narkanda
27th July: Narkanda - Sainj - Jalori - Shoja
28th July: Shoja - Banjara - Aut - Manali
29th July: Manali - Rohtang La - Keylong
30th July: Keylong - Udeypur - Killar
31st July: Killar (rest day)
1st Aug : Killar - SachPass - Chamba
2nd Aug: Chamba - Delhi
3rd Aug: Delhi - Mumbai
You can download the route KMZ file "HP-Backpack-Route" from the "Files D/L" page here ... and see/fly over the entire route in detail on, in 3D, if you have Google Earth loaded on your computer.