I saw heaven!

Have you ever been to a place, which made you feel how worthless your life has been so far??

After busting my ass for nearly 3 years without a single ‘vacation’, finally, my colleagues convinced me to go on ‘a trip’ with them!

After much discussion and brainstorming, we zeroed on Manali! For someone living in Mumbai in the month of June, any place sounds like a plan!

We decided to book our tickets and travel without a clear plan in mind. Being adventurous is more to do with FOMO.

With a 3 day stay booked at a beautiful hostel in Manali named ‘The Lost Tribe,’ we started our journey from Chandigarh Airport. On our road journey to Chandigarh I realized that every second we came close to Manali, the road got more and more beautiful.

We reached Manali in the middle of the night. While I was dying of cold, my colleagues had already started preparing themselves for the night.

It was a beautiful night indeed. With random travelers and clueless friends, we called it a night after having the most delicious hot chocolate and some chicken biryani.

The next 2 days were all about enjoying the sunny mornings with dogs and puppies all around and visiting a few tourist locations in Manali.

It was Day 3 and no matter how much we loved what we were doing, the social protocol stated we get up and move! Hence we decided to head to Kasol. Having heard many good things about this place, I had some really high expectations. Unfortunately, the moment I stepped in, I knew that I will never like this place. My friend and me immediately decided to head back to Manali, and by evening we were back to our Manali hostel. We reached Manali at around 10 pm. Clueless about how we will spend the next few days as the rest of our group had decided to stay back in Kasol. Not thinking much about it we decided to call it a day.

Just when we were about to go to sleep, we realized that few boys from the dorm next to ours were planning to leave for Spiti Valley in the wee hours of the morning. As the most unexpected twist of things, we decided to go along with their plan.

With just a few hours of sleep, we packed our bags and headed to Spiti. The journey to Spiti valley ( for those of you who don’t already know) is considered to be one of the most dangerous ones ( we were oblivious to this fact). For a stretch of around 200 km, there are no roads, people, street lights and the worst of all, network on your phone! You are literally in the middle of nowhere with just mountains and the sky accompanying you. Scary as it may sound, it is probably the best place anyone can ever see. Besides the sky and the mountains, we also had a bunch of localities from Spiti guiding us in this journey.

After having a bumpy ride for 8 hours and no sleep, we were exhausted by the time we reached Spiti. We all decided to rush to our dorms in one of the best hostels and just crash. The name of our hostel was ‘Zostel’. By the time we woke up it was late in the evening and all the other fellow travelers were already bustling with plans for the next and while enjoying the very cold weather and some hot Maggie.

That night we made a few friends, completely unaware that it was a beginning of one of our most beautiful journey together which will always be extremely special to all of us.

The next morning the 6 of us head out to one side of Kaza for sightseeing. Since the initial plan was to stay in Spiti and head back to Manali the next day, we could only cover one part of Spiti. But the second we stepped out and looked around, we just knew that we had to stay there longer. On day 1 we saw some of the most beautiful things my eyes have ever seen. ‘Key Monastery’ ‘Kibber’ ‘Komic Village’ to name a few. Day 1 was a dream and Spiti Valley was heaven. Each second felt like living inside your desktop wallpaper, with no filter scenery and friendly people and the most delicious local food.

Nothing could ever get better than this. Or at least that’s what we thought. On our way back, when we were at the highest post office in the world “Hikkim”, I was so cold that I knew I will die in Spiti (not that there was anything to complain about). Just when I was breathing my last, I saw a SNOWFLAKE! Okay, so for some of you this may not be extremely exciting. But for someone like me who has waited for 29years to see snow, the happiness of seeing that one snowflake can never be put in words! By the time we realized what is happening, it had already started to snow. We immediately ran out of the car screaming and laughing.

After enjoying ourselves in the snow, which by the way was ‘first’ for all 6 of us, we headed back to our hostel. At night bonfire rescued us from the chilly night. While others decided to spend the night by smoking some weed, the only thing I wanted to do was to wrap myself in my blanket and hear the sound of ‘absolutely nothing.’ With no phone beeping, no horns, no neighbours yelling, it was the best night of my life!

The next morning with the dipping temperature, I realized that my jacket will not be enough to survive. Since we didn’t know what to expect from Spiti, we went with just 1 Jacket to a place with 4-degree temperature.

That morning when we left for Manali, I didn’t feel any pain of leaving Spiti. For I knew, that this place, the people, the friends we made and the memories we created will always live with me and will be a part of my life forever.

Here are few more glimpses of Spiti Valley and my journey, that I would like to share with you all.

P.S. – I have promised myself to visit Spiti Valley once more in my life. And this time, spend more than 2 days there.