Chapter 8: Driving to Switzerland of India

21-Aug (Tue)

Amrithsar

Khajjiar

Amritsar - Pathankot – Khajjar

7 AM

8 PM

219 KMS

Day began with a pretty jittery note. It was almost after 3 days we got to sleep well and we had gained the badly needed rest. However, it was negated in just a few minutes as we came out to pack our luggage. We had a flat front left tyre for reasons unknown. Spent almost 40 mins in replacing the spare tyre. It was the same case with the Scorp. An alert light started blinking on the engine dashboard and it did not turn off for quite sometime.

Route map of the day

Started off towards Khajjiar the destination for the day. We could get our tyre repaired at Pathankot as Scorp got its needed treatment from Mahindra Service station. It was drizzling all stretch long once we crossed Amritsar. Driving on a new road with changing lanes (as road broadening was going on) and rain added an additional challenge to keep up the pace to be on schedule at Khajjiar. It was at Pathankot; we missed a turn and landed up in an unexplored stretch between Pathankot and Dunera. (The other road would join this stretch at Dunera)

Came across the lush green mountains of Himachal and had fun in a waterfall that extended onto the road. Had good time driving through the slush, clean tarmac and some landslides cleared stretch. We took an abrupt lunch stop at around 4 PM and as we drove into Dalhousie, the cloud cover and drizzle strengthened. We were driving through clouds with visibility as less as 10 meters. The un barricaded road provided additional challenge to maintain the lane as well as maintain speed to reach our destination. The ambient light too was deteriorating as we were at the dusk of the day.

Drive from Dalhousie Cant. to Khajjiar posed its own set of challenge. Similar roads as we cross all the while, but with a higher gradient and single lane. It almost took and hour for us to drive the last 10 kms of the day. It was around 8 we reached Khajjiar and check in into HPTDC Hotel DEVDAR.

The day did not end there. Avinash was bent upon seeing a HPTDC hotel / house that he had come across in a travelogue on the net. Even though he did not know the exact location, a general information that we had was it was around a place called Khajjiar lake, and all our GPS devices were indicating that we were around Khajjiar Lake with an accuracy of around 1 km. So we knew that we were near it and search in the morning would be an easy one.