Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Travelogue - Shimla 14-16 Aug 2012 - Day 1

Shimla is approx 3 hours journey from Chandigarh. However, we had lot of time, & wanted to enjoy every bit of journey. We started at about 10:30 in the morning. The weather was good. Although monsoon season, but it wasn't raining when we started. Packed all the necessary stuff. Since we were not going to stay in a hotel, instead my cousin was our host, so there was no worry even if we left out something.

i10 - Ready to Cruise


Reached Pinjore at 11. The completion of Zirakpur-Pinjore-Parwanoo National Highway has made travelling on this route a breeze.

Zirakpur-Pinjore-Parwanoo Highway



This road has been named as Himalayan Expressway. The rate was Rs. 23 for single journey and Rs. 34 for two way trip for LMV.

The newly constructed toll plaza.


We took a halt at Pinjore, where my cousins joined us. Left Pinjore to Shimla at 1:15 PM. I was eager to drive on the newly constructed Parwanoo bypass.Tourists traveling to Shimla by road will now be able to experience a smooth ride with the opening of this 10-km express bypass, which would help them avoid traffic snarls on Kalka and Pinjore Towns. This bypass is really an engineering marvel. It is a clear departure from the shoddy construction works that are common in India and shows that India too is capable of building  world-class infrastructure, provided no greed & political meddling comes in way.






It started drizzling while driving through the bypass.


The bypass joins the road from Kalka, just before Timber-trail resort(TTR). TTR is a popular ropeway system in this region and a stopover for tourists heading towards Shimla.


It was raining hard now, and driving had be be careful especially on hilly roads. Thankfully, NH 22 is wide enough & well maintained, till Shimla; so driving was not much of a problem. NH 22 is 459 km National Highway that runs from Ambala through Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh up to Khab on the Chinese border in Himachal Pradesh.

The zig-zag road till Shimla mostly runs along the famous Kalka-Shimla rail section, a World Heritage now. At many places the rail line runs parallel to the road. One of such stretch is near Koti. And woah!! the semaphore was down, indicating that train was soon to arrive. I thanked my luck & started waiting.

Koti - Tunnel No 10


There are over 100 tunnels in this rail section, that add joy to travelling by toy train.

As the luck had it, the raining got harder & harder and I had to get back to my car. And exactly at that moment the train arrived. I hurriedly switched on my camera, but wasn't very lucky to picture the train.


Dagshai Cantt Area



4 comments:

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