Trip to Chail-Sangla-Narkanda

This has been one of the most memorable trip full of adventure and beauty… While I was planning for trip to Himachal I stumbled upon a place called Kalpa in Kinnaur. More I read about it , more interested I got in it. There was a catch though.. road to the journey is quite rough…well I thought of giving it a try….We headed late night from Gurgaon and reached Chail in the morning..People in Chail advised us to stay overnight at Chail and then head for Kinnaur.

Chail had a very pleasant weather and it really felt nice being in quite, calm and pleasant weather away from hot weather in Delhi. To our surprise we were able to find a decent hotel though we had not done any advance booking…

Next day we left for Kinnaur. It took as 8 hrs to reach Jeory from Narkanda-Rampur. Although we were travelling on NH22 the road was really bad at couple of places..From Jeory we had to take a decision to either go to Sarahan ( 1 hr) or Kalpa (4-5 hrs). People had adviced us to go to Sarahan which is similar to Kalpa and is called as gateway to Kinnaur.

We reached Sarahan at 2 PM but I quite did’nt like the place.. I was expecting something more for the 8 hr drive we had taken from Chail….We decided to go down and head for Kalpa..

As we headed for Kinnaur.. real adventure started.. Road was very narrow.. almost cutout from rocks… one could see deep valley on one side and rocky mountain on another side.. Unlike Chail …Kinnaur is not green… Has couple of orchards on its way but not as green as thick pine forest of Chail..From Wangtoo things started getting crazier… Absolutely no road, Sutlej on one side and along side Hydel power projects by JP Group… JP Group is in process of widening the road…The road is prone to landslides..All the way from Wangtoo to Karzam…we were thinking.. what shall we do… Taxi driver was looking at us ..as to what are we doing? where are we making him drive upto..?…From Karzam…Sangla is 16 km and Kalpa is 30 km.. It was getting dark and we had to decide between the two?…We choose.. Kalpa… Way from Karzam to Kalpa is really really really dangerous… 7 km on our way to Kalpa.. we saw a landslide.. Our taxi driver insisted that he cannot cross it as the car will get stuck…I insisted.. let us try… we tried.. and car almost got stuck..we decided to turn back…no knowing what to do… it was too late.. and we could not go back to Sarahan….we thought of giving Sangla a try?… Luckily… we were able to reach Sangla although road from Karzam to Sangla is also very dangerous…

As we reached Sangla.. we were greated by breathtaking view of Kinner Kailash…It was really amazing.. Our hard work had paid.. there aren’t many good options to stay in Sangla.. but it is fine… I wanted to go to last village of India ( Chitkul) but Nikki was already terrified with where I have taken her.. and did not want to go…

We headed next day from Sangla for Chail… On our way.. we found a very good camp with tents and log huts in Narkanda and decided to stay there.. This was again a very different and unique experience..We stayed here for one night and headed back to Gurgaon the next day:)