An accidental Journey Part 1 - At the Beginning

 The Genesis

RAAM Qualifier - Romantika Uz Beas was scheduled for 13th June 2021. This grueling Cycling race was 615 Kms from Hoshiarpur to Manali and Back. But Covid’s second wave ruined the event and was now delayed by a year.

But the hard work I had put in the preparation of the event could not go waste so I decided to do the Chandigarh to Shimla ride with Kanav during the same time. Abhishek Yadav, a colleague at Grofers when heard about the plan, decided to ride down from Gurgaon to join us.

The Preparation

Kanav was really excited to do the trip to Shimla and had pushed himself hard by exercising most of the days in the month of May. I was quite sure that he would make a good headway to Shimla if not able to complete it.

But as the plan’s were undergoing a change, Kanav and Jay were even more excited to do camping during the trip and so Preeti contacted Shankar who helped her prepare a list of important things needed for the camping trip. He even gave his some favourite possessions like a Korean Stove, an Emergency light for the trip. Tried to go as light as possible but still had a car trunk full of bags, tent and cycling gear.

Luckily, I got my car insurance renewed in time and preeti got a quick service of the car done along with the change of windshield from the Motor Market.

The trip was going to be long and Sultan, our pet dog couldn’t be left anywhere so he was definitely going along. 

Just a day before, we realized that we had missed a very important component of our ride - the entry pass into Himachal. I immediately applied on the Himachal website for the pass and voila, in 30 minutes, I had the pass to enter Kasauli. This is when I first realized that the Luck was on our side as Himachal had opened its borders just 3 days before we had planned the ride. (This was our Lucky Break 1 during the ride)

But any preparation is not enough and one only comes to know about it on the road. For I had already left my cycle’s front lights back at home.

The Start

Abhishek had reached Chandigarh by 11th June and wanted to start early. I was a bit hesitant because I had not taken leave and wanted to do it on the weekend so that I don’t have to take more than a day’s leave.

But Abhishek’s persistence made me think out of the box and I decided to work while we rode the cycle. So we agreed to leave on 16th June, Wednesday morning for Kasauli. With this out of the box plan, I decided to elongate the journey and we jointly decided to see if we can push ourselves to go to Manali from Shimla and back to Hoshiarpur. 

With almost no plan in mind but with just an idea, we left our home at 4:30am in the car to reach the Rendezvous point, Command Hospital, Chandimandir and we finally started at 5:30am.