Moved to Mountains | Waking up amongst the misty & snow-clad mountains | #NewYearsEve

On a random evening in December 2020, Abhay popped the idea of moving to the mountains. At first, I thought he is not serious is where I agreed and said, ‘Why not?’ Who knew, what future had in stores for us. After processing the thought, we further went ahead and started discussing the ‘elephant in the room’ meaning how did we make this happen?

Moving base from one location to another is never easy and amidst the pandemic was all the more difficult. And, it wasn’t easy leaving a full-furnished house in Bangalore to move to a place lesser known to us and more importantly, ‘where to move’?

Considering travel has started to slowly see the light of the day is where we looked for places from our bucket list like Ooty, Coorg, Goa, Gokarna, Manali, Shimla and everything else. In short, the list was long and choosing 1 was 1 hell of a task. After a lot of contemplation, we booked a one-way ticket from Bangalore to Delhi.

Now, the main problem is yet to be addressed and we scout through AirB&B, Google, MMT & what not to find a home stay in all the chosen places but guess, Abhay’s mind was fixed in Mountains.

Took help from Google and had a map of Uttrakhand, HP, and J&K laid out in front of us is where we started to circle all the possible places where we can move. Drilled down to some and started narrowing the search with certain unsaid criteria but nothing helped.

So, we decided the odds of moving to the mountains and wrote them down. After a lot of deliberation, we decided to take this as a month-long vacation and if nothing works out then we’d return to our base. Worst of all, we’ll return within a week if things don’t favour (and, by things, we mean WFH scenario, weather, COVID complications et al.).

Narrowing on the place was getting a bit of a challenge and we searched all possible videos on YouTube around the same context and even messaged them on their social profiles to know more. Sadly, nobody did respond (we understand!).

So, we fixed a budget of no more than 30k for a furnished house and nothing beyond. Things started to fit into the puzzle, this helped us pick some AirB&B from all the shortlisted cities and a series of conversations with them to discuss the place, whereabouts, and everything else started.

Still, the list was endless, but booking a 1-way ticket, has sort of helped on a start date (i.e. 30th Dec’20) so anybody who couldn’t accommodate us from that date was again out of our list. This had further filtered our list and we (somehow) stumbled & agreed upon ‘Himachal Pradesh’.

And, long story short, Manali was our first choice and hence the move. We discussed with few AIRB&B owners and finally agreed to rent this house.

Now, moving from not so cold place (Bangalore) to an extremely cold place wasn’t an obvious and easy decision for me but they say na, all the things you do for love. So, I was ready to bet my life on this decision and explore the new year 2021 from a new angle.

I ordered and scout through all my woolens and maybe we’re over packed. It’s like entering into an unknown territory of cold and you want to make sure you have your guards on, all the time. Period.

The final leg of the journey was still pending from Delhi to Manali is where after a lot of discussions & debate, we agreed to take a bus ride.

We started from Bangalore, early morning or rather in Midnight around 3:30 AM to board a 7 AM flight to Delhi. After reaching Delhi, we had a set agenda to meet some friends and then board the bus to Manali from Majnu ka Teela.

Another stupid thing happened, we’re in Gurgaon and we planned to drop my sister to her college on our way to bus stand is where I miscalculated the total run time. Uber also delayed like usual, and we boarded from Gurgaon around 5 PM to catch 7:30 PM bus. This travel calculation was wrong at so many levels as we’d planned to go from one part of the NCR to another. And, as you may have guessed, we had to drop her midway and still couldn’t reach the bus stand in time (all thanks to crazy NCR traffic). Called the bus driver/ coordinator on our way and could reach by 8 PM.

The bus journey took a toll on us as it took 18 hrs to reach Manali, we reached by 4 PM. It seemed to us that whole of Delhi NCR had collided their travel plans with us and going to Manali. Anyway, we’re dead tired and just took a taxi home to reach the place after 36 non-stop hrs of travel. Speculations and anxiety were still there so we’re ok to take a risk and let go of the house in case it doesn’t fit our bill even after moving here but ‘O Boy’ we’re in ‘love at first sight’.

Right after a quick shower, we wanted to see what Manali had in store for us and trust us, it didn't disappoint at all. We’re all set to welcome the New Year 2021 into a new place and in new outlook.

Weather was sub-zero but our enthusiasm & energy was rock-high. Fast forward to midnight, new year start, the whole Manali was lit like Diwali and sound of crackers all around.

If truth be told, never had any New Year Celebration this quaint yet charming. Next morning, we woke early for sunrise but the city of valleys had different plans for us so we went for a small hike. Again, it surprised us and made us fell in love with our decision to move.

A whole day went just like that, eating at some of the famous eateries and roaming on the Mall Road is all we could cherish on our first day of arrival.