Have you ever thought of blissful serenity which will always stay on some part of your mind once you experience it? Do you want to taste life with all ingredients like peace,calmness,patience,relaxation?
Well, I can give you an address, but make sure you will check that by yourself.It will be a part of you before you know it.
Yes , you can guess the name from the title of this travelogue, but you can never guess the experience it is going to indulge you in.
Let's begin with the story of my journey to Kasol, also known as The Mini Israel of India.I am going to share my experience and all the details of how to get there.
Bon Voyage
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Obviously I am starting with the details of how I began my journey, but I will try not to bore you with unnecessary informative details. Let's concentrate on the useful ones till it comes to the engagement with the nature and its bliss.
We, a group of five people, started our journey from Kolkata. To get into Kasol, the best place for arriving at is New Delhi. So,we took our train to Delhi and reached there around 18 hours later.
From Delhi, you have several options to reach Kasol, you can rent a car or you can take a bus.Bus services are provided by private volvo buses, government services like Himachal tourism,state bus etc.You can book bus tickets using PayTM,Redbus,Makemytrip etc etc or you can book it from inter state bus terminus.We took a metro to reach Kashmere Gate metro station which is nearest to the bus terminus.You have to look for buses which goes to Bhuntar, which is 31 km away from Kasol.It will take around 1 hour from there to reach Kasol.
We took a state bus to Bhuntar and later came to know that the bus will take us to Kasol. It was a 10 hours journey from Delhi to Bhuntar. After making a stop at Bhuntar, it took around 1 hour to reach Kasol.
The journey from Delhi to Bhuntar majorly includes highway scenes, some motels to stop for the night if you are travelling by a car, until we reach Bhuntar. After that, the beauty of the nature started to engulf us, surrounded by rocky mountains high along one side of the road and soulful flow of river Parvati on the other side, way way down below. It seemed like Kasol is welcoming you by all of its blissful beauty and gentle touch of calm nature.Welcome to mini Israel of India.
Welcome to Kasol
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Kasol is famous for its peaceful nature, unconventional cafes, staying right beside Parvati river and not so crowded atmosphere with an assuring license to roam here and there safely.
It is like your own village, you can roam about taking paths beside the river and go deeper into the jungles surrounding the river, but you will always find a cafe or camps inside the jungle. The cafes are run by locals, very good people, who serves you all kind of foods, right from simple noodles to Israeli food, Italian breakfast,English breakfast etc etc.
We roamed about here and there in the village, hopped one cafe to another cafe to experience their unique ambience and food.Trust me, cafes are too good for people to sit calmly and enjoy the food, each one having unique nature of atmosphere.
You can sit on the rocks beside the river (be careful though) and enjoy the beautiful genuine light and sound played by mother nature.You can walk away and away following the path beside river bank.We found more cafes, camps,people while walking the path beside the river.
Here I want to share some information that we found helpful for everybody.Kasol is getting crowded with more and more tourists and thus more and more homestays, so if you truly want to enjoy the peaceful nature and ambience, we advise you to stay at Challal, the other side of Kasol. One side of Parvati river is Kasol and the other side is Challal connected by a bridge which everybody use to walk from here to there. We stayed at Challal and walked deeper into it, later we crossed the bridge and did cafe hopping in Kasol.
There are several good cafes with psychedelic ambience, for example, JimMorrison cafe, Bhoj cafe etc.The Alpine Cafe is the one that sits just beside the river and it is open air cafe, a breakfast in there is like a perfect good morning, don't forget to try that one.
We took our time and sit on the rocks beside the river at afternoon.It was so peaceful and silent, you will learn how to remain silent for a while and enjoy the sole being of yourself. The only sound that we experienced then was the flow of the river, like a flow of serenity making its way through the cacophony of my mind until a steady silence makes my mind stable and peaceful.It is hard to explain the feeling of being there.At evening, on the way to the cafe we stopped midway and watched the river flowing calmly, there was no light on our way, the only light guiding us was the astonishing glow of moonlight, it was really a great ambience that I still can not believe experiencing by bare eyes, it was soothing to both eye and mind.
Journey to Malana
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The next day we started our journey towards the beautiful world of Malana, claimed to be the oldest democracy in the world. Trust me, you will experience a whole different world isolated from rest of the civilization.
We rented a car from kasol and stopped in front of the gate of Malana village.From the gate you have to walk almost 45 minutes along the slopes going high towards Malana village.
When we reached there , we felt like somehow we have time travelled from current world. They have their own culture,very own social structure, unique language and style of interacting with people and yes,of course the best hash in the world.
The village is very small,you can have a look over all the village within a 45 minutes or 1 hour walk.You will come along temple of their powerful deity,Jamlu baba.The structure of the temple and its peaceful existence will make you freeze for some times.Touching the structure is prohibited for the people who does not belong to the village.It is also forbidden to touch the people over there( you can not shake your hand with them nor you can pass your money to the shopkeepers hand to hand). Though they communicate with tourists in Hindi language, they have their own spoken language which is years and years old and they still communicate in their own language among themself.
Their social structure is not run by government, they follow the rules and regulations set by their old deity whom they respect by heart.There are sayings that they are the descendants of army of the Alexander the great.
The people over there are very nice and it is a bliss to watch their ambience and style of living.You will also feel to have time travelled if you reach there.
However,there were so many cafes or home stays , currently you will find only 3 home stays as functional, at least we found only 3 during december.
You can try as many hash as you wish as it is their pride and glory to cultivate those finest products in the world.They are very confident and proud of their culture.
The village is surrounded by mountains all around it and you can find a splendid view from the top of the village.Clear sky full of stars and high mountains all around it, we felt heavenly being there.We were to leave the village that day but after arriving there, we could not leave after this heavenly experience.We stayed one night.You can spend as many days as you want there, you will never want to leave whatsoever.
I can never explain the unique, strange and peaceful experience that Malana gave me.I will go there again and again.
End of trip
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The rest of our trip includes one night stay at Tosh village which is also beautiful but a bit crowded by homestays and cafes,back to kasol for one day and stay at Manali for one day.Two of our friends went for Kheerganga trek which is famous for its awesome and magnificent beauty which I want to try later.If you are planning for Kasol and Malana, never miss the Kheerganga trek.
This was a trip which will always stay in my mind for whole life, it left an impact which I can never forget.Malana was the best part of the trip.
So, gear up and get ready for it and please never do advanced plan of where to go, when to go and what to do during this trip.Enjoyyyyy.