The Hills Are Calling: Trekking in Himachal Pradesh

“When are you going?” “I don’t know.”

“And where are you going?” “I don’t know.”

What a great planner I am! This time I actually didn’t know any details about my trip until 2 days before I left. All I knew was that I wanted to go trekking in Himachal Pradesh – or at least somewhere 😀
In my defense, this cluelessness was not really due to my laziness but simply because a friend could not decide whether he’d tag along or not.

So there I was, thinking whether I should go towards Almora in Uttarakhand, which had been on my mind for quite some time. On the other hand, I had fallen in love with McLeod Ganj since I had done the Triund trek 2 years back, so I’d really love to do this again. Or should I go somewhere completely different?

After my friend finally confirmed that he couldn’t come along, I decided to explore Manali and/or Kasol in Himachal Pradesh after seeing a couple of nice trekking tours online. These two destinations are some of the most visited places that everyone in Delhi is going to (maybe one of the reasons NOT to go there 😉 ), so I wanted to see what’s the hype about.

Thanks to a super long weekend (big thanks to Shiv ji and Jesus), I had 5-6 days off. The original plan was to go for a 3-4 day trek which I’d book from there itself.

The itinerary

No clue. Trekking in Himachal Pradesh. Manali for now. Maybe Kasol as well.

The budget

Hotels – 1500 INR(~21.50 $)/night –> 4-5 nights: 6000-7500 INR/~86-108 $.

Alternatively: some days camping. Online options for 3-4 days were for ~5000 INR/~72 $.

Food – 1000/day –>5000-6000 INR/~72-86 $

Bus – 1500/one way –> 3000 INR/~21.50 $

Autos – 2000 INR/~29 $ (they are quite expensive in the hills)

Guides – 3000 INR/~43 $

Total – 18500 INR/~265 $

No way I’ll be spending that much but let’s see! (If you want to jump to the summary, here it is)

So let’s get started on Day 1 of my trekking adventure!