Himachal Diaries: Part Ninteen

Wrapping up the Spiti Valley Journey 

10.07.2024: Himachali Folk Dance 

These folk dances are a vibrant and colorful expression of the culture and traditions of Himachal Pradesh. These dances are often performed in traditional attire and accompanied by folk music and instruments. The dance performed today is called Nati: a lively dance performed by men and women in a circle, often with colorful props like sticks or handkerchiefs. Sanket introduced the crew. There were three females and two males performing the steps alongwith three people playing the musical instruments. 

Then the travellers joined in the performance and bollywood songs were played. After the 30 minute dance performance, the crew left the venue clicking a group photo. 

Hrishikesh and Sanket elaborated on the successful completion of the tour with no medical emergency or landslides. So we had to celebrate the success now with the DJ songs and dance. Again the Gala family took the initiative for teaching us new game. We played the hat game wherein we have to stand in pairs and pick the hat from our partners head and place it on someone else. When the music stops, the pair having the hat is out. Then Sanket organized two games: count and grouping, bomb in the city. Bomb in the city had four cities defined, we need to choose one city when the music stops and if the city is bombed, we are out. Count game needs us to make group of the number said by Sanket when the music stops. If we fail to make the group, we are out. We played for an hour and had dinner at 9:30pm. 

Thanks to the painkiller given by Smita and Sunil Kulkarni, I could sleep peacefully at night. 

11.07.2024: Kullu Shawl Factory and Sona Dryfruits Shop

I woke up at 7am and had paratha breakfast at 8:30am. Luggage was loaded in the cars and we drove towards Chandigarh. Since we could not make it to river rafting, it was a disappointed day. We reached the shawl factory at 10:30am. They demoed us on how a traditional shawl is made on the handloom. 

We shopped in the factory for a while. Then we proceeded to the dryfruits shop for buying the stuff. We were greeted by the kashmiri kahwa. We were allowed to taste the items before buying. I bought walnuts. I accidentally ate the himachali garlic assuming that it was hazelnut. We reached Hotel Valley View at 1:30pm for the last lunch on tour. 

We drove ahead to Chandigarh passing various tunnels. We halted at a restaurant for tea coffee maaza and washroom break at 4:15pm. Fellow travellers formed groups for journey from Mumbai airport to their homes via cabs. We learnt a bit of punjabi. 

Finally we reached Hotel West End at 6pm. My room no 205 had no window. 

We had dinner at 9:30pm followed by the Thanksgiving session for Hrishikesh and Sanket and all the car captains for safely managing the whole tour. 

Post that we strolled outside the hotel for a while. Here is my car, our travel companion.

We were back to our rooms, I packed my bag and dozed off.

12.07.2024: Departure from Chandigarh airport to Mumbai airport

I woke up at 7am and had breakfast at 8:30am. Luggage was loaded into the vehicles and we were off to Chandigarh airport at 9:30am. Sanjeev and Anjali Kulkarni waved off goodbye to us. They had the flight post noon. We reached the airport at 10:30am. 

Since the flight was delayed, we had lunch at 11:30am. Then the gate was changing multiple times making us go up and down the elevator. Finally the boarding started at 1pm. I had an aisle seat which I hate. Not sure when the flight took off because I had fallen asleep. After reaching Mumbai, we had to be in air for an hour since we were not getting clearance to land. Finally the flight landed on the CSMIA and we took our luggage out. It was raining cats and dogs outside, already evening and hence I joined Chinmay in the cab to Nalla Sopara. Again we faced traffic on the road. Somehow we managed to pass through, our driver being too lazy to drive. Finally I reached the Nalla Sopara station and boarded the Virar train. I reached home at night. Finally completed with the Spiti Valley Circuit journey!