A trip down to Manila (A long one – both the trip as well as this report as it is my travel diary)
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| Our Favorite Honda, takes us everywhere |
Summer has set in Gurgaon, sizzling above 40 for quite some
time. It is the time to take a break and go on a holiday. All the time we go to
places far away from home where anything you want to buy, you have to use the
Multiplication factor of more than 1!! in terms of currency. So this time we
have decided to go to a place where we don’t have to use currency
multiplication while buying.
So we said, let us drive down to Manila. Those who heard me
say that, asked me in astonishment , what! Drive down to Manila? That’s too far
to Philippines. I told them it is not in Philippines but in UK. I know it is
not a geography lesson, but Manila is in UK, I had been there and I know it
well enough. The whole trip we managed in INR and remember no currency
conversion! By the way UK stands for UttaraKhand
We were very excited to go on this trip as the destination
is at about 2000mtrs above MSL and expect it to be cooler than Gurgaon. We
planned to start 430am but as usual finally left an hour later. The road was
good and kept on paying road toll at many places (Rs5, 15, 25, 50 etc). We
don’t mind paying toll if the road is really nice. We took the diversion at
Rampur Dorah to the left to proceed to Ramnagar. As we approached the town of
Ramnagar we found every hotel, Dhaba and stores all named after the famous Jim
Corbett – Jim or Corbett or Tiger. We reached at 1130am after covering 280kms
with a breakfast stop over at Bikanerwala Restaurant (at a distance of 139kms
from home). The place was clean but food, just OK.
We wasted some time to locate the forest office to meet the
DFO, but he was on a long leave. We were told and assured us that we have a
reservation at Manila Forest Rest House. We stopped at a Dhaba for lunch, it
was nice and cheap with hot chapattis and Paneer Bhujia, Dal and salad for
Rs100/- The road surface has become bad
to worse as we went closer to Manila and the 80 Kms took us more than 2 and a
half hours. Of course we went on stopping at different places to buy our
grocery items and Vegetables. The FRH at Manila does provide for a watchman cum
cook but no ingredients.
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| Forest Rest House in the middle of Forest, Manila |
The FRH is situated in the middle of thick forest on an
elevated place. The FRH is surrounded by Pine trees. We chose a smaller room
due to its position in the house overlooking beautiful valley. We were met by
the watchman who served us with hot tea and Biscuits. We felt elated at this treatment;
it showed later that first impressions are not necessarily lasting impressions.
That was 2nd of June 2012; the evenings were cool and made us take
out jackets towards the night. We sat in the verandah for a long time till we
were served dinner at 830pm in the adjoining Dining Hall. They have a solar
light which came in handy when the lights went out. Next day morning we walked
around the place and took a long walk down the main road. The gravel path from
the FRH to the main road was flanked by thick woods and sloping hill sides,
absolute silence except for the birds and the winds blowing across the leaves
of the trees.
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| On a stroll in the forest |
We went and inspected another hotel called Himalayan holiday
resort, at a price of 1000 per day the rooms were badly maintained. Even
further down we found an abandoned building, well designed to view from
outside. We came to know that this was KMVN rest house given off to a private party
on lease. The charges are same Rs1000 per day.
The FRH had water problem and so did other hotels, we were
rationing use of water. We had bought enough drinking water on the way so were
well equipped. The water stored in small containers started depleting and we
had to make a choice of staying or leaving soon. The watchman started grumbling
and was advocating us to leave as soon as possible (as he has to cook for us). He was very reluctant to cook anything. He
couldn’t be more blunt than this to tell us “buzz off”.
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| In front of Manila Mandir |
On 4th June after finishing our morning walk in
the woods we drove up about 3kms on a narrow road to visit the ancient Manila
Temple. This temple is built some 900 years back. It seems that one part of goddess, the hand
fell (or got detached and brought here) at
this place. We returned to our FRH after offering our prayers.
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| The hand of Devi which is brought to this Manila Mandir |
In the afternoon suddenly the black clouds came on above us
as if a blanket was drawn over us. It started raining. We went out to enjoy the
rain and its splatter on the sloping roof. We were delighted to see hail storm
with them looking as if a string of pearls is broken and strewn all over. It
was not a string but seems like a bowl or a barrel!. It continued for a long time, normally hail
storm comes for a few minutes but here it lasted and lasted. It was a perfect
setup to have hot tea and pakoras. But we decided against knowing our grouchy
‘cook’. We got hot water and made our own coffee.
The nights became cooler after the rain. As we were short of
water the watchman started collecting rain water in buckets and drums which we
could use later.
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| Beautiful Flower near FRH, Manila |
Night set in and retired early as we planned to leave to any
other place in Garhwal from this unwelcome place. The place was wonderful only
spoilt by the cook’s attitude. I knew there was a place near by in Garhwal, I
like Garhwali people who are caring
On 5th June, we left Manila, the rest of the trip is another report
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