AppetitravelWinter Wonderland of Manali
Every day thousands of tourists visit Manali, just to see some snow and even more pray to see if they can get actual snowfall at the time of their visit. Even we did.
I won’t exactly call us lucky but we did feel an ounce of snow on our head a night before in our stay at Zostel and it meant their is heavy snow in the mountain ranges. This was evident as we woke up, opened the window and found the mountains are much white than the day before. Damn, they were covered with fresh snow from last night.
Just like every tourist we tried to rush to Solang Valley but then we decided not to, since both of us knew how many people would already be there before us lazy lads, so we asked our cabbie if we could go to a better place, with better view, more snow and we already heard about Hamta Pass from the Zostel squad over the night chatter.
He agreed to take us to Hamta Pass and in a matter of 90 minutes we reached about 6500m until where our car gave up in terms of climbing up the range due to slippery roads from the snow a night before. So we hired another car which had that much strength to take us to 11000m to our destination.
Travel Tip: Always hire a 4×4 car when going to Hamta Pass, other cars won’t last.
That’s exactly how it looked like. Trees covered with fresh snow all around and when we started to walk towards them, snow was falling all over us because the day was turning out to be sunny hence melting the existing one on trees.
We took multiple stops on the way up, sometimes due to slippery terrain and at time just to click a few images playing in snow.
The second ride we took was much comfortable, fast yet stable and in about 12 mins we climbed 4kms uphill and the first thing we did was to find something to eat and there is nothing like instant noodles – Maggi!
and once we had the energy, we started rolling in snow like snow babies đ
Near and around Hamta Pass, there was also India’s first-ever Igloo stay. More details on the post, here is a glimpse.
Cost to reach
INR 3000+
~Appetitravel recommends~
“Ditch Solang, visit Hamta Pass”
You can take a 4×4 cab or a self drive here. We prefer the former.
