Narkanda Diaries…

It was a Monday morning, the blues were at its zenith, and I was busy basking in the pursuits of the weekend which just passed by. And, with gloomy eyes, reluctantly, tried to comprehend a complex excel formula which somebody from the overseas team sent. Suddenly a mail popped up which read “Hi, will not be able to make it to work today, best xxxx) Elated, I could not do much to express my happiness, pressed CTRL+ALT+DEL, took a deep yawn, stretched my arms and looked at the poor fellow who sits diagonally opposite to me who was busy convincing his senior.

Lets go and have some coffee. I said it to myself.

So while I was having coffee and as I looked through the window gazing the world outside suddenly a thought of visiting Narkanda crossed my mind… Leaving no time wasted I zapped out my phone and chalked out a plan to visit some hill station with 2 of my close pals..So we all zeroed for Friday on Narkanda, HP.

All enthused, we started from Gurgaon at around 7:30pm and reached Murthal at around 9:30pm.

Murthal is a village on NH1 in the Sonipat district of Haryana close to around 45 kms from Delhi border.  It is by far the best place for good food on the entire NH1 and is a must stop over if you long for good food. There are a lot of good options available viz a vie Amrik Sukhdev, Gulshan Dhaba, Ahuja Dhaba etc etc etc. Also, there a lot of replicas which have cropped up viewing the success of these authentic dhabas. So choose carefully and the authentic ones.

So, we all decided to have dinner at Amrik Sukhdev, which is not only famous in North India but also in Canada, UK, USA and other EU since a lot of NRIs from Punjab prefer to check in while enroute back to their homeland, Punjab. You may also get to see a lot of Punjabi actors and singers, luckily we met Neeru Bajwa, a famous Punjabi actress. (She was more beautiful than she appeared in Movies).

After stuffing ourselves upto the brim with paranthas, butter and lassi (BURP I m sorry) we headed straight to Chandigarh, crossing Panipat, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Ambala and Chandigarh.

(Point to note: You need to be extra cautious while speeding at Panipat flyover, as speed interceptors are installed at regular intervals. Maintain an average speed of 90-100kmpl which I think is a decent speed for you to reach anywhere)

It took us around 3 more hours to chandigarh and finally we checked into Sunpark Resort which is strategically located on Simla-Zirakpur highway.

(Advice: Before the flyover, you need to keep left if you intend to take zirakpur simla highway as the fly over will take you straight away to Chandigarh. Dont panic, even if you took it, just take a u-turn towards zirakpur; just a matter of 10 minutes).

The property was decent but certainly was not worth 5400+taxes. While entering Aman observed that some function was going on within the property… Aman popped his head out of the window to assess the possible threats and opportunities and voila! little did we know that we guys will end eating max of the menu itenary :)

Hey! Lets go check out the wedding.. Adi smirked.

I’m hungry. Let’s roll. Aman replied.

Meanwhile, this reminded me on my good old engineering days when we all would attend such auspicious events where on every alternative Saturdays we dine over the delicacies.

Let’s go. Who can dare to miss such big bash. I said.

All thanks to Adi’s personality, looks and etiquettes which makes him resemble more or less like a CEO of a MNC, I bet that’s the reason nobody questioned about our existence there..

Try that doodh jalebi, its good. Aman said as he rested on a safa.

Is it? Aditya said.

Get one for me as well. I requested as we all sat in the sofa placed in the first row…

(Per Adi’s theory, Punjabis generally don’t bother wedding crashers like us, as long as you are decent, unlike, as he once mentioned, he had a narrow escape during an attempt to crash a wedding in Bangalore.)

So after a complete 1-2 hours of fun and frolic, we came back to our rooms as we had to rush early the next day in order to reach Narkanda in time.

Remaining will word down soon….