Extended Weekend at Mcleud gang/Amritsar
15th Aug was on Tuesday and I was looking for this holiday. Take Monday Off and you get straight 4 days to holiday and this is exactly what we did. Three of us (Nitin, Amit and myself) got together and visitied Mcleud ganj and Amritsar.
Mcleudganj is 12 hour bus journey from Delhi and there are lots of travelling options. One can book Volvo from Delhi or travel by train till Pathankot and then take a cab/bus. Semi Delux Bus is also convenient and it costs you 400 bucks. Plenty of staying options out there. We just landed up there without any prior booking and got a decent place at just 350 a day. A big room with attached restroom overlooking the mountains. Not a bad deal atall. Good thing about Mcleudganj is there is as such no sightseeing place. No sunrise point/no sunset point. It is the whole ambience that makes the place special. People call it mini Lhasa. I would also call it mini europe as I could see so many european tourist moving around with a copy of "Lonely Planet". Another matter of fact is that there are many tourists from Israel. So many that the local cafes have keyboards with Hebrew characters on them. We spent most of the time idling around in Nick Restaurant which serves excellent Italian food (check out my blog in food section for details on Nick). We took a small walk to Bhagsu temple too. Its a good stretch of 2 km walk from main market. Another must watch is HH Dalai Lama's Monastery. Luckily when we visited the place, HH Dalai Lama was there for a 4 day teaching. We managed to get a view of him but could not attend his talk as we had to leave the day the talk started. Mcleud ganj is seriously a place to go and relax. Its a different world out there. Not typical of a indian hill station. Tibetan chants add to the serene ambience. A must visit place to enjoy the ambience and variety of food offered there. Its definitely different.
From Mcleud ganj who travelled to Amritsar via Pathankot. Golden temple was really great. The harmandir temple is majestic to mention the list. I picked up some small boosk on Sikhism and got some lessions. Really liked the concept of Sikhism. Seems to be a no hassle religion based on just karma. The concept of langar (universal kitchen) is too good. It was started as they realized that a hungry man cannot appreciate spiritualism which is so true. Also visited Jalianwala bhag. It happened to be 15th August and what better date to visit such a place. Also went ahead to celebrate indepence at Wagah Border (India-Pak Border) but it was so crowded and so mismanaged by BSF that we preferred to stay outside. It was a stampede kind of situation there and BSF did nothing to avoid that. Rather they complicated by unnecessary narrowing down entry points. They were just overwhelmed by crowd but I would expect BSF to handle such emergency well.
Food in Amritsar was all about pure desi ghee in everything they had. Be it laccha paratha or aloo paratha. Had some nice Amritsari Laccha Paratha/Kulcha at Brothers Dhabba. Seems it is a very popular food outlet. Very very crowded at peak times but since we were keen on tasting some authentic amritsari food, we tolerated the crowd patiently and focussed only on food. Try lassi when you are there too.
Journey back home was comfortable in amritsar shatapdi. Well spent 4 days. Memorable Trip with lot of good quality food...Italian/Tibetan/Punjabi
Mcleudganj is 12 hour bus journey from Delhi and there are lots of travelling options. One can book Volvo from Delhi or travel by train till Pathankot and then take a cab/bus. Semi Delux Bus is also convenient and it costs you 400 bucks. Plenty of staying options out there. We just landed up there without any prior booking and got a decent place at just 350 a day. A big room with attached restroom overlooking the mountains. Not a bad deal atall. Good thing about Mcleudganj is there is as such no sightseeing place. No sunrise point/no sunset point. It is the whole ambience that makes the place special. People call it mini Lhasa. I would also call it mini europe as I could see so many european tourist moving around with a copy of "Lonely Planet". Another matter of fact is that there are many tourists from Israel. So many that the local cafes have keyboards with Hebrew characters on them. We spent most of the time idling around in Nick Restaurant which serves excellent Italian food (check out my blog in food section for details on Nick). We took a small walk to Bhagsu temple too. Its a good stretch of 2 km walk from main market. Another must watch is HH Dalai Lama's Monastery. Luckily when we visited the place, HH Dalai Lama was there for a 4 day teaching. We managed to get a view of him but could not attend his talk as we had to leave the day the talk started. Mcleud ganj is seriously a place to go and relax. Its a different world out there. Not typical of a indian hill station. Tibetan chants add to the serene ambience. A must visit place to enjoy the ambience and variety of food offered there. Its definitely different.
From Mcleud ganj who travelled to Amritsar via Pathankot. Golden temple was really great. The harmandir temple is majestic to mention the list. I picked up some small boosk on Sikhism and got some lessions. Really liked the concept of Sikhism. Seems to be a no hassle religion based on just karma. The concept of langar (universal kitchen) is too good. It was started as they realized that a hungry man cannot appreciate spiritualism which is so true. Also visited Jalianwala bhag. It happened to be 15th August and what better date to visit such a place. Also went ahead to celebrate indepence at Wagah Border (India-Pak Border) but it was so crowded and so mismanaged by BSF that we preferred to stay outside. It was a stampede kind of situation there and BSF did nothing to avoid that. Rather they complicated by unnecessary narrowing down entry points. They were just overwhelmed by crowd but I would expect BSF to handle such emergency well.
Food in Amritsar was all about pure desi ghee in everything they had. Be it laccha paratha or aloo paratha. Had some nice Amritsari Laccha Paratha/Kulcha at Brothers Dhabba. Seems it is a very popular food outlet. Very very crowded at peak times but since we were keen on tasting some authentic amritsari food, we tolerated the crowd patiently and focussed only on food. Try lassi when you are there too.
Journey back home was comfortable in amritsar shatapdi. Well spent 4 days. Memorable Trip with lot of good quality food...Italian/Tibetan/Punjabi
posted by Ayusman Sarangi at
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