Manali was more than 300 kms away and we knew there is significant hill drive involved. So, we started early in the morning at 5:30am on Day 10 of our trip. Given that we were at Panchkula and not in Chandigarh, we decided to take NH 21A instead of NH 21 northwards.
The highway was not too great, but we were happy to be progressing towards Himalayas. After driving for about ~100kms, we reached a point where a bridge had been completely washed away by the rains and the only way to cross the river was the drive through it!
A waited a while and allowed a few trucks to pass through. Of course, I realised that it was not possible to do it in a car - so thought of making most use of it and clicked a few photographs as we saw the trucks drive through the river!
We continued to drive and then reached the foothills of Himalayas. From thereon, it was about 200-250 kms of hill drive. We didn't gain that much in altitude (Manali is just over 2000 meters above sea level), but we had to go deep into Himalayas. With each turn, we were navigating our way deeper behind mountains and the drive was fun and interesting.
This road has a lot of truck traffic too - it feeds a lot of areas in Himalayas, esp. of Shimla. In addition, given that the winter is nearing and the entire region would be cut off from rest of India, Ladakh/ Leh region was probably stocking up its supplies for the winter too.
The heavy traffic with hilly terrain meant I drove a large part of it, stuck behind trucks!
I think, the highway to Manali is extremely safe, no issues with its design - but a note of caution here - I wasn't too impressed with the driving skills of the local drivers. Often we would find cars and taxis overtaking at blind turns - a very risky proposition in deed. I wish I could just speak to all of them and say that with this driving technique, you might get there a couple of minutes earlier, but its not worth it at all. Such undue risks exponentially increases the chances of accidents. All it meant was that I became a bit more defensive at turns, always accounting for an aggressive driver driving from the other side as well. Seriously, I feel very strongly about safe driving and we all need to understand that good driving has to be zero - risk. You don't overtake at turns and over-take only when you are absolutely sure there is no other on-coming vehicle. Instead, I saw many drivers overtaking all the time, unless they see a truck in front of them! This is not great at all - you might be lucky 99 times out of 100 as the on-coming vehicle would brake, but that 1 out of 100 is not good enough, esp. when you consider the number of over-takes involved in a drive and the number of such drives the taxi drivers do in a month and a year. This blog wouldn't do anything, but I strongly appeal to the local drivers to shift to defensive driving, particularly at hills.
Just as we about to reach Manali, we could see sign boards for Leh! We knew it was not possible, but gave it one final try after reaching Manali - we asked around the taxi drivers, tourist centre to figure out that driving Swift to Leh was not an option at all this time around.
Overall, we drove for 331 kms on Day 10, driving through a lot in hilly terrain. It's always interesting to drive in hills - but it drains you out as the concentration levels need to increase many fold!
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