Keylong Diaries #1

Hello beautiful people,
Namaste !!
It was indeed a beautiful morning & a much needed break from my daily monotonous office routine. I already somehow managed to get a leave for 4 days from my strict manager. :P May was at its end when we(me & my travel partner) decided to go on a adventurous bike trip to Rohtang, heaven on earth with snow clad mountains, glaciers, striking views & one of the highest motor-able roads in the world. Rohtang ("pile of corpses" in Persian language), the name itself suggests the deadly adventurous state of the place due to unpredictable snowstorms & blizzards. The Rohtang pass presents a wide-spread panorama of mountain scenery, a range of precipitous cliffs, huge glaciers, deep ravines & piled moraine. Post researching about the place on internet, we stretched our itinerary till Keylong as we found the place really mind blowing. Even a single thought of visiting such an amazing valley was enough to get us thrilled.
Our plan was to take a bus till Manali, Himachal Pradesh & then bike ride till Keylong. We started from our homes at 6:00 PM in the evening & boarded the bus at around 09:00 PM. It was indeed a wonderful feeling. Most of the people in our bus were there for trekking camps in Manali as it was the perfect time to set off to enjoy snow laden roads & mountains. We nodded off after a while of enjoying highway views outside. Our bus stopped at a small food joint for dinner at around 11:30 PM. We were all set so we didn't have anything but tea & little snacks. After the break of half an hour, bus again started towards Manali & we slumbered in our own world of vivid imagination.
An early sensation of cold weather woke us up in the beautiful morning & we found our bus moving somewhere in the middle of verdant forest canopy(couldn't take pictures though :O). Till now our back started aching & the relief arrived near a restaurant where our bus took a break for morning tea & snacks. We came out of the bus & post our usual pandiculation; we started looking for something healthy to eat. At a distance, there was a fruit stall where we bought some fruits (bananas & cucumber) & refreshed ourselves. We clicked many photos over there & came back to our seats. It was just wonderful. Our bus was running late by around 5 hours. We reached Manali at 01:00 PM where it should have been at 08:00 AM. Despite being a sunny afternoon, there was a feeling of freshness & cold in the atmosphere. We stood nearby a roadside dhaba (a wooden food stall) & ordered Maggie (staple food for travellers like us. Post relaxation, we were in quest of a bike rental shop. We explored many shops & finally got our place where we rented a Royal Enfield (A royal comfortable cruiser bike) within our budget. I was so excited & frightened as this was going to be the first time when I would be riding a heavy cruiser bike on a mountain road. But being constant bike rider in the city for the last 5 years gave me a bit of assurance & confidence. We collected all the required materials (bike documents & helmet) from the shop & set of for our destination, Keylong.