Planning for Mcleodganj

October 2013, winters approaching, festivity in the air with Navratras and Durga Puja and on top of everything, its one of my best friend's birthday, so we planned a weekend trip to Mcleodganj.

After a regress research, we finalized the destination - Mcleodganj, also known as Upper Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh (India). The plan is to leave Delhi ISBT on Thursday night (10th Oct, 2013)and reach Mclo early morning on Friday (11th Oct, 2013).

To start with the preparations, the first thing we did was to block the Volvo ticket. To my surprise we got instant booking via Himachal Road Transport Corporation (http://www.hrtc.gov.in/hrtctickets/), a government owned website and the kind of details we got on the website for Bus along with a picture was really surprising. We also got a chance to allocate our seats and finally we booked our seats and did online payment, Kudos to the team....great work! One important thing whenever I plan I get my tickets done round the trip, this is just to avoid last moment kiosk :)

Next step was to book an accommodation, when I checked on Google, I got many options and as per budget i froze on few options namely - Hotel Bhagsu (My first preference because it was a Govt Own Hotel), Hotel Jungle Hut & Hotel Green. I divided my preference in Good, Average & Budget hotel respectively (that is my style of shortlisting). I was unfortunate to get the Hotel Bhagsu, as it was sold out on preferred dates and on the same time I was fortunate to get availability in Hotel Jungle Hut, which to my surprise was actually a above average hotel (As per reviews got on internet). So i NEGOTIATED (which is in my Gene) with the hotel manager and got a good deal for two rooms for two nights. I will share the final cost break up in my next blog.

Hotel website: http://junglehutdharamshala.com/

So far so good...everybody is excited for the trip, two major things are sorted - Travel & Accommodation.

The next blog will have further details on the trip along with some nice pictures.