Kasauli – Perfect Break From The City Life

Kasauli is a small hill town in Himachal Pradesh. Probably the first major Hill station when you enter Himachal from Chandigarh. It’s a 2 hour beautiful drive from Chandigarh and a little over 6 hours from Delhi.

So one evening in summer of 2015 I get a call from my college senior and a very dear friend and following is how the conversation goes (I swear this was the whole conversation):

RS: Bau, Lets go to Kasauli!

KV: Okay Veerji, When and How?

RS: Tomorrow morning, will drive in my car!

KV: Okay, let me ask my brother in-law too!

RS: Okay, See you at 5 in the Morning. Bye!

KV: Bbye!

So in around 10 hours, as promised, he was at my door at 5 in the morning, He along with his wife picked me and Ashima and we picked my brother in-law on our way out of Delhi. The Highways in Haryana have improved drastically over the years and it was a smooth ride till we reached Haryana, Himachal border. Once we entered Himachal, the drive was not only smooth but also beautiful. A little before Kasauli we were stopped as there was a railway junction and a Toy train had to pass. Toy train journeys are extremely beautiful but we will talk about that some other day.

So we reached Kasauli post noon, looked for a decent hotel and checked in. Going there from Delhi’s summers the weather seemed quite pleasant even at noon. Kasuali does not have much sightseeing locations but the weather along with easy accessibility attracts a lot of tourists especially during long weekends. I would advise to avoid going there on long weekends.

Everyone rested a bit and we set out explore the local market at around 3. Had some lunch from a small shop in the market serving Tibetan cuisine. The thukpa and momos we decent. Post this we headed to the sunset point. This place was quite breezy and had a tuck shop and some hawkers selling various snacks, chips, soft drinks and tea. By the time the sun had set there was some chill in the air. As we walked back to the market it had already become dark we explored the other side of the market and got some food packed from a restaurant where we saw a lot of crowd. None of us liked the food we had got the snacks were fine and we just had them with some drinks and slept for the night.

It rained a lot that night and the morning was cold and beautiful. We set out for our morning walk and went to Monkey Point – Hanuman Temple. There is also a Sunrise point in Kasauli but none of us was interested in waking up that early. Post visiting the Monkey point we wanted to have some food. It was 2 on 3 vote for experimental street food or having thupka again but majority wanted North Indian and we headed to Ros Common as it was restaurant by HPTDC (Himachal Tourism Department) and we thought it would be a safe bet. We were right the food was good. Post this we again set out to explore the streets of Kasauli on foot. As with the lovely weather walking around was not an issue over there. By evening we had one more round of delicious momos and set out for Chandigarh for dinner.

We visited Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh and after spending about 2 hours there went straight to have dinner. Finally we had some delicious chicken and were headed to our way back.

To sum it up, Kasuli is a nice hill station to take a break from city life. Though there is not much to explore the weather is pleasant almost all the time and you can have a perfect break here. Just avoid going on a long weekend.