When we made our reservations in March 2023 for travel to Dharamshala and Dalhousie during early July, we were pretty excited. To start with, we booked our travel by train to Pathankot, then by taxi to Dharamshala, thence to Dalhousie, and back again to Pathankot. It was a long stretch each way. We then discovered that there were flight services from Delhi to Dharamshala so we cancelled our train bookings and bought flight tickets instead. Considerably more expensive but less strenuous. Club Mahindra is just about 25Km from the Kangra Airport, so that was great.
Unfortunately, as the travel date came closer, the weather in Himachal turned worse. Heavy Rains lashed the state and disrupted life in most parts of Himachal, especially areas like Manali, Solan, Parwanoo and Shimla. There were landslides, roads were washed away, parked cars were simply swept away as rivers broke banks and there was considerable loss to life and property. Newspapers and TV were full of reports of tourists being stranded on the road for 48 – 72 hours in torrential rain and Travel Advisories all advised people to stay away from the hilly regions. We were scared too, but cancellation at this late stage would have meant a heavy loss as hotel bookings were past the cancellation date and flight tickets offered almost no refund.
Here in Delhi too, it was raining heavily, and as we observed, flights to Dharamshala had not been operating for the past couple of days – all had been summarily cancelled. The evening before our flight, I spoke to the airline about cancelling our flight tickets, but they said, as such, our flight had not been cancelled, so if we cancelled from our end, it would be a voluntary cancellation and charges would apply. However, if it was the airline that cancelled, we would get full a refund for the outward as well as return journeys.
Seeing the prevailing weather conditions at Delhi and at Dharamshala, as well as the forecasts, and seeing the history of the cancelled flights in the preceding days we were quite sure our flight would get cancelled too. And we were hoping that it would. But we realised, we would need to go to the airport if we wanted a refund as sitting at home and just presuming that would be treated as a No-Show.
The morning of our flight was not as bad as it had been a day or two earlier, our taxi came on time and we were soon on our way to the airport. Check-in was smooth, there was no mention of any delay or cancellation, we spent our waiting time in the Encalm Airport Lounge and we boarded our flight for an on-time departure. The aircraft was a Bombardier 400 Turbo Prop Aircraft, I had never flown in one before and was wondering how it would take the expected turbulence. But when I saw it was fully booked, all happy travellers, looking forward to their trip, it uplifted my mood too. An uneventful flight, smooth as it could be, and an hour later, we landed at Kangra Airport, amidst beautiful weather, clear skies, and lovely mountains. Soon, we were on our way to our resort.
We took it as a good sign from God that He would make sure our holiday went well. And that’s excatly how ou 10 day holiday went.
Some pictures from our first day at Dharamshala are in the gallery below:
