Travel With Tanvi: Yet Another Confusion In Chandigarh | A Trip To Himachal

When the breakfast is free and when it is good, you should not skip it, never. After all it is the most important meal of the day. So that is what we did on our sixth day of our Himachal trip. We woke up in the morning and had our breakfast. It was going to be a long day of travel, so we left immediately after our breakfast.

Our journey from Manali to Chandigarh had begun. The road to Chandigarh from Manali was just so so amazing. The lovely Beas river flowing all over. It was amazing. We were driving non-stop and only took a halt at 3 pm to have tea. I mentioned about the breakfast, we were so full that we didn't even stop for lunch. Then after having tea, we got on the road back to Chandigarh. As we were about to cross the Himachal border, it started raining, but, soon stopped as we crossed the border. We had reached Punjab. Lovely farms and gurudwaras welcomed us in Punjab.

After going a bit further, we saw a few young boys stopping the vehicles. At first, we thought what was this, why were they stopping everyone? Because in Kullu, a man stopped our car as if there was some emergency & when we stopped he asked us to visit his shop. So we felt like even these boys were going to do something like this. But as our car reached near, much to our surprise, the boys were serving langar to everyone. It was so kind of them. We took the langar and started our journey ahead.

langar served at Punjab.

We then reached Chandigarh. What a city Chandigarh is. Well planned roads, lush greenery, people following traffic rules, it was all really pleasing to the eyes. Our hotel was at Zirakpur, almost 20 kms from Chandigarh. So we first decided to go to do some shopping at Chandigarh. We then asked where the market was, but, till we reached there, it started raining heavily. We had to therefore carry on with our journey. We reached the hotel, Hotel Sapphire, at around 9 pm. My dad went in to do the check in procedure. I went and sat on the sofa in the hotel's lobby.

My dad called me, because there was yet another confusion regarding our stay. Now when a person books a holiday package or a hotel, the travel portal sends a voucher to the customer and the hotel. Here the hotel staff said they hadn't received any voucher and hence they hadn't booked any room for us. Then we called the travel portal and the lady said she would like to speak to the hotel staff. I handed the phone to one of the front desk executive. He asked her when had she sent the voucher and said that he is checking but cannot find any mail from the portal. But what I could see in the mirror behind him was that he was just scrolling the page up and down. So I insisted on checking for the mail. He allowed me to check it. After checking their email, I found a mail which had a list of guests who had booked the hotel in that month and it had my father's name as well. They had all the details, the name, contact number, check in & check out date, number of rooms booked and moreover had also received the payment. I think it was very irresponsible of the hotel, if they had received the details, it was their duty to call the portal and ask for the voucher. But we had to face all this mess and confusion.

The hotel manager then called up another hotel and arranged two rooms for us there at the same price. We then left for the other hotel, KC Cross Road. The hotel was quite big and looked nice from the outside. We then went to our rooms. Sadly, the rooms were not at all well maintained. There was leakage, stained toilet, water seeping through the wall. It was in a very bad condition. Moreover, we got a corner room which gave it a haunted feel. But it was a matter of one night so we decided to adjust. We then went down to have our dinner. The service was extremely slow, they took almost 20 minutes to bring us a spoon. But we had no other option other than adjusting.

at Hotel KC Cross Road

The next morning we woke up early as we had a flight from Delhi at 1:30 pm. The staff was kind enough, they packed some sandwiches and fruits for us as the breakfast was going to start at 7 am. We then left at 6 am. We then left for Delhi. On the way we took a halt at Karnal Haveli. It was a lovely place with an amazing outdoor.

at Hotel Karnal Haveli

We reached Delhi well in advance. We then went straight to the airport. The sick feeling I had while coming started to haunt me. So I took the medicine. Then the check in procedure started, we got on our flight and had a safe journey back home. And that was the end of our Himachal Trip.