Manali by Overnight Coach — Three Nights in the Valley

The coach leaves Delhi in the evening and runs through the night up the Beas valley — around twelve to fourteen hours depending on traffic and road conditions, on a semi-sleeper with reclining seats and rest halts. This is a night spent travelling rather than in a bed, and it should be planned for rather than discovered: it is how a great many Indian travellers reach the hills, it saves a hotel night at each end, and it is not the same thing as a berth on a train.

Into Manali in the morning. Rooms are held so you can check in on arrival rather than waiting for an afternoon check-in, which after a night on a coach is the difference between a usable day and a lost one. The rest of the day is deliberately gentle: Hadimba Devi in its stand of old deodar, built in 1553 with a four-tiered pagoda roof, and then Old Manali up the hill, where the orchards and the stone-and-timber houses sit above the modern town.

North up the valley to Solang, a wide meadow under the Rohtang road where paragliding runs in the warmer months and the snow sits from December. The Beas comes off the mountains above it. On the way back, Vashisht across the river has hot sulphur springs feeding stone baths beside its temple, and the walk up to it through the village is short. Rohtang Pass beyond Solang is permit-controlled and capped by daily quota, and is arranged separately if the pass is open.

South and east to Manikaran, where springs emerge close to boiling a few metres from a river running with snowmelt — the gurdwara cooks its communal meal in the spring water, and the site is sacred to Sikhs and Hindus together. The return runs by Naggar, the old Kullu capital, whose castle uses the alternating timber-and-stone construction the region developed against earthquakes, with the Nicholas Roerich estate and gallery below it on the slope.

The day is free until the evening — Mall Road, the Tibetan monastery in the town, or the Van Vihar park by the river — with rooms held as long as the itinerary allows rather than a midday checkout and eight hours to fill. The coach leaves in the evening for the overnight run back down the valley and across the plain to Delhi.

Into Delhi in the morning, where the tour ends. Arrival time varies considerably with traffic on the approach and is not something any operator controls, so an onward flight should be booked with real margin — early afternoon rather than mid-morning. If you need somewhere to shower and wait, a day-use room can be arranged near the airport on request.