Shimla & Manali by Coach — Six Nights from Delhi

The coach leaves Delhi in the evening for the overnight run north — a semi-sleeper with reclining seats, curtains and rest halts, taking roughly ten to twelve hours to the hills depending on traffic on the plain. This is a night travelling rather than a night in a bed, which the sheet counts in the trip total and which this description states plainly rather than leaving to be discovered.

Into Shimla in the morning with an early check-in requested so the day is usable. Shimla was the summer capital of British India from 1864 and the Ridge is still lined with the buildings that made it one — Christ Church of 1857 with its stained glass, the Gaiety Theatre, the Town Hall. The afternoon takes the Viceregal Lodge, finished in 1888 and the setting for the 1947 partition discussions, or Kufri to the east if the weather is clear. The evening is for walking the Mall, which is closed to traffic.

The transfer north by deluxe bus, as the source itinerary specifies — around eight hours, dropping to the Sutlej at Bilaspur and then following the Beas up through Mandi into the Kullu valley. It is a long day on a coach rather than in a car, and the compensation is one of the best valley roads in the western Himalaya with the river alongside for the last stretch. Into Manali in the evening.

Hadimba Devi in its stand of old deodar above the town, built in 1553 with a four-tiered pagoda roof over a rock shrine. Vashisht across the river, where sulphur springs feed stone baths beside the temple. The afternoon goes up to Solang under the Rohtang road — paragliding in the warm months, snow from December, and the Beas coming off the mountains above. Rohtang needs a quota-capped permit and a permitted vehicle and is arranged separately when the pass is open.

East into Parvati to Manikaran, where springs emerge close to boiling within metres of a snow-fed river and the gurdwara cooks its langar in them — a site sacred to Sikhs and Hindus together, and one of the more genuinely surprising places in Himachal. The return takes Naggar, the old Kullu seat, whose castle is built in the alternating timber-and-stone style developed here against earthquakes, with the Roerich estate and gallery below it.

The day is unstructured until the evening — Old Manali's orchards and cafés up the hill, the Tibetan monastery in the town, Van Vihar by the river, or the Mall. Rooms are held as long as the itinerary permits rather than a midday checkout. The Volvo leaves in the evening for the overnight run down the valley and across the plain.

The coach reaches Delhi in the morning and the tour ends there. Arrival times vary considerably with traffic on the approach into the city and with conditions on the mountain road, neither of which any operator controls, so an onward flight wants real margin — early afternoon rather than mid-morning. A day-use room near the airport can be arranged if you need somewhere to wash and wait.