3 friends on a road trip from Lucknow to Jispa in a Mahindra Scorpio N

We never thought that all those years after school and college, we'd end up crossing one of the coolest tunnels (Atal Tunnel) in our country, together.

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Prologue

Right from the day the Uttarakhand trip had concluded back in Nov 2023, we were itching to spread our wings again.

This turned into countless weekends of drawing route maps, budget analysis, slide decks and brainstorming instead of the usual "order nice food, shoot other people and their space stations in Rebirth 7.7, wind down".

Yes, I make slide decks for my trips as well because planning is paramount (and usually things do not go as planned).

The final decision was to take a 3-man squad to Manali:

• Balbir (Akash) - From the last travelogue, one of the only two people allowed to be in the driver seat of the Eclipse as I am extremely paranoid about people crashing it. Highly experienced rider/driver and he frequents Leh/Spiti along with random hill stations with funny names.
  Then there is our taste in cars, modifications, gaming, photography and music that goes very well. He was my roommate back in Chennai, so we have influenced each other over the years to the point that we can communicate without speaking

• Ritter McFritter (Ritwik) - This is the oldest friendship that I still have active and well. We used to share the class bench till we got split up by Bio/Computer Science. The fellow who flies with me in Rebirth 7.7. The guy who goes inside a battlefield totally blind but manages to survive. The man who knows target prioritization and weapon grouping, even though the controls are in Russian. Besides, there is a near 99% match on our musical preference, which is extremely rare. Rarer than a cheap LC200.

• Myself - Yeah, sometimes people need motivation and emotional blackmailing to pull a trip through

Bookings were made and we drew up a date where the rendezvous would be at Lucknow.

NOTE

Most of my phone photos from the trip are lost due to:

• My stupidity of not taking backups
• Apple sync software for Windows

Have recovered a small portion, thanks to Balbir. Most phone photos that you will see are taken by him and myself. Also, lost the driving footage up to Manali because the Hero 10 corrupted the SD card. But we still have content as it worked after a format.

Because of the same reason, the POV videos come at a later stage in the travelogue. Travelogue? Might as well be a photovlog as a few people got really offended by a recent post. Hence, reduced text content and funny bits in order to play safe.

END OF NOTE

Bookings were made and we drew up a date where the rendezvous would be at Lucknow. Balbir started off from Delhi and the same for Ritter departing from Kolkata.

Crusty but dependable WAP7 pulling Balbir's Shatabdi:

The boys seem to have a party where they put up at Lucknow:

Nobody could get proper sleep due to the excitement and we were off by 3:30 am:

Somewhere on the Agra Expressway:

Having a grand time:

Then I surprise the boys by pulling out a 13 year old Torch 9850:

Ritter's reaction to that information:

Chandigarh and beyond

As the sun rose, the heat and traffic became worse. Despite some diversions (due to the protests), we managed to reach Chandigarh by afternoon.

I thought I should pull out my Z5 just in case:

Upon reaching, we decided to have lunch at a place different from our hotel:

With thirst quenched and bellies satiated, we headed to The Lalit for checking in and a nap.

Hmm, yes, AC it seems:

Product marketing:

Mirror check:

Asserting dominance:

The long corridor:

After relaxing for the rest of the day, we start off towards Manali in the next post.

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