Shimla, Manali & the Beas, 6 Nights

Met at Chandigarh airport or railway station and driven 115 km up through Kalka, Parwanoo and Solan — about four hours, with the toy-train line crossing the road a dozen times. Check in near the Mall and walk up to the Ridge for the evening: Christ Church, lit from six, is the second-oldest church in north India. Dinner is at your hotel.

Private vehicles stop 2 km short of Kufri, so the last stretch is a local taxi — included — up to the Himalayan Nature Park with its snow leopard and himalayan monal enclosures. Back in town, Jakhoo Temple sits at Shimla’s highest point under a 33-metre Hanuman statue; keep food and glasses out of sight, the langurs are organised. The afternoon is the Viceregal Lodge, where the 1947 Partition was signed off in the wood-panelled council room.

Seven hours north via Bilaspur and Mandi, the road running alongside the Beas from Aut onwards. At Pirdi near Kullu you get a seven-kilometre grade II–III rafting stretch with a certified guide and full safety kit — cold water, real rapids, and safe for anyone over 12 who can follow instructions. A stop at a Kullu shawl weaving co-operative follows, then Manali by evening.

The Solang ropeway lifts you to about 3,200 m for the Dhauladhar face — your tickets are included. From Solang the road runs through the Atal Tunnel, 9.02 km at 3,000 m and the longest highway tunnel above that altitude anywhere, into Lahaul at Sissu, where the landscape flips from pine to bare rock in ten minutes. Sissu is snowbound from about December to March and the tunnel closes on heavy snow days.

A lighter day. The 1553 Hadimba Devi temple is a four-tier deodar pagoda standing in a cedar grove — the woodwork is the point, not the queue. Manu Temple in Old Manali, the sulphur hot springs and the stone Rama temple at Vashisht, and the Tibetan monastery in town follow. The afternoon is free for Mall Road, the Old Manali cafés or the Van Vihar deodar park by the river.

Eight hours south through Mandi and Bilaspur on the four-lane, with a stop at the Sundernagar lake and the Bhakra reservoir view. You reach Chandigarh in the evening. Dinner at the hotel; Sector 17 plaza is a ten-minute walk if anyone still has energy.

Nek Chand’s Rock Garden was built illegally over eighteen years out of industrial waste and demolition rubble, and is now forty acres of sculpture courtyards — allow ninety minutes. Sukhna Lake and a look at Le Corbusier’s Capitol Complex from the road follow, then the airport or railway drop.