Barog

A beautiful small hill station where you can spend a relaxing weekend. I stayed in the Himachal tourism hotel there and they have huge open gardens and lawns. Icing on the cake, the backdoor of our rooms opened into the lawns directly so we had all our meals arranged in the lawn only and it was amazing. This what I love when I go to hilly areas because we don't get all this in our busy city lives.

This place, Barog, is famous because of the special significance of the toy train station here. The Barog tunnel is one of the longest tunnel of all the operational tunnels on the Kalka-Shimla railway line and this station is right after the longest tunnel finishes.


As the railway line is just used for the toy train, the time gaps between train arrival are huge so you can easily walk on the tracks and even get some beautiful pictures clicked anywhere.

The railway station has some small eateries as well where you can enjoy tea and snacks.


A few kilometers ahead of Barog there is a brewery where beer is produced and packaged. If you want and if they allow you can go and take a look inside at their process of beer making and bottling.


Rest this place is more unwinding and relaxation so I suggest that target for a hotel which has some open area to sit and enjoy outside.

The famous Laxmi Villas Palace - Baroda

Woww!! the one word that I have for Laxmi Villas Palace. A beautifully created structured and maintained really well. I must say it is a must visit if you are in Baroda. I personally felt that the entrance ticket price was little high.


This place still remains residence for the royal family and they live in a part of the palace and rest is open for the tourists. The palace has banquet and lawns which are now used for parties and weddings. Definitely it is a beautiful location for wedding.


Once you go there, you need to buy an entrance ticket and then you would require to collect your headphones from the office room. These headphones have the recorded details about the palace and would guide you to go from one room to another to make you visit the entire palace with all the detailed information.


The campus has a zoo, a museum and a golf course as well.

Visit to Manali

Manali has a beautiful drive, along the river on one side and that itself makes the visit to Manali worth it. This time I stayed in the Himachal tourism cottages and the experience was amazing. They were small & cozy wooden cottages with huge garden area with each one of them. The staff was courteous enough and even arranged for bonfire on our request on one of the nights. Good food, wine and bonfire, what else would you need. The morning was equally beautiful there as the days were quite sunny and it was the time around Christmas. We enjoyed our hot cup of tea and yummy breakfast in the garden area where there were lovely flowers as well.

Personally I like walking and exploring the place wherever possible as hill stations are easily manageable by walking. We visited a quite a lot of cafes during our stay there and I must say old Manali has amazing cafes and that side of Manali has it's own charm. A few places where we had lovely experience personally are -


Café 1947 - A very cozy place, with a bonfire place inside and the food they serve is delicious. We had all Italian - pasta, pizza, lasagna as suggested by our server. Whatever we ordered was great. Also this café is river side, so if you can manage to get a seat outside and it's sunny enough to keep you bit warm, you would be able to enjoy the food and drinks with the beautiful sound of river flowing beside you. These kind of experience I specifically enjoy as we don't get any of these opportunities in our metro cities. One suggestion I would like to give, if you plan to visit this café to spend the evening there, please book a table with them in advance as they are always full and the waiting is couple of hours as once people get in here they just don't want to move out and usually sit for long long hours.

Johnson's café - This café was just at a walking distance form the cottages where we stayed and went for dinner on one of the days. the place is good and the food is good too. the only issue that we faced is that most of their menu and kitchen were closed because it wasn't the peak season for visiting Manali somehow so they were serving only from a very small section of the menu. We tried the trout fish there and it was done well.

Drifter's café - This place became one of my favorites and would be on my list for sure whenever I visit Manali. We went there for breakfast and ordered some sandwiches and Omlettes with cappuccino. Each of the food item was very well prepared and I loved it. After placing our order and while we were waiting for our food to come, we suddenly spotted a few games and books lying in the corner and we decided to pick the very old and one of the childhood favorite games - Ludo :) We started with the game and we were perfectly 4 people for it. We kept on playing for 2 hours till we finished the game. In between our food came and coffee kept on flowing in. That morning gave us a chance to revisit our childhood days and we all were super happy faces when we stepped out of that place.


River side cafes - Just before you are entering Manali, there are a few river side café and they serve amazing fresh river trout fish. We tried the grilled version of the fish and it was really well prepared and the feel itself is amazing, of sitting by the riverside, with that sound coming from flowing river, lovely rays of sun or the setting sun (depending on the time of the day you are going).

Manali has a nice market as well on the mall road in case you want to indulge in some shopping. I personally don't shop much from these places until and unless there is something really specific manufactured in that area only. Like we shopped for the local fruit wines from there, like - Apple, Peach, Guava, Grapes, Pomegranate etc. One tip - Don't forget to bargain :P


All in all, it was an amazing experience to visit this place and would love to visit anytime again, preferable this time in the season when apple orchards are full of juicy apples :)