Manali Leh trip is one of the most popular road trips in India. This route is known for its landscapic beauty and driving challenges. The road from Manali to Leh is full of ups and downs in terms of altitude and road conditions. You may find tarmac roads for a part and no road whatever, for the next. Added to this is the low temperature, lack of petrol pumps, no mobile-signal coverage, very low inhabitation, no mechanic services on the way, low levels of oxygen at a few points and snow. All these make this trip horrible and avoidable for most and exciting and memorable for the others.
If you are planning to take this trip in a Tata Safari, I wish to share my experiences with you in the form a few tips which are worth remembering.
1- Take a map with detailed route descriptions. With bad roads and no one to ask directions to, this is essential.
2- Take food to cover for meals for at least 2-3 days. You may get stuck in landslides or avalanches. This food will be life saving in those circumstances. If possible, also take a gas cylinder and few utensils to do the cooking.
3- Take lots of warm clothes, which is common sense.
4- Take a first aid kit with extra medicines for drowsiness, road sickness, nausea, cold and fever.
5- Take a puncture repair kit, but take training for using it before the trip. Take a leg pump too.
6- Have extra fog lights fit on the front side. During my trip, the headlights stopped functioning mid-way due to broken fuse. Fog lights can be very useful in such cases.
7-Take the latest phone numbers of service centers on the route and in Leh. There is a Tata Service center in Leh, so take its number from the Tata website.
8-You can take a small oxygen cylinder with you if anyone in the group is suffering has a breathing ailments.
9-Take 20-30 L diesel can, with you. Get it filled in manali. There is NO petrol pump for the next 300+ km and the steep slopes make the car burn fuel like anything. Just in case, you run out of fuel, stop one of the diesel tankers and beg for diesel. We did that.
10- Don’t travel in night. There are very few recognizable roads for 150 km after Keylong and you can easily get lost in the night.
11- Safari, no matter how much pride all of us owners take in it, is a very unsafe car when talking about sharp turns. Such sharp turns are in abundance on the route, so drive slow.
12- On the way, you will find 'down' routes. Don’t take them for going up. They are down routes and should be used only for driving down. This is a serious advice. Safari can go up on those routes easily, but a single driving fault may make the car go toppling down the mountain.
I have driven to from Gwalior to Leh and back in 7 days and must say that safari is an amazing car. No matter what people say about it, but it’s amazingly great for routes like Manali-Leh.
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