MobileGIRI at HPPWD Guest House, Nagrota Surian - One of the few options to stay around Pong Dam or Masroor Temples in Kangra District of Himachal Pradesh, India
During Jan 2012, I planned to visit Pong Dam near Nagrota Surian in Kangra region of Himachal Pradesh and biggest worry was place to stay around this region. There are hardly any hotels and main towns like Kangra and Dharmshala were quite far from Nagrota Surian. At the same time, I wanted to stay near to the lake to have a better feel of this place. This PHOTO JOURNEY sharing one of the place I could locate...
After exploring lot of permutations and combinations for transportation & stay, I finalized to stay Nagrota Surian HPPWD Guest House, which was nearest place to Pong Dam in Himachal Pradesh. Above Photograph shows main entry to the Guest House and place was quite secure.
A Photograph of Guest House lawn at HPPWD Rest-House, Nagrota Surian, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh.
This place was quite close to the main market. After getting Volvo from Delhi, I reached Dehra at 5:00 am in the morning and from here is was 1.5 hrs journey to Nagrota Surian. After reaching Nagrota Surian, it was hardly a 5 minutes walk from Bus Stop to the Guest House. So that was again a very good reason for me to decide this place to stay...
Before reaching the place I had various some doubts and was not very sure if I would really stay there or would want to move to Kangra or Dharmshala. But after reaching the place, it was of-course above expectations in terms of cleanness, services etc. The guy who takes care of this place was very humble and very helpful in better planning of my days there. Above photograph shows room number-3 of the guest house, which is one of the new rooms here. Room was booked through some officer in HPPWD who knew about these facts :)
Guest House has huge rooms with double bed, sofa or chair set with a table, attached washrooms and Almira. Room Number 3 has nice view of the village and agricultural land around Pong Dam Lake.
This is dining area of the guest house, which is on ground floor and near to only kitchen. Really good food is served in Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner and they used to ask the kind of food guests want in their regular meals. Food was really simple and amazing...
Waiting area of the Guest House. This was the region where I needed to wait when I reached at 7:00 am and room was not available before 12:00 noon. But fortunately they are an area which can be utilized by guests in waiting.
Staff of the Guest-House includes Three caretakers and a Security-man. Out of three caretakers only one can be found on duty during nights and two during day time. They have shifts and all belong to surrounding areas of Nagrota Surian. All of them were really helpful and humble.
Here is a broad listing approximate distances for various places like Kanga, Dharmshala, Shimla, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Delhi etc.
Here is a view of one part of Pong dam Lake, which was dry during winters. This view we get from main gate of Nagrota Surian HPPWD Guest House.
If you liked this post and found it helpful, I would request you to follow these things when traveling -
- Manage your waste well and don’t litter
- Use dustbins. Tell us if you went to a place and found it hard to locate a dustbin.
- Avoid bottle waters in hills. Usually you get clean water in hills and water bottles create lot of mess in our ecosystem.
- Say big no to plastic and avoid those unhealthy snacks packed in plastic bags. Rather buy fruits.
- Don't play loud blaring music in forests of jungle camps. You are a guest in that ecosystem and disturbing the locals (humans and animals) is not polite