Himalayan Adventure For kalmstrom.com QA

Today's guest blogger is kalmstrom.com QA Engineer Neha Gupta Kaushal. Neha has been testing our solutions since 2011 and is an important team member.

However, a while ago we had to manage without her, as she took a well earned vacation to go with her husband, Kapil, to the northern part of India. They experienced so many interesting things and have so many photos to show that I have allowed two blog posts for it, and this is the first one:

It is challenging to manage both a home and the professional life, and I felt that I desperately needed a break from our hectic schedule. That’s why Kapil and I planned a journey, and we choose to go to the Himalayan hill station Manali.

Manali is a small town in the foothills of the Himalayas in North India, situated 2050 m above sea level. It is a wonderful place with apple orchards, snow peaked mountains and beautiful rivers.

We also visited another town in the area, Kullu. It is situated in a valley formed by the Beas river. Above the valley rises mountains with pine and deodar.

Kullu is famous for its temples and for the Naggar castle, which was built in the year 1460 exclusively with timber and stone without the use of mortar. The castle is sprawling, but the image below shows one of the shrines with beautiful wood work.

When we had admired this marvelous old castle, we went rafting on the river. It was an amazing experience. I loved it and wanted to do it again and again.

Nearby Manali, in the Solang valley, the ground is covered with snow even this time of the year, and I can’t explain in words how much we enjoyed it.

Kapil and I had never before experienced snow, but now we could play with it and try winter activities. We built a snow pole, a heart and a snowman, glided down the slope on a tire, made angel wings in the snow with our arms, drove a snow mobile and tried skiing – which was not so easy as it looks on TV!

Kapil tried paragliding, and we both rode yaks. The first photo in this blog post, where I wear local ornaments and clothes, is also taken in the Solang valley.

My next blog post will be about New Delhi, the capital of India, which we also visited in this journey. Here we saw many famous places, like the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Museum and the Baha'i Lotus Temple.

Neha Gupta Kaushal
QA Engineer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions