Best driving roads: Ranital to Masroor Temple, Himachal Pradesh
India is infamous for its shabby roads, but at the same time there are many fantastic driving roads spread through the length and width of our beautiful country. OVERDRIVE has been fortunate enough to experience quite a few of these roads, and we want to share the joy with a weekly feature of a fantastic road that you should aspire to experience someday. This week, we take you from a small town called Ranital in the foothills of the Dhauladar Range in Himachal Pradesh, to the ancient rock-cut Masroor Temple.
There isn't anything particularly interesting in Ranital itself, but it's a town you'll pass on the way to Kangra and Dharamshala. From Ranital, you take a turn off the highway and drive around 22.5km to the temple. The road initially climbs downhill, until you cross the Baner River, and after that, it's mostly flat land, with long, sweeping corners that are a real joy to drive on. To make it better, there's hardly any traffic on that road, and the scenery is absolutely beautiful. There aren't any places to eat on the way there, but it's not a very long journey in the first place. The temple is one of the oldest monolithic temples in the country and it isn't very clear who built it.
For more of the best driving routes in India, click here.