Taxi transfer
Delhi to Bir Billing
Four hundred and ninety kilometres to the landing field, most of a day in a car, and a well-known overnight bus that does the same journey for a fraction of it. Worth a car for some people and not for most.
- Route
- Ambala · Bilaspur · Mandi · Jogindernagar · Baijnath
- Driving time
- 11–13 hrs
- Distance
- 490 km
This page is the drive itself — one day, Delhi to Bir Billing. If you would rather stop along the way, we run it as Bir, Billing and Barot valley.
Delhi → Bir Billing
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Only Delhi to Manali and Delhi to Dharamshala run further than this, and like the first of those it has a bus problem.
Bir is a paragliding village. Almost everyone going there is going for one specific reason, in one of two specific windows of the year, and a great many of them are going on a budget with a wing in a bag. The overnight coach from Delhi exists, it is direct, and it costs a small fraction of a private car. Pretending otherwise would be silly.
When the car is the right answer
Four or more people, and the arithmetic changes completely — a car split four ways is competitive with four bus seats and vastly more comfortable.
Your own equipment, which is awkward on a coach and fine in a boot.
Or the country itself. The bus does this journey in the dark on purpose, so that you arrive having seen nothing. The drive in daylight runs up the Sutlej as far as Bilaspur, crosses to the Beas at Mandi and then turns west through Jogindernagar into the tail of the Kangra valley, and the last hour has the Dhauladhar standing up in front of it. That is not a small thing to trade away.
The season is the whole plan
October and November are the flying months. Bir is busy then, the air is stable, and the cancellation rate is low.
March to June fly as well, with more days lost. The monsoon does not fly, and this is the important one: Bir in late July is a small wet village in cloud, and several hundred kilometres is a long way to go to sit in a café.
Winter flies on clear days, and the thing people get wrong is the temperature at the top. Billing is at 2,400 metres and the landing field is at 1,400, so the take-off is a thousand metres colder than the place you had breakfast.
What we do and do not do here
We drive. We do not sell flights, we are not affiliated with any of the operators at the landing field, and we take nothing from them.
That is worth saying plainly because it is unusual in Bir, where a lot of the transport and a lot of the flying are the same business. Ask us what the weather has been doing and you will get a straight answer rather than a booking.
On the way
Where we stop, and why
- Stop 1217 km inAmbala
Four hours out and the last of the genuinely fast driving before the road starts to think about hills. Nothing here asks to be visited and everything here is open at every hour, which is the whole point of it — this is the long first stop, taken properly, on a day that has a great deal left in it.
- Stop 2Mandi
Where this journey stops being a Manali journey. Everything going north carries on into the Beas gorge and queues; we turn west for Jogindernagar instead, which is why the arrival time here is more dependable than on any other long run we do from Delhi. Fuel and a proper meal before the turn.
- Stop 3Baijnath
The old stone temple sits directly on the road with a car park and no ceremony, and almost everybody drives past it. Twenty minutes short of Bir. If you are arriving in daylight it is worth the ten minutes, because you are unlikely to come back this way with time to spare once the flying starts.
The road
What the drive is actually like
Surface and traffic
The first four hundred kilometres are ordinary and the last ninety are the reason to have a car at all. Delhi to Ambala is four-lane and fast, and the route carries on through Chandigarh and up the main corridor past Bilaspur to Mandi, much of which has been rebuilt into four lanes with tunnels and is quicker than it used to be by a wide margin. At Mandi we turn off. That matters more than it sounds: everything continuing to Kullu and Manali goes up the Beas gorge through Pandoh, which is the least predictable piece of highway in Himachal, and this journey leaves the queue before it. From Mandi the road climbs west through Jogindernagar to Baijnath and Bir on narrow two-lane with villages on it, slower than its distance and slower again after dark. Bir itself has lanes rather than roads. The 14 km up to the Billing take-off is a rough climbing track of about forty-five minutes and is not a road for a low saloon — the flying operators run jeeps up it and that is what you should be going up in.
Through the year
The road is open all year and the flying is not, which makes the season the only thing about this journey worth planning around. October and November are the best flying months by a distance and are when Bir is full. March to June fly too, less reliably and with more cancelled days. The monsoon does not fly at all, and a July or August trip is a trip to a wet village with nothing to do, which is worth knowing before you spend twelve hours getting there. Winter flies on clear days and is cold at the take-off in a way people underestimate, since Billing is a thousand metres above the landing field. On the road itself, the Punjab fog of December and January mornings is the real hazard and it can add two hours to the plains section. The hill stretch from Mandi onwards is straightforward the year round, with the usual small monsoon slides on the Jogindernagar road clearing within hours.
The car
What we would send
Questions
What people ask about this run
Is the overnight bus better than a car?
For one or two people, usually yes, and we would rather say so. There are direct overnight coaches from Delhi to Bir, they cost a fraction of a private car and they use the hours you would otherwise spend driving. The car earns its place when there are four or more of you, when you are carrying your own wing and kit, or when you want the Kangra valley on the way in rather than arriving at six in the morning having seen none of it.
Do you book the paragliding?
No. The operators are clustered at the landing field, tandem flights are arranged there or in advance directly with them, and we take nothing from anybody who sells them. We drive you, we will get you to the take-off road, and we will tell you honestly what the weather has been doing. Who you fly with is your choice and should stay that way.
Can we break the journey somewhere sensible?
Yes, and for a family we usually suggest it. A night at Mandi puts you two to three hours from Bir with the long driving done, and turns a thirteen-hour day into two comfortable ones. It costs the driver's halt and nothing else with us.
Can you take us up to Billing?
Up to the point the surface stops being a road, yes. The last fourteen kilometres to the take-off are rough, steep and better done in the operators' jeeps, which run continuously through the season and are built for it. We would rather put you in one of those than take a car somewhere it will be slower and less comfortable than the alternative.
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