Taxi transfer
Pathankot to Dalhousie
The short one. Eighty kilometres from the railhead to a hill station at nearly two thousand metres, almost all of it climbing, and the most useful transfer we run for anyone arriving by train.
- Route
- Dunera · Banikhet
- Driving time
- 2.5–3 hrs
- Distance
- 80 km
This page is the drive itself — one day, Pathankot to Dalhousie. If you would rather stop along the way, we run it as Dalhousie and Khajjiar.
Pathankot → Dalhousie
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Pathankot is where the broad-gauge network stops and the hills start, which makes it the arrival point for the whole of Chamba district. Almost nobody comes here to be here; they come to get off a train and go up.
Eighty kilometres does not sound like much, and then you spend most of three hours doing it. The road climbs from a couple of hundred metres to nearly two thousand without much respite, which is why the transfer takes longer than the distance implies and why the temperature at the top is a genuine shock in June.
It is an easy drive and a pretty one in its second half. The thing worth getting right in advance is the vehicle, because Dalhousie’s streets were laid out for something considerably smaller than a modern minibus.
On the way
Where we stop, and why
- Stop 135 km inDunera
Where the road leaves the last of the flat and commits to the hill. There is not much to it beyond a few shops and a tea stall, but it is the natural place to stop because everything after it is continuous climbing and the next comfortable pull-in is most of an hour away.
- Stop 268 km inBanikhet
The fork, and the reason to know the name: right for Dalhousie, on for Chamba and Khajjiar. It sits high enough to have its own view back down the valley, and it is where you can feel the temperature drop for the first time. Ten minutes here is worth it for the air alone.
The road
What the drive is actually like
Surface and traffic
A tarred two-lane road the whole distance, in reasonable repair, and the only thing it asks of you is patience — this is eighty kilometres that gains around sixteen hundred metres, so the average speed is low and consistently low. There are no flat sections to make up time on after Dunera. The climb is steady rather than alarming, with none of the exposure of the Kinnaur or Spiti roads, and it is well within an ordinary saloon car. What it is not good for is a full-size Tempo Traveller: the final approach into Dalhousie and the roads inside the town are genuinely narrow, with tight bends and parked cars, and a twenty-six seater spends the last half hour reversing for oncoming traffic. For a group that size we would send two smaller vehicles and everybody arrives sooner. Dalhousie's own layout is worth a word — the town is built along two looping roads around a hill, so "the centre" is a matter of which loop your hotel is on, and the driver will need the actual name rather than a landmark.
Through the year
Open most of the year and genuinely closable in winter, which makes it unusual among the low approaches. Dalhousie sits just under two thousand metres and gets real snow in January and February — enough that the last fifteen kilometres above Banikhet can be shut for a day or two after a heavy fall, and enough that chains occasionally matter. This is a road we will not take at night during a snow spell, and we would rather move a pickup by half a day than argue with it. The rest of the year is straightforward. The monsoon brings the usual small slides on the cut sections between Dunera and Banikhet, generally cleared within hours. The best window is April to June, when the plains below are already unbearable and Dalhousie is fifteen degrees cooler, and then again September to November for the clearest views back across Punjab.
The car
What we would send
Questions
What people ask about this run
Which station should we book to — Pathankot or Chakki Bank?
Either. They are a few kilometres apart and we meet trains at both; Chakki Bank takes most of the long-distance broad-gauge traffic and Pathankot Junction takes the rest. Tell us the train number rather than the station name and we will work out where it actually stops, which is the part people most often get wrong.
Is it worth going on to Khajjiar the same day?
Yes, if your train gets in before lunch. Khajjiar is about an hour beyond Dalhousie on the Chamba road and works well as an afternoon, so you arrive, drop bags, and go out again. If you are arriving on an overnight train and have not slept, do it the next morning instead — the road up is not one to do twice in a day on no sleep.
Can you meet a delayed train?
Yes, and trains into Pathankot are late often enough that we plan for it. We track the running status rather than the timetable and there is no waiting charge for a late arrival. If it is badly delayed overnight we will call you rather than leave a driver sitting on a platform.
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