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I have seen several people going to places covered with snow these days. It is common for people to go to a cooler region on birthdays or anniversaries, but if you are not ready with some of the basic things then you can get stuck in a place that might become one of the horrors for you.

I will not name a particular place, because there are many places in this world where Snow Covered Mountains and Hills are present and some are tourist destinations as well.

Several people get lost or even get stuck in these mountains and the rescue teams have to search for them. This is especially true with people who are new to the Mountain Ranges and who are not well prepared.

Making decisions to go further and stop or to even go back to your previous camp can make all the difference.

Most of the time when people go to mountain ranges, they do so in their cars, and it doesn't make more difference if you own a 4 by 4 or 4 by 2 if you don't have any experience in mountain areas.

Having said that, there are a few things that you can keep with yourself to ensure that you are safe during any mishap that may happen and especially to stop mishaps from occurring. 

When you are planning to go to Snow Covered Areas, ensure to keep Snow Chains and Walkie Talkie to be connected with your friends who are going with you.

During a Snow Storm, you don't get much time to understand what to do and over the Black Ice, your tyres will start sliding if you don't have good experience driving a car on snow. Even if you have experience, it is always good to have a snow chain and to know how to use it on your car.

When you drive your car on snow, especially black ice, your tires start sliding because of low traction on the road. This may result in the vehicle getting out of control and falling down. Therefore, you should always use Snow Chains while going through such terrains. Lowering your tyre pressure is another thing that you should do to ensure a better grip on tyre. Having said that, you should always have Winter Tyres in these places.

Plus having a Walkie Talkie helps you in situations where you are your friends are going in separate cars or bikes or you might have to separate for some reason. 

Walkie Talkies, although not as efficient as satellite phones, help in a number of ways. For example, if you are moving on a road that seems stuck, and you want your friend to check the road further,  walkie-talkie may help you be in touch because usually these snow-covered regions might not have a cellular connection, which may result in some mishap. If you are stuck somewhere and your friend is farther away from you, then in that case you will not be able to connect with each other. This will result in you panicking out which will make the situation even worse. Also, having a walkie-talkie will help you to connect with each other over short distances which is not possible with mobile phones usually because of loss of network connection.

In addition to these two items, you should also carry towing hooks and ropes to ensure that you are able to pull your car in case it is stuck somewhere or if it is not able to get traction, in that case, you can use these things to at least have some additional power.

Therefore, while going to Snow Covered Mountains or Ranges, you should always have some things that will help you get out of difficult situations. You can even have ice axes and other mountaineering items with you and even items like warm clothes, food supplies for some days, items that can help you create fire, etc.

I am sharing the list below so that you can refer to it before going to any Cold Place or Snow Covered Regions around the world;

1. Snow Chains for Cars 
2. Walkie Talkie
3. Warm Clothes
4. Heating Mechanism
5. Fire Starter Kit
6. Towing Hooks and Supplies
7. Food Supplies for 2 to 3 days per person
8. Water Heating Kit
9. Snow Axe
10. Mountaineering Ropes
11. Plastic Bags - to keep wallet, IDs, and Mobile or other Electronic Items Dry
12. Medicines - Paracetamol, Cold and cough Syrup, Headache tablets, Stomach Infection Tablet, Antiseptic (Medical Kit)

Traveling from Hyderabad to Jammu and Kashmir is one of the things that I want to do. Although the distance is more than 2,000 km, there is still a lot of adventure that one can experience.

It might take anywhere from 3 to 4 days to complete this trip.

One of the things to consider while traveling from Hyderabad to Jammu and Kashmir is the vehicle that we are going to take with us. Diesel vehicles are going to get banned soon, so it may be the right time to buy one because after a few years or I believe after 15 years have passed, Diesel vehicles might not be relevant, so we can at least enjoy their low-end torque for some time.

Plus having a body-on-frame vehicle is one of the best things to have for this trip instead of a monocoque structure because that provides a more commanding view of the road and will also help us in ensuring that we have good ground clearance.

Although several sub-compact SUVs have come into the market these days, but most of them are glorified hatch backs. An SUV should be a body-on-frame structure with rear-wheel drive, and when we talk about compact SUVs that are in the Indian market today, not even a single vehicle provides these things.

The only companies that are providing this currently are Toyota and Mahindra.

Now because Toyota seems not to be focusing on new cars, Mahindra seems to be one of the best fits for this purpose, and its Bolero Neo is one of the cars that seems to be capable of handling this travel.

This is because, it is the only vehicle or 7-seater SUV that has MLD function which is also known as Multi-Terrain Technology by Mahindra, and this actually helps in getting over bad road patches as well without any issues or without losing a sweat.

One of the other reasons is that, because it's a rear-wheel-drive vehicle, it is one of the most capable vehicles while driving a Bolero Neo, one won't get tired easily and when we are going on a long trip we should be sitting on a large platform as that helps us be more energetic and feel less tired.

While moving from Hyderabad, we will have to ensure that we are doing this trip in winter because that is the time when traveling becomes easy as we will not be experiencing any heat waves, and when we move north, we will start experiencing cold weather gradually as we move farther away from Hyderabad.

So, the time will be December, especially on New Year and Christmas Holidays.

Now, I prefer to leave early in the morning and will try to cover at least 500 to 600 km in a day. This will surely help us complete our trip in 4 days and them back to Hyderabad in 4 days. So there should be at least 15 days' holiday to complete this journey because we don't just want to go to Kashmir and then come back directly. We will also try and plan a stay in Kashmir.

Our first stop will be Nagpur as it is 535 km away from Hyderabad and hence it becomes our first stop in this journey. Then our next stop will be around 700 km further in Gawalior. This will be a long drive but it will be one of the places that we will try to explore because I have never been to Madhya Pradesh before.

Then our third stop will be from Gwalior to Delhi which is a small distance and is around 340 km drive and should not take more than 5 to 6 hours by road. We can stay in Delhi for some time as it is one of the places where we can do a lot of things and can also have some shopping time.

Having said that we can then plan to drive to Jammu from Delhi, which will be around 10 hours of journey or 586 km in total. Now at Jammu, because I have my home, so we can stay there for some days and then plan to go to Patnitop or some other hill station, and the we can plan to move to Kashmir.

It should not take more than 4 or 5 hours to cover 140 km from Jammu to Kashmir, and we should be able to reach there quite fast.

In Kashmir, we can plan to check out snow-covered roads and Sonmarg, but in winter I guess it is too cold over there and we will try to stick mainly to the cities. This will help us explore popular tourist destinations in Kashmir like Shalimar Bhag and Nishat Bhag.

We can also go to Dal Lake and Check out Vullar Lake.

When we go from Jammu to Kashmir, we can also go to Very Naag, which is a small garden kind of structure in Anantnag region of Kashmir. Locals usually go there and enjoy the beauty and chillness of the small spring that is there in the garden.

Then after exploring the city, we will try to return back to Hyderabad with same stops that we already discussed.

This should be a memorable experience as it is one of the most awaited experiences that I want to have and would like to travel long distances using a capable car.