White blanket wraps Himachal's Queen of Hills

Shimla, Feb 3 (IANS) The hills of picturesque tourist resorts Shimla, Manali and Narkanda Tuesday saw more spells of snow, bringing cheer to the hospitality industry.

This was another significant snowfall that froze the "Queen of Hills", as Shimla was fondly described by the British.

The snowfall has brought down the minimum temperature to 0.7 degree Celsius.

According to the Met Office here, some areas of Shimla like the Mall Road, the Ridge, the US Club and Jakhu hills got plentiful snow.

Other picturesque tourist resorts Chail Kasauli in Solan district and Dalhousie in Chamba district are experiencing snow.

"High-altitude areas of Lahaul and Spiti, Chamba, Mandi, Kullu, Kinnaur, Sirmaur and Shimla districts have been experiencing moderate to heavy snow on the second consecutive day," a weather department official said.

Shimla and its upper areas like Kufri, Narkanda, Jubbal and Kotkhai received moderate snow.

Manali in Kullu district and Kalpa in Kinnaur district experienced 10 cm and 52 cm snow, respectively. These towns recorded a low of minus 1.4 and minus 9.8 degrees Celsius.

Tourist Mayank Bhatia said: "What a pleasant surprise to see snow in Shimla in February."

"The occupancy in hotels is likely to spike up owing to snow," D.P. Bhatia, general manager of Clarke's Hotel in Shimla, told IANS.

Keylong in Lahaul and Spiti district saw a minimum temperature of minus 6.5 degrees Celsius with snow of 18 cm.

Rain lashed lower areas of the state such as Dharamsala, Palampur, Solan, Nahan, Bilaspur, Una, Hamirpur and Mandi, pulling down both night and day temperatures.

Dharamsala, which recorded 38.6 mm rain, saw the night temperature at 3.6 degrees Celsius.

Traffic movement beyond Dhalli, 10km from here, remained disrupted since a large stretch of the Hindustan-Tibet Road was under a thick blanket of snow.