The bright side to enduring Gurgaon weather, dust and traffic (aside from all the good times one can actually have here) is that the NCR is close to many weekend getaways and destinations. A plethora of backpacking opportunities present themselves and it would be a shame to let sloth and inertia take over and pass up on visiting all these places.
It was also time to head to the mountains, where the clean air and the breathtaking views overrode any possible discomfort endured in the process of reaching the destination.
“Are you a mountain person or a beach person?”, she asked, and I couldn’t help grinning from ear-to-ear when a question that I often posed was in turn redirected to me. The delight multiplied manifold when both our answers matched. I sometimes sit and wonder now whether this is a standard question that features in conversations between people getting to know each other.
What follows is a hand-picked set of experiences during my weekend trip. I prefer this approach to the chronological narrative version because the latter gives one the scope to ramble on much more.
One could observe the various holidaying stereotypes in the crowd – the newly wed couples, college sweethearts, nuclear families, extended families, mixed groups of guys and girls that eerily reminded one of a Desi version of FRIENDS, groups of guys checking out the girls in the aforementioned mixed groups and lastly, the odd sets of foreign travelers who would’ve no doubt been overwhelmed by the thought of what they had in store for the next five hours, as the little train chugged along through the beautiful mountains to reach Shimla.
I, on the other hand, had no intentions of being on a train filled with loud people. Were that the case, multiple Delhi Metro rail rides would’ve done the trick. One of the many advantages of solo travel is the ability to change track and not bother about group consensus at any point in time. I had to forsake the ticket that I had purchased on the toy train and decided instead to head to Kasauli via Dharampur.
As the weekend stretched past lazily in this beautiful town, I noticed how it was over-run by tourists as well during certain parts of the day. I shudder to think of how much more worse it would’ve been in Shimla.
It is also one of those places that is overrun by local tourists from Chandigarh, Ambala and other places in the plains that want to avoid Shimla to escape the other loud and boorish tourists from Delhi. As a result, getting accommodation was next to impossible. Most of the standard hotels were expensive, charging anything upward of INR 1500 per room per day.
I only had one night to spend there and I was ok roughing it up with cheap accommodation. Since the regular hotels were out of question, I went towards that part of town near the market which had guest house rooms available, and after much searching, was able to get a room for INR 400 at Shiv Guest House.
The room was spacious, but uninviting, which meant that I would sleep there because I had to and I could use the rest of my limited time in this place to go outside and explore. The room did have its own exit onto the cobbled road in front of it.
The room seemed more like a refurbished attic, but what was more fun was that the bathroom upstairs seemed like it was the attic to this room that I was staying at. The bathroom seemed to be constructed as an afterthought, after those precious moments of realization wherein they suddenly figured out that the something that was missing was actually the bathroom.
Roughly constructed uneven steps led up to an Indian-style lavatory, and since there was no water supply, water had to be carted all the way up to the bathroom. Talk about roughing it.
But yes, the mountains, the the crisp air, the greenery, the cobbled streets, the folks that would smile and nod if you did and the proximity of my guest house to the market all made it all worthwhile.
When I went in there, the outside table was occupied and I made myself comfortable at the second table. A short while later, some chap arrived and sat at the table I was at and pulled across a small curtain to cover his seating location. My view of the outside, however, wasn’t obstructed.
A few minutes later, he was joined by this pretty girl and both of them sat there, ordered chow mein and drank coke. The guy kept glancing outside and it seemed like he was a bit worried about people seeing both of them together.
Makes sense, after all, Kasauli has a population of not more than 7000 people and given how all these honour killings have been in the news now (despite having been around for ages), being clandestine about romantic affairs is always more sensible than to be out in the open among people with a conservative bent.
What was interesting was that the guy referred to the girl as ‘Aap’, the second person plural reference used as a form of respect, usually reserved for the elders or used in polite conversation with unfamiliar people.
I spent a lot of time walking around Kasauli, and the soles of my feet and those on my shoes bear ample evidence to validate that. Sigur Ros’ music seemed to be the best suited for the outdoor ambience and the fresh clean air that I was revelling in.
I eventually switched to a mix-mp3 playlist that was uploaded by Beatzo, and to my surprise, I discovered a few tracks on it that will henceforth constantly feature on my list of most preferred tracks to listen to.
It seemed apt that one of them was a Sigur Ros track. Some of the other stuff on it included ‘Summer’ by Joe Hisaishi, whose piano hook made me play the track about fifteen times and ‘The Real Folk Blues’ by Yoko Kanno, which despite being in Japanese and hence incomprehensible lyrically, had other redeeming qualities including a killer bass line that made listening to it just absolute magic. The entire mix-mp3 can be found here.
If you’re lucky, you just end up listening to the right stuff at the right time. This trip was all about that.
