Shimla Trip

Parents, protect your children

Airport: Bong family with small child strapped onto the dad's back in an aluminium frame. Very handy thing. You can take it off and stand it on the floor, and it's high enough to stop the kid from escaping and sturdy enough to resist an attack by the most speedcrazed trolley attendant with over a hundred trolleys.

Also has useful straps that spread in all directions like the arms of a predatory octopus, ready to ensnare and trip loud overweight aunties by the dozen for the kid's entertainment while he himself remains safe inside the frame, like Ellen Ripley in Aliens. You can also hang it up in the loo if you need to take a leak, or zip it closed and send it as luggage (removing child first is advisable) or collapse it and use as a weapon while defending oneself from packs of rapacious touts and taxiwallas in Delhi, prowling the airports like wolves in the steppes.

Deja vu
Delhi: Captain Alex, once again a Singaporean. Do all Singaporen pilots come to India solely for the purpose of flying me to Delhi and making me circle it while my train leaves? But I outsmarted them this time. While they were pretending to lose my luggage, I booked a cab, freaked out my girlfriend by pretending to be in dire jeopardy of missing train, losing luggage and freezing to death while simultaneously getting run over, kidnapped and forcibly married off in a west UP village, freshened up, produced gigantic alpine jacket from hand baggage and proceeded to don it, raising eyebrows all around and imparting an additional chill to those who forgot there's at least a fifteen-degree difference between a Cal and a Delhi winter and were in thin shawls. Heheh.
What is mere airline staff in the face of such preparation?
Admitting defeat, they trundled my bag out onto the conveyer in the first batch itself.

Train Loos

Old Delhi Station: Meet up Doc, Buddha and Praddy. Heard the Terrible Tale of Doc And The Loo, a hair-raising horror guaranteed to make you go on a liquid diet on each journey.
Ah, train loos. They’re an exercise in acrobatics, juggling, organizational skills, and split-second timing. Getting your pants off and keeping your balance while the loo shakes and heaves around you is just the beginning. There’s also usually at least an inch of water sloshing around on the floor, and if you’re really unlucky, an incontinent child with poor aim has visited the loo before you, and the light will be dim, or flickering, or alternating between all three states. And when you’ve done your business, there’s the Coming Together Of The Four. Mug, Water, Hand, and Ass. Miss any one, and… well, use your imagination.
Hungry. Search for omelette stall. Find it, but the owner is fast asleep on top of the cart. Have unhealthy high-fat botulism-laden puri instead, and it’s delicious, steamin’ hot and drippingly juicy.

The beginning of the cold

Kalka: Early morning. Fog, mist, condensation. Damp, cold air. Sleepy heads. Empty stations. And then find a guy selling chai. There’s a phrase in hindi, ‘rongte khade ho jate hain…’ That first sip makes you feel the words physically. Try it. Rrroll off your tongue. Rrrrongte. You can feel those chills running down your spine, as the hot tea slides down through your chilled body…

Toy Train

What else did you expect? Bong Family. Bring out the monkey caps! Europeans, in silent pairs in the corners. Boisterously excited students bouncing around, singing, yelling. Exposed skin so cold it hurts. Toasty warm in the jacket, exhaling thick white vapor. Omelette, cutlet, and bread while zipping through 103 tunnels, over roman-style bridges, under clear blue sky past misty valleys. Clicking snaps like a maniac.
Think of the 8:19 slow to Churchgate pulling out of Andheri station at this very minute back in Bombay, and it feels lifetimes away. Ha ha ha ha ha…

Peeing in a toy train
Is even more problematic than a regular train. To begin with, you need four arms. Two to hold the jacket open. One to hold down the jockeys from snapping back and collapsing you in an agonized heap on the floor. And one to actually direct flows in a epileptically shaking WC.

A little history
The Kalka-Simla toy train is one of the world’s recognized narrow-gauge engineering feats. The 103 tunnels it travels through were constructed using giant mirrors for lighting, and they’re still used today for repair work. Build by an Englishman named Barod, after whom they have a station named, where we had our first pitstop and took on supplies. The toy train driver – a chappie called Suresh Varma – was convinced by Doc to let him see the engine cabin.

Simla
Cab up to Shilonbagh, where we’re going to be staying… around 25 km out of Simla, a resort in the middle of nowhere with a couple of shops, a taxi union, and another resort for company on an otherwise uninhabited wilderness. A bus goes by every hour or so, otherwise you walk.

Sit around in the sun.

Have some tea. Watch the view.

Except this time round, it was sleet season. Ice cold drizzle whipping around. Ears going cold, frozen, then numb. Fingers refusing to work. Situation desperate. Doc decides enough is enough, and stops at the first desi daru theka and picks up a bottle of the local stuff, entitled, appropriately enough, Suroor. It has similarities to its’ musical namesake, too- it’s ubiquitous, not very healthy in the long run or in large doses, but does its’ job of giving temporary warmth and comfort at a very cheap price.
Stop at Khufri where we pick up gloves and pictures of Yaks.

Toshali Bird View Resort has a jacuzzi, a gym, a pool table, a TT table, a bar (naturally) and a chai shop and cig shop right outside. It has a strange choice of internal décor, though… the passages and rooms alike are filled with prints of French architecture and American presidents.

Take Doc & Praddy for a walk in the evening, downhill 3 km to a village called Kag. At the end of it, we turn around and look at the long, long way back and the fading light… and right on cue, a taxi arrives. Someone else was coming down to here. Talk about luck.

Bitterly cold. We find out later it’s a cold wave, and the whole of Himachal is shivering under icy winds and falling temperatures. It was 5 degrees in Simla; Shilonbagh must have been easily 2 or 3. So cold it hurts.
Try a little phone sex but it doesn’t work out; there’s poor network inside the room, and 3 very curious pairs of ears, and outside means putting on your thermals, t-shirt, sweater, and double-layered alpine jacket and shoes, cap, and gloves, and then stand with whole-body shudders and chattering teeth.

Watch the moon set at night. Completely still now, completely dark.

Deadly silence and deadly cold.

Wake up, step out on the balcony, and in 3 seconds I'm screaming 'Abe m@#@%€0#!!' and running back inside with my feet so cold they felt like they were on fire.
Take a walk in the morning. Lots of monkeys, but all of them remarkably peaceful and well-behaved. Ignore me completely.

Fix up a cab for 4 days, head off to The Mall. It’s a vehicle-free zone with old English architecture; lovely place. You can only move around on foot, on horses, or in a pram, if you are in a certain age bracket with accommodating parents.

Indian Coffee House. Stuff myself with the softest, thickest, most delicious, golden buttered toast and scrambled eggs. I swear I haven’t tasted those toast anywhere outside the hills. Worth the trip just for that.
Lounge around on park benches in the sun, watch the crowds, write, read, chat.

This place is one big real-world Orkut. Black suits. College kids. Families. Businessmen. Oldies. Aunties. Schoolkids. Girls in groups. And the First Mall Brats. Friends met. Deals stuck. Plans made. Hands shaken. Strolling, walking, chatting, amongst themselves or on phones. I counted a handshake every ten seconds at the junction.
Everyone goes gaga over the Himachali women but I find the reports a little suspect, and the results doubtful. They’re too sharp-featured… but then again, maybe I was looking at a biased sample. At that time, all the college kids would be in, and these would be the housewives / working women… but definitely incredibly fit. It's the air that does it, I guess.

Movies

Went and watched Dhoom 2 at the Ritz Cineplex on the ridge. This on top of one idiotic Sunny Deol movie the previous night (classic daku-police, thakurs, heaving bosoms, shotguns, childbirth under stressfuls conditions, horse chases, emotion! drama! action! revenge! etc) I think I overdosed on bollywood idiocy. The best way to see movies I guess is, the more the maker takes himself seriously, the more you should treat it like a parody. Or you play Bollywood Bingo where the winner the is the person who can recognize the maximum number of movies where ideas, stories, characters, jokes, dialogues, and music has been plagiarized - sorry, inspired - from. Doc naturally hooted, hollered, whistled, moaned, and supplied impromptu censor-unfriendly dialogues throughout the duration, which made up for the movie in entertainment value, at least.

Christ Church at night. Lit up, clean yellow against midnight blue sky.

Cool, cold, colder… we need a bar. We find one. Called, interestingly enough, Madira. Just like the seedy one in front of my office. I guess you can leave the office behind, but like the Hutch network, it follows.

Post-booze, gulped down boiling hot gulab jamuns from Baljee's, hot enough to burn your mouth. Nothing beats hot GJs on a cold night, except maybe hot freshly-made jalebi, which we also had on our next trip to the Mall.
Find a Tibetan Handloom shop, where I pick up assorted gifts for far and dear ones… bone bracelets, and for me, finally, I manage to lay my hands on a CD of Tibetan chants. I’ve been looking for that since MacLeodganj. But you know something? It needs cold weather to be appreciated. Down here, in the plains… it felt like something was missing, somehow.

This guy also had a couple of North Face jackets hanging up… I want this life. I want to live in a place where they sell North Face jackets hanging outside the shops.
Nail-biting ride back on the dark mountain road, with Gangster remixed playing, the cab swaying all over the place, including off the road on occasion.

The Shilon Dragon
For some unfathomable reason, the Shilon Resort has a large plaster statue of a virulent green dragon. The rest of the resort is a fairly dignified, traditional resort, with no trace whatsoever of any dragon themes.

Breakfast at ABC's
The next morning is brilliantly clear, crystalline air. You can see all the way to the peaks of Rohtang Pass, gleaming white in the morning sun, while we sit in the garden of the ABC Sher-e-Punjab and pig out on aloo parathas.
Why ABC? Well, it used to be a single dhaba called Sher-e-Punjab run by two brothers, but jealousy, greed and sibling rivalry reared it's ugly head and they had a fight and divided it. One promptly named his half the Zenstha Sher-e-Punjab. The other, I assume in a fit of hasty renaming, cried "Um - ehh - Om Sai, nonono - Khufri dh- no, that's taken - abe mera bheja nahin chalta, fuckit!" and named his pride and joy ‘ABC’.

Bollywood Flashbacks
Naldehra. The scenic site of many a dozen seventies bollywood romances. Riding around on horseback between the tall pines, stopping at little clearings for a cig-and-chai break. I keep expecting to see Rajesh Khanna pop out from behind a tree with soulful expression, while Asha Parekh or Sharmila Tagore flit hither and thither. Although, more recently, some bits of LoC had been shot here…

One the tea-stall people was from Lucknow. (I seem to find my roots wherever I go!) He runs his biz here, and goes home during January, during the storms season. He remembered the times when movies used to be shot all the time… now it’s tapered off. Directors prefer the foreign locales. :(
This is my somewhat skittish steed, Rani. Say hi.

Hopefully, I can ride a horse now, as long as he trots amiably around. Horses have a funny way of resting, you noticed? They’ll stand with one rear hoof half-raised, like they’re posing for something.
And while we’re talking animals, you have to see the dogs they have out here… healthiest bloody creatures ever seen. Huge. Obviously because of the extra layers of bushy fur, but a lot of the retired colonels’ and brigadiers’ Alsatians and Dobermanns have been enjoying themselves amidst the local canine populace; the place is crawling with mongrels that are almost, but not quite, alsatians, obermanns, spaniels, retrievers, Labradors, and even great danes. Add a healthy component of bhutia in the mix and you have a classic Himachal street dog – bushy, large, well-kept and well-fed, and generally having such an indolent expression on his face you want to jump off the nearest cliff in shame at the thought of your own life.

Tattapani: The road is through only bare, brown hills. Golden grass like fur. Down into the Sutlej valley, before the river finds its’ way into Pakistan… hot springs. Sulphur deposits along the banks. Seams of sulphur in all the rocks, worn smooth by the water… picked up some nice paperweights here. Chill out on the banks for a while, on the rocks. The water’s swirling white, noisy.

3 firangs arrive on Bullets, apparently doing a cross-country thing, or a finding-themselves mission. One day…
After a while, a group of Indian tourists arrive and begin to bathe enthusiastically in the hot sulfur springs, as Indian tourists are wont to do at the drop of a hat near any water body, and we move on. Pass a major flock of ghurals and several women carrying gigantic bundles of sticks – this is when they gather the firewood for the season when it’s too cold to go out – and later, in a deserted patch of the road, the Black Bear marked territory. Buddha was about to as well, until he saw me clicking, and changed his mind.

At least, I hope he did. That’s a suspiciously wet-looking patch there.

Stargazing
Gorgeous sunset, clean air, biting cold. Lights of Simla like sparks on a dark hill.

Night.

Stars.

You can’t see stars like this in the city… pure black and hard white glitters, yes, standard stuff, but what you have to see- and what I just can’t put in words here – is the way they sweep across that entire gigantic expanse of the sky, end to end, everywhere, so many of them, and you can just stand there in the dark, mouth open, head thrown back, just staring up and up and up while your breath mists in the night air and there’s a faraway murmur of a few dhaba workers talking around a glowing fire…

Overeating?

Spectacular dinner, but we were slightly unnerved by the way the owner doused the lights and downed the shutters as soon as we paid the bill. Come on, yaar. Did we really eat your entire stock? Cold makes you hungry, but we’re not such bhukkads… but it turns out he knows there’s nobody else who’s going to be coming after us.

You have to get used to a completely different lifestyle and pace out here, man… it’s another country. Another world.

Sometimes I wonder if this is the way life is really supposed to be, and we in Bombay are stuck in some ghastly life-gone-wrong horror

Talk to R again. Most of our conversations begin with me telling her what I ate that day, which completely horrifies her. Actually, it horrifies me too, if I think about it too long.

Doc is so in love with here that he has made his plans to settle here for a few months. He is a man on a contact-making mission with each and every local he meets, getting addresses, names, numbers, and discussing plans. Buddha, slightly uncharitably, endows him with a future himachali wife and kids, developing it into a modern-day Ram Teri Ganga Maili story.

Naturally, this brings into mind vivid images of the specific unique problems involved in extreme cold-weather sex when she’s used to the temperature and you aren’t. One would imagine a strategically cut hole in the sleeping bag… with risks of frostbite if you got it wrong too often. And as for getting it right when it’s 3 degrees… but this is a family audience page, so I shall desist from going down that particular train of thought. ; )

Chail has the highest cricket ground in India, a statement that seems a little familiar from hearing it being claimed by Dharamsala as well. It definitely has the highest basketball court, and a historic tree.

Conversations with Cabbie
The Himachal taxi drivers are extremely unionized, with clear territories and rules. Each driver is doing his job only part-time; the rest goes in farming, or other businesses, or hobbies. It’s also on a rotation basis, so we get a different driver each time.

Today, it’s an extremely talkative Mr. Sharma, who apparently owns 400 bighas of land and 3 shops all over the place, but has photography as the passion of his life, which he unleashes upon unsuspecting tourists and honeymooners. This he tells us while sprawled out on the grass, trying to convince Doc to buy a stock of charas from him. Once he realizes that the sale isn’t going to happen, he philosophically rolls a joint and smokes his supplies, while Praddy is in paroxysms of alarm remembering that this guy will now drive downhill in the dark on a mountain road while on a completely different spiritual plane altogether.

I luuurve winters
The best part of winter- more than the breath vapor in the mornings, more the hot food and hotter coffee, more than the snuggling under the quilts, is the snoozing in the sun on the grass. Buddha was woken up finally by an ant crawling up his ear, or he’d have remained there till now.
Watch the first innings of a local match, then head off to the Chail Palace Hotel.

This is where Black was shot – Mr. McNally’s house. Dark clouds come up, and we sit in the lawns in an icy wind having brilliantly hot coffee and watching a beautiful, boisterous golden retriever mix enthusiastically chase monkeys, other dogs, and finally his own tail before bolting off towards some unseen, and probably imagined, prey. The caretakers train dogs to chase off monkeys so that the tourists aren’t harassed, though apart from the golden guy, the rest seemed to be a lazy bunch who put their belief in the adage of ‘live and let live’, curling up in a warm spot and closing their eyes, hoping the monkeys will go away before someone calls on them to do their duty yet again.
Temperature dropped so sharply that when you take a leak, the steam from the bowl practically hides it.

Make it to the famous Chanderu dhaba, run by a Nepali family, the favorite of all taxi drivers of Simla. With good reason. It’s the single most delicious meal I’ve had in years. And healthy. Home food cooked on a wood fire. Makke di roti, sarson da saag, paratha, rajma, dal, kadhi, and finally topped up with gur-roti as a sweet dish.

Play a couple of games of pool back at the resort, in the evening after a hot shower. Is this luxury or is this luxury?

Back to Simla then next day, for more lazing around. Go through Lakkar Bazaar, the wood market, this time round… taking a shortcut through a long, dark, dank tunnel. We are already starting to feel the first twinges of familiarity, of becoming localized here. Buy lots of gifts to be taken back home.

Monkey Business
Head up to the Jakhoo Temple in a fit of enthusiasm. Forty five minutes of a forty five degree slope later, we’re gasping at every level patch of ground, swearing to, really, really this time, quit cigarettes. Good thing Doc and Praddy didn't try it, or, as Buddha so succintly puts it, we would have had to cancel their tickets back.
The monkeys here are the local gundas of the himachal monkey, the Macca mulatta mafia. Not so well-behaved and shy, this lot! At regular intervals, the locals are selling sticks to tourists to ward off the monkeys. We don’t realize why until, halfway up, I feel a gentle tug on my jeans and look down into a pair of wide-open, soft brown eyes attached to a hairy body and little black paws gently yanking at my pants.

I’m too surprised to really react immediately, which also confused our solicitous simian who’s more used to the object of his (or her) affections screaming in fright and dropping bags of goodies before scuttling off.

Not seeing any reaction coming, it tugs half-heartedly at my jacket again, then dolefully walks off, pausing to give me a disgusted look; ‘Come up here all this way without even a packet of pathetic peanuts! Bloody tourists! Give me devotees any day.’
Jakhoo Temple is a Hanuman Temple, and the monkeys swarm like piranha here, and are as aggressive. But it’s still a nice place, with nice carvings, peaceful.

The Great Indian Train Traveller
Finally, at 4 AM,it’s time to leave; catch a cab back to Kalka, and onto the Paschim Express back to Bombay. At Chandigarh, we see a classic case of the inability of the average Indian train-traveller to understand the mechanics of train-boarding; gigantic groups of portly travelers with gargantuan luggage will burst in at each end of the coach and charge towards the opposite ends, clashing in the center like some cosmic force, each with his own attendant solar system of relatives, well-wishers, porters, and luggage, with cries of ‘Side do! Side do! Zara shift karo ji!’ and pushing each other into to laps of those already seated.

Snack on delicious chane-bhature from the Ambala platform, sssssoft bhature like you get only in Punjab.

Kids on a Train
Oh, the Horror. One crapped in the compartment. One couldn’t keep still and romped end-to-end for the entire journey, trailed by a lanky minder with a cell surgically attached to his ear. One demanded everything from every attendant who passed by, and shrieked in rage at every denial, every attempt of his parents to sleep, read, talk, or do anything not directly involving him. One had a grandmother who would cough alarmingly, tongue protruding, eyes bulging, and phlegm spraying in all directions.

Beautiful winter weather… cool, overcast, slightly drizzly, and best of all, seen from behind a pane of glass while wrapped up in a warm blanket.

And so it ends.

Time for you to start planning your own trip.

See the Photos here

See the Slideshow here

Kharagpur Trip

Station Parade

I'm walking down with my dad, my mom, a PA, a peon, a porter, the assistant stationmaster, 4 uniformed RPFs with machine guns, a plain-clothes senior RPF with a walkie-talkie, a driver, and a miscellaneous gent. Another contingent with more guards and a radio is shooing people out of our way ahead.
Apparently this happens every time my dad arrives in Kharagpur. Our little parade proceeds along India's longest platform, through a tunnel, out into the main entrance where there's The Classic White Ambassador With Red Official Light waiting in the foyer, surrounded by more armed guards and a pair of drivers.
And other assorted miscellaneous well-wishers.

Inhumanly Cramped Living Conditions
The Brits had absolutely ridiculous standards of living. They've given 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 2 dining rooms, a drawing room, 2 verandahs, a portico, a kitchesm 2 boxrooms, a TV room, and assorted other alcoves, including a separate room dedicated solely to the purpose of washing dishes.
In this cathedral, the Indian Railways now houses one DRM.

Classic winter holiday
Warm sun. Sitting in the verandah in a chair. Lolling. Reading. Snoozing. Dozing. Snacking. A dog comes along the driveway, into the lawn, lies down in a flowerbed, and rolls around enthusiastically. Gets up, leaves the way it came.
Dead silence.
Occasional sounds drifting in on the breeze from a school. A marriage. Trains in the distance. Birds.

Family
Elderly grandparent threatens suicide in the face of my continued doggedly single existence.

Alfred Hitchcock Returns

Crows crying cacophonously. All five thousand of them.
Guano turns the entire driveway white.

Railway Identities
A Mahila Sammelan meeting happens, presided over by my mom. In the railway colonies, individual identites get subsumed, lost in the greater entities that they've chosen to become a part. of. Like names. There's Mrs. FA&CAO, Mrs. DRM, Mrs. ADRM, Mrs DAO, Mrs. ADAO...

Leaving
Station master calls to tell us the train has arrived at the platform and will leave in 5 mins to Cal! We're still finishing breakfast. And this is why I love small towns - we still catch it.

packing

Packing
is so much fun.

like taking a trip by remote. think of all the things you will be doing, later, and the things you could be doing, and the things that you might do, and the things you'd probably not do but hate to miss for not having packed for it.

long hols. the Big Bag.

day trip. the knapsack.

shoes. walking. long silent stretches, warm sun, cold breeze, views. some talk. and constant, steady, footsteps.

batteries, camera, film, memory cards. all the snaps you'll take, imagined vistas and memorable moments.

energy bars. the hikes, the trails. the moment of pure bliss when you take off the pack in a shady spot and open a water bottle.

canned food. the campfire, the gusting wind at night.

camcorder. the group of friends you're going with, the friends you're going to meet.

notepad. the long breaks from everyone in nature, just you and your thoughts.

credit cards and membership cards. the gifts you're going to be buying, the family you'll be seeing.

formals. weddings and pitches. presentations and parties. confidence of looking good, of being admired, envied, especially by that piss-off cousin who dropped in during the summers.

MP3 player. the long bus journeys, staring out of the window, dozing in and out of consciousness, the rest stops in the middle of nowhere.

books. the long train home, across the length of india, inch by inch.

jacket. memory of face tingling in the cold while the reast of you is toasted warm. bike engine at midnight on deserted main roads, searching for the one open coffee bar, the cigarette vendor, the petrol pump.

trunks. cool cool pool or warm sand. chilled beer, condensation dripping down the edge. beautiful young women in bikinis.

band-aids and odomos. moving quietly through the brush, backpack on your back, birds calling around you, rustlings.

empty spaces. all the souvenirs and gifts you're going to be bringing back.

tickets. sounds of the stations, the smells. announcements. display boards. chai. omlette-bread from the station stalls. wheelers'.

activating roaming... or not activating roaming. sense of connection, or sense of liberation.

setting the officemail autoreply. sending the officially-away-on-leave note.

lists. maps. places to go, things to see, gifts to buy, food to eat, snaps to take, people to meet...

the medical kits, survival kits, vehicle spares, repair kits, emergency rations. adventure. finding your limits. walking into the unknown.

I love packing.

Kathingadh Trek

Kathingadh / Tung

Kathingadh, literally translated, means 'difficult fort'. So there was some trepidation while getting there - but this turned out to be one of the easiest treks I've been on, barring Murud-Janjira, which wasn't a trek at all. As D said, this fort will be Saralgadh from now on.

6 am at Ahura Bakery; it's still dark, and the newspaper packers are getting the bundles ready on the pavements. When I reached, I called D to confirm where he was, and saw a european guy waving frantically at me from the other side of the road. But when I went over, his happy expression suddenly turned into a very confused one; apparently he had been calling someone else at the same time, saw my cell, and assumed I was the friend who was supposed to have arrived. And I guess the friend also told hime something along the lines of "I'm practically there!" so there was a moment of serious identity crisis while he tried to desperately figure out who the hell I was. This was my first meeting with N, A and J, exchange students at NM college from France.

We had hired a 25-seater sky blue minibus this time round (which is exactly like the ones the government uses for administering polio eradication drives in the countryside, so we were greeted with villages and scared-looking children all ready for the polio shots when we arrived, but that's another story)

Picked up De (long live the Net! He joined up via an Orkut community) from Sion, and headed down to Chembur for the first pitstop to fill up on fuel; There's something about that canteen next to the petrol station which is the embodiment of travel. Hot chai, cold morning, and a cig.

Fairly peaceful journey out of Bombay; I slept very peacefully if ungracefully, in spite of R trying to feed me hairclips and camera cases in my sleep and taking photos; and woke up at a place called the El Taj for breakfast.

Every time, Nature Knights adds on something new to it's treks. This time, it was a live sex show. Who needs the weekends in Bangkok? It's all at Lonavla! But I think the people have started to protest...

The ride got quite a bit more bumpy from here; rockin and rollin, we finally arrived well and truly shaken and stirred.

Quickly got a guide, and started walking up. The sun was out, and it was pretty bright, but surprisingly not very hot. Pleasantly warm at best. Passed a palm tree with an old man sitting under it who gave us all an extremely baleful, evil look. Probably guarding his tadi up in the tree.
Started climbing; this was a fairly easy climb, but B, who was trying this for the first time, had to stop halfway up, not feeling too well. So we (me and N) drop her back and then come literally running back. Without packs, it took just about ten minutes to reach the entrance. Cool.

A little photoessay on the Various Faces of S during the trek

Arrive to find the group sitting like a disaster-struck refugee camp, draped across the landscape in various dispirited poses at the base of the final peak. The peak, naturally, had the mandatory flag.

It also had a little gap in the wall which we tried to use as a kitchen, but the place heated up so fast with the smoke it was more like a tandoor in which D emerged, coughing and semi-broiled. We were not hungry enough to eat a whole Roast D, so we let him be and A made a fire on the edge where we quickly heated up some tuna mince.

So, in the afternoon, we're sitting at the top of the hill in the warm winter sunshine, eating hot fish, bread, apples, theplas, cheese sandwiches, khajur... you get the picture. I'll get paan next time, and I know how to get it properly, too. Hmmm... Nature Knights seriously lives to eat. Here's Y in a Sania Mirza pose with the tuna; A cooking; us waiting with growling stomachs; and D who couldn't wait anymore and seems to be eating a can of tuna without opening it first.

After lunch, a very peaceful hour lying in the shade, chilling. Spectacular view all around; misty mountains on one side - you can see the forts of Lohagadh and Visapur in the north, and Tikona in the east; and the Pawna lake on the south.

Cool, strong wind. Silence. Once in a while, you can see the wake of a speedboat slowly creeping across the steel-blue waters, or the gently drifting orange of a sailboat. From that height, they look like ants; but the silence is so intense you can hear them. A farmer, far, far down, was calling out to his bullocks as he plowed.

The top of the fort is fairly small, and has mostly deformed, alien-looking vegetation that's dried banana trees, and tall yellow grass; there's also a small shrine to Devi Tuljai, and a small reservoir. You can't drink or bathe in it, though; too dirty.

After resting, D wanted to practice rapelling, since Harshchandragadh was coming up soon; some other people immediately wanted to try it out, so that afternoon's entertainment came from helping the new trekkers through their first steps in rapelling. Very small descent, but quite noisy; R went down amidst so many yells that she had nearly 10 people shouting instructions at her. But still did pretty damn well. I think I'll take her for a more vertical rock-face descent soon.

The Progress of R

Climb down later in the afternoon, peaceful and incidentless. Play a little cricket with the village kids at the bottom.There had been a samadhi earlier in the afternoon, and when B and R wandered too close to it, the dog who was happily accompanying them till then suddenly went extremely nuts and growled them away. Animals and death have a strange relationship; they can sense death, and it makes them uneasy, and they will warn away people from that place. Maybe they can smell a dead body; maybe it goes deeper than that, and they can sense the soul itself, wandering around briefly before it moves on. Either way; best avoided.

Pile in and head off to a Kamat's in Lonavla, where we went berserk with giant paper dosas and paan.

Happy ending.

Good, relaxed sunday.

See the snaps here, the slideshow here.

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Update - I had written earlier of my experience at Dhak-Bhairi. Just got to know the week after we were there, another group tried the same crossing, and while one guy was traversing the rockface, his hands got too badly stung by the heat of the rock in the sun, or maybe the sun itself was too hot... and he had to let go. He fell. Died.

Guys, again - Dhak is dangerous.

Be careful. Use a safety line.

Asherigadh Trek

Wouldn't have blogged this normally since it's a fairly sedate out-of-town trip... if it hadn't been for a wailing, lamentatious, teeth-gnashing post of someone (be warned, pitiful misadventurer!) who attempted to do the same thing. While he nobly suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, technologically challenged passengers and Indian roads, I was sitting in the back seat of a Mahindra, doing eighty and eating potholes with nary a whisper, between two pretty women while a cigarette would be passed to me regularly from the front seat.

In fact, now that I think about it, we almost ran one poor guy on a bike off the road at one point...

The trek

Hot muggy jungle with rapicious mosquitoes, but R had industrial-strength Odomos. A preferred to wear foliage earmuffs, saying it was as effective.

Madhav the guide gazing in amused contentment at the antics of these crazy city slickers.

Contentment? Hey I got some of that too!

A novel new method of air-conditioning; soak your cap at every available opportunity.

An image that is a classic representation of a Maharashtrian summer trek in its' essence.

A local rural deity. Note the sun, the moon, and the panther.

Why panther? Because there's an active one in this area. Note the Panther Poop.

Also snakeskin.

R overawed with her first trek's vistas, going snaphappy with cam.

Me coming up the only difficult part of the trek - a narrow rock-chimney thingie.

R capturing me doing the same. I will need all this when they do my photobiography and take the publishing world by storm.

Cactus (Eriosyce napina) on a cliff. Batcactus (Myotis napina). The Adam West of Cactii. (Adamwestus napina)

Cave on the top of the hill complete with flag. Looks more like a bunker. Or the entrance to some top-secret underground lair.

The joy of cool dark quiet shade

Want cool? Check this out! Lake!

And what do you do when you find a lake on a hot dry sunny trek...?

Scenes from a rural India

Chalo... peaceful recovery trek.

R nearly collapsed with thirst on the way down, and discovered a full bottle of water she had dutifully carried up and again down the mountain, having forgotten it in her bag.

Y carried swimming trunks and bathed at the top, changed, and found another stream and bathed again in his underwear. Dunno what he wore on the way back.

Tea and missal pao at roadside hotel. AWFUL traffic getting back into Bombay, with roads full of suicidal frustrated-looking bikers.

Back home.

Happy ending.

Good night.

See the slideshow here