The day began with me waking up at 7 a.m, well rested and ready for a new day of exploring, sightseeing and meeting people. Once freshened up, I packed my bag and made my way to the dining hall. Though Shekhar was off duty, his reliever made me an omelet with toast, and this I devoured with relish. Once I had settled the bill, I bid farewell to the staff and set out for the bus stand in the Central Square.
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| Tiny toy tracks at Dharampur |
A crowded bus ride, with the driver swerving around dangerous corners, missing oncoming vehicles by inches, brought us to Solan. After walking around for a while, I thought of taking the bus to Shimla. I had even boarded the bus and bought the ticket when I realized something was amiss. A moment before it started, I jumped out of the bus, and into a rickshaw driven by a friendly fellow and asked to be taken to the Solan railway station. Like the Dharampur station from the previous day, this too was a treat to the eye – the quaint narrow gauge railway lines leading in and out of the station and the toy train chugging in at walking pace. I booked myself a ticket and boarded the next train.
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| Chugging through the Hills |
Though there were a seat or two available, I did not feel like sitting, so as not to miss any of the breathtaking countryside passing by. I anchored myself at the coach door, armed with my camera and got talking to a friendly group from UP who were also hanging around the door.
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| Collision Course |
The slow pace of the train clubbed with the endless tunnels and scenic wonder was an experience to behold. The endless stream of tunnels cutting through mountain after mountain set one thinking about the engineering marvel that this railway was and what a feat it would have been to build it at a time as early as the late 19th century.
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| irst Friend in Shimla |
Three hours and several stations later, the train chugged into it’s destination – Shimla. I got off and began walking along the tracks towards the township. Along the way, I made friends with an old Sadhuji in Reebok shoes who was mumbling prayers as he walked. As we parted ways, he blessed me and gave me a lucky ‘Tiger Eye’ stone to keep with me for good luck.
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| Shimla Town - Perched on the Hillside |
Shimla turned out to be much like any of the other British built hill stations like Ooty, Coonoor, Mussoorie or Dehra Dun. A steep climb brought me the centre of the city – the Mall Road, where vehicles were not allowed. School kids skipping along, tourists admiring the stalls, lovers holding hands, backpackers, shopkeepers, vendors, beggars, policemen, bystanders and locals going about their daily hustle and bustle, adorned the road. Old buildings stood out on either side. Some of them had been renovated while others lay abandoned and dilapidated.
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| Spooky Dilapidated Mansion |
A hot dog and twenty minutes of gossip later I decided that the city just wasn’t my style and decided to head to Naldehra – something I had originally planned for the next day. A steep descent down a flight of loose steps brought me to the bus stand. I bought myself a candle and lighter for the night and boarded the bus. The journey was a crowded one – at one point, out of the blue, a mother who had just embarked, dropped her child into my lap without any warning. I took the opportunity to break the monotony of the journey and entertained the little fellow.
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| Maggi in the Wild |
We arrived at Naldehra an hour and a half later and I got off at the golf course. Asking around, I found a couple of cheap places where I could have spent the night but the urge to try something crazy got the better of me. A very helpful fellow named Naresh who worked as a caddy on the golf course showed me a secluded place surrounded by a pine forest where I could pitch my tent. We walked down to the golf course reception tied up to play eighteen holes the next morning, ate a plate of Maggi from a little tea stall and then returned to the proposed campsite. Two more youngsters joined us and together we figured out how to pitch the tent.
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| Tent in the Woods - An Indelible Memory |
Once it was erected, I thanked them and they set out back down the hills to their homes. The site was a little clearing in the midst of a forest of coniferous trees. I soon began to get dark and I watched the monkeys swinging from tree to tree screeching at the intruder for a while, before I zipped up the tent from the inside, lit up a candle that I carefully erected on a stone, and took out my pen and narrative book to relive the events of the day.
Not even sure if the tent was fire proof, I wrote on while the candle burnt away, thinking about the night that was to come. The silence was almost deafening, broken only by the distant hum of a generator. Even the birds that had been tweeting at twilight had fallen silent. Surprisingly but thankfully, the night wasn’t nearly anywhere as cold as the previous one at Kasauli. It being my first night in a tent- let alone a night all alone in the middle of a forest in a distant land – I was apprehensive yet excited and wondered whether the tingling in my veins would allow me to sleep.
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| Alone in the Jungle - Twilight Descends |
Once I finished writing, I blew out the candle and retired to what I hoped would be a good night’s sleep out in the wilderness. The proverbial ‘Fear of the Dark’ did not really figure over the course of the night. Except for the overwhelming silence that descended upon the hillside after dark, it was quite an ordinary night. However, I must admit, it took some time getting used to the whole scenario. Stories of Jim Corbett’s and Ruskin Bond’s man-eaters lurking in the dark kept me awake for a while. By about 10 p.m, the birds stopped chirping and even the sound of the occasional vehicle motoring by in the distance came to an end. There descended upon the pinewoods an eerie calm, broken only by the occasional guffawing of the odd monkey returning to his tree after some late night party.
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| Bare Essentials |
With nothing else to do, I retired to bed once I was done with accounting the events of the day. However, what I did not envisage was by doing this, my body’s usual quota of six hours of sleep culminated at 3:30 a.m. Trying to go back to sleep after that seemed futile and as I lay tossing and turning in my sleeping bag, Jim Corbett’s man-eaters creeping back into my head. “Do your tossing and turning”, I thought to myself, “But do it quietly for heaven’s sakes. It’s a question of you hearing them without them being able to hear you”.
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