Himachal Visit - Some tips and musings

- I had my full trip arranged through Banjara Camps and Resorts. They had done an excellent job of planning the trip. Their web site is http://www.banjaracamps.com

- Himachal is hill country. The moment you enter Himachal from Punjab you have started climbing the mountains. I heard there is some place in Himachal where there are plains but that is supposed to be a very short stretch. So be prepared for a mountain journey. In case you have motion sickness, ensure you consult a doctor and carry the necessary medicines.

- Himachal is cold, especially for us from down south. So pack in lot of woolen wear and also jackets to keep the cold away. You should take your kids along if they are 4 or 5 yrs age or above. One person came with a kid who was around 1 1/2 yr old and he was having a tough time protecting the kid from the cold.

- South Indians must be ready to eat North Indian food as you will not get idli sambar here. The food is delicious though. We had great paratas in roadside dhabas when we were going to Chandigarh from Delhi and also in a small dhaba when we were coming from Tanedar to Kalka. Try the paneer dishes and you will never eat panner again in Bangalore !! It is so fresh out there.

- Food at the Banjara Camps was delicious as well. Especially at Shoja and Sangla. Tanedar has a bit of catching up to do to be on par with the other two. The cook at Sangla tried South Indian dishes but with mixed results. The north indian stuff was fabulous though.

- Take lot of music with you, whether you are going with your kids or not. The driving times could range anywhere from 5 to 9 hrs and having music of your choice will surely help during the trip. So ensure the car you hire has a music system

- You can read again my earlier article in this blog about how best to handle children during long drives. I used all those tricks to keep them busy !! They were playing Dhoom 2 tape most of the time and I almost got to liking a song or two !!!

- There will be some zillion photo opportunities available for you so take lot of memory with you. I am assuming that you are still not using the film camera and have changed to digital. In case you still like film camera, take a lot of film with you. Needless to say, pack your batteries and also your battery charger. The number of photos you can take will be proportional to the patience you have and the effort that you can put in

- Beware that most of the villages that you pass on your way in Himachal are small ones and many a times you may not find a restroom around. So ensure you talk to your car driver and tell him that you will need bio breaks along the way. He will then stop at the hotels which have decent restrooms.

- It is better to plan your full trip before you leave. As I said Banjara Camps people are good at it. Rajesh Ojha, who is a co-founder of Banjara, is an extremely pleasant person and he also has great knowledge of Himalayas, having travelled extensively there. So you are interacting with professionals here and they can tell you which plan would work and which wouldnt. I interacted with a person called Kavita and she was very helpful in planning the trip and was also very prompt in her replies.

- Banjara Camps arranged for my car. The driver was a nice chap called Chaman. He had lots of patience, a great virtue while driving in the hills, and he has seen most of the places so he knew which ones were worth visiting and which ones were not.

- As far as tariff goes, Banjara Camps are comparable to Jungle Lodges rates in Karnataka. Their location, service and food definitely made me feel that I got my money's worth. Of their three locations that I visited, Sangla, Shoja and Tanedar, it is Tanedar which has the normal resort feel. The other two give you a totally different experience altogether.

- What you need to keep in mind is that you will be spending lot more on travel than you would spend on stay and food !! Especially if you are from South India. So try and plan your travel early enough so that you can save a lot on flight fares to Delhi.

- In Himachal, people are probably the fittest anywhere in India. Gayathri pointed out to me that there wasnt anyone there who was fat or obese. Everyone was trim. Must be all the walking that they do !!

- In conclusion all I can say is that when you get time, head for these hills. It is an experience you will never forget. I am just waiting to go to Tabo, Kaza and my dream destination of Ladakh soon.

The enchanting drive to Chitkul

"You can go to Chitkul tomorrow", said Bishnoi, the manager at Banjara Camps. "The drive is very scenic". He turned out be 100% right and probably more. It was an enchanting drive with the scenery changing constantly and you gasping for breath after seeing so much beauty at one place.

The early morning tea was something all of us welcomed given the cold weather. The tea is served outside under a large tent. We met people once again and most of them were going to Chitkul. Infact, _all_ of them were going to Chitkul. After breakfast we started our drive leisurely.

The car climbed up from the camp site and joined the main road. Initially you get no clue of what is in store for us. The scenery remains unchanged for the first few kilometers. Then slowly you see that you are travelling on a very narrow road which curves around the mountain and far below you pure white water of Baspa river runs over the rocks. As you are enjoying this scenery you reach the small village of Racham and the scenery suddenly becomes more beautiful by a large factor (if there is some way to measure the beauty of a scene).

The narrow valley through which Baspa has been running suddenly widens up and lets you experience the vastness of this area. In front of you is the wide valley and all around the gigantic mountains. As you stand there staring at the scene, you get the same feeling when you stand alone and stare at the stars on a clear night. You are encompassed by vastness on all sides and you realize that nature can be overpowering. I asked the driver to stop and we got out and took some pictures. There was no way that any wide angle lens would do justice to what I was experiencing but it is always good to capture some memories for future 'chewing of the cud'.

The road further was equally beautiful. Suddenly coniferous trees started appearing and with them appeared round white boulders. It was fascinating to see so many boulders strewn around. Added to this were the streams which ran over these boulders forming tiny waterfalls. At one place the water stream was running on the road for some length. Gayathri and the kids were sure that they wanted to stand in the waterfall and wet their feet on the way back, little realizing that it was not an option !!

After some time, the trees disappeared. We were in barren land with the mountains around us barren and with lot of boulders and small stones all around us. The beauty of the scene made us stop again and take some photos. The wide area strewn with white round rocks, the distant barren mountains some of them covered with snow, the deep blue sky with a fluffy cloud or two, everything seemed to be made only for photographers. It was difficult to move away from the beauty but as they say 'Woods are lovely, dark and deep'. I guess you know the rest :)

We then reached the village of Chitkul. On this side of Himachal, this is the last village. Three kilometers from here is the last Indian outpost, which is manned by the Indo Tibetian Border Force. After that, when you cross the mountains, you get into Tibet.

The car stops at Chitkul and we need to trek for 3kms to reach the last place that you can go as far as Himachal is concerned. We started walking and the sky started turning dark. The air was gathering water and rushing all around. I met a local old man as I was walking and we started talking.

Old Man: You enjoying youself here
Me: Yes. The scenery is wonderful
Old Man: You should come a few months later. This whole area will be green and it looks even more magical !!

(Well, those who have kids whose school starts in June cannot think of going anywhere during the months June to Aug. All you can do is to imagine how much more beautiful this area would be in those months !!)

The old man had a Pomeranian dog. Needless to say Ranjani and Harini immediately went and patted the dog and took photos with it.

By this time the sky was fully dark and a light drizzle had started. We had no option but to return back to some shelter. We were each wearing one sweater and we had no spare. If that got drenched we were in serious trouble. So we rushed back to where our car was parked and took shelter in a small shop which was selling almost anything. The rain had intensified and those who had gone earlier than us for the trek came back fully drenched. There is absolutely no shelter once you start trekking.

Gayathri was very upset that it was still raining and that we may not have a chance to stand in the small waterfalls. Luckily for her the rain had almost stopped as we were going back and I asked the driver to stop at a place where the water was running on the road. Gayathri and kids got down to go and stand in the water and were back inside the car almost immediately !! "The water gives a shock" said Ranjani and Harini, with lot of excitement. The water was probably a glazier melt and it was must have been freezing cold. Gayathri was upset. "This is injustice. Such beautiful flow of water and you cant keep your feet in this even during summer !! How will anyone enjoy this?"

We came back to Banjara Camps, had a great lunch and relaxed for some time. Then we went down in the evening to sit on the banks of Baspa. The bank here is full of pebbles of different sizes, shapes and color. The river water is cold and crystal clear. The river rushes with a good force over the boulders. It is not very wide here but you cant think of walking across the river due to the cold and the force with which the river flows. I took some snaps of the pebbles and was cursing myself for not having got my polarizer which would have been very useful here.

The river flowing continuously, the mountains in front of us with green trees, the distant horizon with the sky a deep shade of blue, the white clouds floating around, the calmness of the area and absolutely no trace of any humanity around can put you into a philosophical mood !! As I sat next to Gayathri I realized this as she asked me, "Just like the waves of the ocean, the river keeps running on and on, without ever tiring". True. The mysteries of nature are many and in times like this we can feel a calm descend on us as we take in the scenery and forget our trivial worries. The water cold but not very cold. This allowed us to put our feet in the river water for some time, withdraw it and put it back after some time. We sat there till it was starting to get dark and came back to the room.

An elderly couple who we had met in Shoja had come to Sangla that evening. We were talking with them for some time. Then we had tea and the kids started playing. The bonfire as usual happened at 8 o clock. After that we had dinner. The cook had decided to go continental that day, which meant baked vegetables and lots of dishes whose names you cannot pronounce !! Gayathri had a look at it and said that she cant eat any of it. Where were the chapatis? The day was saved by another family which had ordered Jain food. Gayathri got her strength back when she saw rice, dal and chapati. It was important that she got her strength back. She didnt realize it at that point in time but the next day, the Racham walk, would make her realize it !!

On the banks of Baspa - The Amazing Sangla Valley

We started from Shoja around 10 o clock after a nice breakfast. The kids were not very happy to leave as they had fallen in love with the place and with the dogs there. We drove through the Jalori Pass, got to the other side and proceeded further. The landscape initially is one of coniferous forests, pines, firs etc. After some time the terrain changes and you start seeing mountains with no trees on them. Only grass grows on them. We saw a charming mountain stream running alongside us and we stopped and wet our feet in this stream. It was a nice experience.

Right from Shoja till we came to this place, there was no river or stream around and I was missing that. Then the stream appeared and after some time we were in the Sutlej Valley. Sutlej appears here and it has a muddy color to it. The crystal clear streams of Tirthan or Baspa, which we would encounter later, it wasnt. I told Gayathri that it could be that the river was flowing over a muddy area which gave it this color. The terrain around it also becomes a bit barren with mountains having nothing on them. The whole area has a muddy look to it. There are a few towns on the shores of Sutlej and we stopped in a town called Rampur for our lunch at a HPTDC hotel. Our driver went off to fix some problem which he had discovered in the Scorpio. He said he would be gone for atleast an hour. We told him that we would have lunch and wait for him. We neednt have worried. The hotel guys served us so slowly that the driver fixed the defect, came back after an hour and waited for us !!!

We started around 2:30 from this place and our progress was OK for the next hour or so. After that we hit a dam site where lot of work was going on. The roads were mud roads and with the traffic around it was difficult to keep the window opened here. It was so dusty that it reminded me of the city !! Around this area is where the Baspa river merges with Sutlej and loses its identity. We had to take a right turn from here in order to get to Sangla. The progress till this place was painfully slow and once we turned right our speed picked up a bit but we got into othe problems !!

The road leading to Sangla is narrow and as I had said earlier all roads here are ghat roads. So there were times when a vehicle would come in front of us and depending on the mood of the drivers, one of them would have to back up so that the other can go thru. We thus played 'pehele aap, pehele aap' with a few vehicles !! On the way we saw a bunch of 'chirus'. These animals are a cross between yak and cow. Initially I thought they were yak but the driver said they werent and upon closer inspection could see there werent yak. We also saw some wild horses. They looked like a cross between horse and donkey !!

We crossed the Sangla town and were going in the direction of another town called Racham. On this road, you need to take a deviation, which goes to your right and downhill and this leads to the Banjara Camps tents which are on the banks of the river Baspa. It was around 7:30pm when we reached here. We were shown our tent. It was a spacious one with three beds in there. They also provided me with an additional mattress as we were four of us. These tents have attached restrooms and also have a water heater. It is a bit cold in the tents compared to a normal room but they give hot water packs to keep yourself warm in the night. Added to it you have a razai and a woolen blanket. So if you cover yourself with a razai and keep the hot water pack next to you, you will end up sweating in the night.

The Banjara Camps at Sangla is located at an outstanding place. The tents are on the banks of the river Baspa. (You neednt worry if the river will overflow and enter your tents !! The tents are at an elevation compared to the river) There is a path which leads to the river. One one side you have the mountains with lot of greenery and on the other side you have black mountains with snow covered peaks. Once in a while these mountains are covered with white fluffly clouds which add to their beauty. All through the night you will hear the gentle murmur of the Baspa river as it glides over the smooth pebbles which lie on its path. You can also see a couple of glaciers and a small village at a distance.

The bonfire was started around 8 o clock and I went to join it. People were playing anthakshari and I started singing some songs that I knew. Anthakshari is a good way to make friends. People are united quickly in music that anything else. If you sing a couple of songs which they like, they tend to like you as well. This had happened in Sikkim last year and it happended here on two nights. Another hint: Sing Kishore Kumar + RD Burman songs and you will be a well liked guy almost immediately !!

In Banjara resorts the food is generally served in a central dining hall, which allows people to interact with each other. During dinner, which was very tasty, I spoke to people who had come from far and wide and realised that most of them have come from the same far and wide place, Mumbai !!! This trend continued for the next couple of days, of people arriving from Mumbai. For a second I felt like a Mumbai duck out of water !!! There was one family from Banglore and they, Sunil and his wife, happened to be close friends of my former boss. As can be expected, we wondered what a small world it was !!!Sunil gave a monkey cap for Gayathri and it proved very useful. Thanks Sunil.

The next day would be the wonderful ride to Chitkul.