Powered Rain and Dharamsalaed Trek

Punjab has been reeling under power crisis. Nothing new, considering that the two prominent contenders for power have always been at verbal loggerheads with little time and energy to think of common people. And do not forget Mr Sukhbir Badal contributing his (unfortunately worthless) more than two pennies too. Anyway, I desist from political commentaries and I stick to the bijli crisis that we all suffered and which was a supreme case of mismanagement, rowdiness, and haphazard supply. As a result, you have a paddy cultivating Punjab suffering badly with a power supply released for half an hour every two hours. Anyway, this post is not about power.

Thankfully, for the past two days it has been raining hard and good and I cannot help grinning. Rasan, ecstastically hugged me yelling, Mama, hun bijli nahi jayegi na? (there will be no power cut anymore, right?) Never in the last five years have I celebrated rains in such a spirit. Why, you would say? My previous residence was a closed kind of building where you did not get to see the stars. Mahesh loves to see and show off the stars to kids here in this residence. Here, I hear the koel, I hear the crows. Sadly there are no small house sparrows that I grew up watching in my house. I loved the way they picked at the grains that we scattered in the courtyard for them. They are innocence incarnate. Where did you all go, dear little sparrows?? And here I get to see grass growing so fast that the gardener is unable to finish trimming the whole garden in one go, By the time, which means days actually, he gets to finish the lawn, the grass at the beginning, much to his and my chagrin, grows back and yells for his attention. Being a sarkari banda, he doesn’t bother though. Grounds filled with water, cool breezes, jamuns falling off the trees in front of the main gate. You deserve a video. I will post it soon.

But then this post was not about rain also. This post was about our recent visit to Dharamsala and the trek that we enjoyed with the kids.

the fortunate girl, the unlucky boy

Before we set out for Dharamsala, everybody discouraged us saying that there is nothing much to see in Dharamsala. Sure they were right, if you go by the standards of a standard Punjabi family looking for fun. The staple fun that they expect in a hill station consists of these ingredients -there should be a good hotel, sumptuous food, car-able road (road where you can take your car and blare the stereo at full volume to disturb others), drinks – mostly for men, and shopping-loads of it-for women. We are different.

buddies

I mean I am different. My family was looking for the fun, sans the drinks. This time around though, I had my way. I made them live in a lodge with few luxuries. I pushed them out of the rooms at 8 am and we trekked all the way to a nameless waterfall. Most of the people who have been to dharamsala would understand that I am talking about Bhagsu Nag. Sure, we went there too. I found the priceless FBI at work there. This other waterfall is way higher above McLeodganj and Dharamkot where you leave your car to go into the wild to explore the priceless waterfall. I and Mahesh would have loved to go there alone but we had kids along. So we had a family meeting, took kids' consent that they would walk all the way to the waterfall which was about 4 kilometers uphill through narrow trails. It was fun, because with every step that we took, we were heading away from civilisation.

in the middle of the trek, we could hear the waterfall and could not see it

Kids were apprehensive, Mahesh quiet. I am sure he was thinking if it was a good idea to take his family into the wild. 1 hour and 45 minutes into the trek and we reached the waterfall. It is infact an assortment of 5 waterfalls and three wonderful pools that they form. With only two trekkers who reached prior to us, we were a total of 7 people on site. The seventh being Sansar, a man of 35 who runs a cafe here.

Sansar, the gutsy guy who lives alone at the waterfall

The cafe has the barest refreshments but the guy’s attitude is far more refreshing than anything else. A few minutes of talk with him revealed that he is unmarried and that he enjoys staying here-far far away from madding crowd. When asked if he misses living near the city he said “Those who live in stress need meditation; I am meditating every single minute of my existence. No, I don’t miss the village nor the city” It was somehow strange to find a humble businessman uttering these words.

I had a big fall on the rock near the waterfall. With an already injured knee it was a bit too much for me to handle. I wanted to cry, as in , I wanted to weep but just about managed with a yell and Mahesh rushed to my side, made me stand in the cold cold water to cure the knee of any fresh muscle tear and I was able to walk back through the tricky trail that we had chosen to spend our morning in.

the end of the trek-a tired trio, atop a cement ka ghoda

The day prior to it had been spent in roaming about in the McLeodganj market. Kashmiri stalls of trinkets and silver jewellery arrested me a lot of times but my favourite cop came to my rescue and released me from the shackles of avarice for newer pieces of junk jewellery. The Namgyal temple, its great wooden interiors , the funny signboard that warned us thus,

even when you are inside the temple? You gotta leave your eyes outside...

chess in every cafe, momos, Tibetan bread, bad humoured waiter serving us French toasts, a cool waiter bringing in chicken tikka, thin crust pizza,

bole so nihal, sat sri akal slogans in the McLeodganj main square, lunch in McLlo, dinner in CarpeDiem, cold drinks sans limits, half the night atop the lodge roof-under the stars, no internet, no TV , a dried up Dal Lake (yes there is one Dal here too- a duplicate one), St John's gothic Church and Lord Elgin's grave and Mahesh trying to play ghost,

this bell was foundered in 1915 in London

-that is what our two days consisted of. The third day, we went to this trek and said adieu to the hills, till we meet them again.