I've been meaning to update my blog since a while now.
I started a new job earlier this year, the demands of which took over and my travel writing took a back seat. I also lost my 9 year old dog soon after my last blog post after which I didn't feel like writing.
I have travelled a fair bit around India this year. Lots of weekend getaways and even an extended weekend getaway with my family for the first time in 15 years. Jaipur, Kasauli, Shimla, Mussoorie, Mumbai, Goa, Naldhera, Alwar, and most recently Kasol & a trek in Malana.
With the high pollution levels in Delhi, I was finding it hard to breath. In spite of buying oxygen inducing plants and wearing a mask outdoors, the city was beginning to stifle me. Fresh mountain air is what my body was craving. After asking for trek recommendations on a travel group on Facebook, I came across a travel community called Tripver. I like their website's UI & UX, they had great reviews and so I decided to book it.
It was a 14 hour overnight Volvo journey from Delhi to Bhuntar, Kullu. Suprisingly, I managed to sleep quite comfortably during this time. We were woken up in Bhuntar, when we had to change buses as a Volvo cannot travel on the narrow road leading to Kasol. The seats on the local bus were freezing. I zipped up my jacket, put my hoodie on and sunk my hands into my pockets. The driver decided to wake us up by playing old bollywood songs at a really high volume. An hour later, we had reached our destination. Soon after getting off the bus, I took in a deep breath of crisp mountain air. With our rucksacks on our backs, we hiked down a mountain path, over a rickety wooden bridge, a few people at a time, over to the other side of the Beas. We then walked through the woods, passing a couple of cafes and homestays, to our hotel White House in Katalga, Kasol.
It was a quaint hotel with a huge garden full of flowers and vegetables growing on the side, overlooking the Beas. A breath of fresh air from my daily life in Gurgaon indeed. After lunch, we went for a long walk to Kasol and Chalal. Everyone stocked up on goodies, we did the same, buying old monk and chocolate balls from the German bakery. By the end of it, everyone had gone their own seperate way. As it was getting dark, we decided to make our way back with the help of torchlight. Many cars passed by, some with blaring music and buses swerving on the curves. We flashed the torch their way so that we wouldn't get run over. It was quite a long way back, 3 or 4 kms. Luckily, as soon as we reached the hill from where we were to begin our descent, we saw the others. We passed through the woods, over the rickety wooden bridge, listening to the sound of the passing river.
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We sat around a bon fire later that night, one of the guys had a guitar. He took song requests, we all sang along and had a great time. Everyone struggled to get out of bed early the next morning. It was the day we had all signed up on this trip for - our trek to Malana, a remote village at a height of 8700 ft known for its hash around the world. We took a bus up to the trek's starting point. The bus journey was quite gruesome. As the villagers in Malana like to be cut off from the rest of the world, they have not let the government build a road there. As the road was very narrow, there were many times when you could not see the road below and it seemed like we were floating (with a few bumps here and there). I tried not to look down as all you could see was a sheer drop right into the Beas. The conductor was communicating with the driver through a whistle - two whistles indicated that there was room to manoeuvre and one meant he should stop. Every time there was a tough turn and the driver would reverse, the whistling began, making my heart sink with fear. An hour later, we reached the starting point for our trek.
We found out later that ours was the only bus that had actually climbed up that hair raising route.
We were given instructions on how to behave in the village and not to touch anything as the villagers would otherwise create an issue and not let you leave till you paid a fine. We climbed 1200 plus steps to get to the top, stopping many times to catch our breath, realizing how unfit we all were. The locals seemed to climb up and down the mountain with ease. I found the village architecture to be quite unique.
There was what seemed to be a main square with wooden temples in it. There were wooden stilt houses all over the village, some of which had villagers sitting outside drying locally grown weed. A rare sight, I have to admit. They were carrying some of the freshly picked weed on their backs, we would get a strong whiff of it every time they passed us. We had cheese maggi, nutella pancakes and some tea to gather some energy for our way back.
We had to walk an additional four kilometers to the bus as the driver refused to bring it back up all the way. Although the others were complaining, I was secretly glad as I didn't have the heart to sit through that hair raising journey again. Towards the end, the conductor who was waiting for us closer to the bus, suggested a short cut. It was a steep downhill trail, we had to sit on rocks, hold any vegetation we could get our hands on and make our way down carefully. That, according to me, was the highlight of the trek. While the others slowly made their way down, we waited by the riverside, watching the ripples in the water.
The next day we relaxed at our hotel, sitting by the riverside, eating and chatting; enjoying the peace and quiet of the mountains before returning back to the city madness.
