Chapter 1 - Uttarakhand, India, December, 2014

Dec 21: Tasting

Sorry, Saturday should have been called ‘night 1’ because I had reached Dehradun yesternight. I had boarded the Dehradun Jansatabdi and I know, Olive would never believe me, but this time I had a dirty, stinky old woman sitting beside me and um pretty sure she had peed herself. Well, you get such passengers in Indian Railways second-seaters. So my Jovan White Musk Can is almost done with. I take an auto to Hotel Akashdeep [basically means ‘lamp of the sky’] but on seeing the room that was allotted to me, damn, ‘Whats in a name!': a dim light [no tube light] and a ‘heavenly’ lavatory [I prefer not to elaborate].

            I wake up at 5:30am today. My alarm was set to scream at 6:00am, but the urge to find a new and better shelter, could just not let me stay warm under the blanket for too long. And there was no point in getting fresh. So I just go out.

            
The last night I had asked a resident for information regarding cheaper places to stay at. He had suggested some Aggarwal Dharamshala, but right now I am at the Digambar Jain Dharamshala...pictures of two naked men [Digambaraaz, remember? That ‘much loved’ chapter on Jainism?] smiling like shameless jackasses. But this is the cheapest and at the same time, the cleanest place I could find. Then I go out to buy a newspaper. The morning was sufficiently foggy and the feel of a valley could not be felt. But from any terrace in the Mussoorie Road one can feel the wholehearted giving away of the sun’s very best. And as dusk faded, began the lighting up of the town of Mussoorie high up on a hill. On my way back to the Dharamshala, I drop at Lansdowne Chowk, or the Sunday Bazaar and my little yellow friend was quite right in telling me that Dehradun does consist of lots of pretty ladies. So I preferred to preferred walking instead of hastily passing by those pretty ones in an auto-rickshaw.

            

I had come to know about a Buddhist monastery in Clement Town. Moreover, I am reading ‘Freedom In Exile’ right now, so the mind is a little tilted towards those stuffs. I’ll go to Clement tomorrow. 

Dec 22: ‘Release Me’ at Maggie Point

Cold! It was so cold! I wake u at 5:30 in the morning and the cold’s just killing me. But it was worth the subtle suffering. I set out for Clement Town. Travelling around this city is quite cheap, unless you take autos. Vikrams make it a lot easier.

Clement Town is a calm town. Small homes and few Tibetan people and monks roaming around and more monkeys than people, actually. This town boasts of a number of restaurants it has: ‘Wok’, ‘Tenzin’, ‘Dorjai’ and many more. I roll almost all the Mani Wheels at the entrance. I do not wish to describe the place much, but in brief, it was refreshing an beautiful. The hot thukpa at the Dorjai Restaurant was really worth tasting in that cold weather. I just cannot wait to write about the evening.

I had come back and had slept for three long hours. I have a long talk with Olive and despite her strict command, I could not get off my warm bed. I fall asleep again. My little yellow friend all me up after a while and says he’s coming to meet me at Astley Hall. So I wait there for him. It felt so good to see that little crazy piece of shit right in his hometown and an absolutely changed person. We go to a street side momo shop, little ahead of St. Joseph’s Academy and we have “the legendary” mutton momos and then he rides uphill and we reach Maggie Point.

Maggie Point is quite far from Dehra and one can find it on his or her way to Mussoorie. I have no idea how long we gossiped there for because from up there you can see the whole city of Dehradun and in such a situation, one should not keep a track of time. I mean, that is the perfect moment to hum something like ‘I see the world, on a rocking horse of time’ (From ‘Release Me’ by Pearl Jam). And so went on our jam talks and our expressions of frustration regarding not having a ‘functioning’ college band drummer. I just missed a guitar and Mr. Vedder, that’s all. Today’s dusk strangely changed from mauve to orange, so delicious for some Tennysons and de la Mares.

Along with that, getting to know my hostel homie so much better and his devil-may-care self because he hardly hops around our hostel floor sober and that actually goes for most of us. And it’s true! A person who’s born in a place like this would never require giving a shit about some city where the sun has fled from.

Rohan arrives tomorrow. I am assuming his train will be at least an hour late because of the heavy fog. Tomorrow we head to Mussoorie.

Dec 24 (Morning): In Mussoorie

            Ahem! This is about Day 3, actually. [Dec. 23]. You must be wondering why I have not written about it on its very night, but I had passed out. 
Rohan had reached Dehradun an hour late. Then we set out for Mussoorie. Very narrow and curvy hill roads, but the driver was equally competitive. We got a great room at Hotel Valentine (:p) and from the window we could see the whole of the Doon Valley and have a Tibetan dish called Tofu at Kalsang. Besides, one of the best features Mussoorie is that it has seats installed in the pavements...just too many seats and they face the valley.

            

We return to the hotel in the evening, with a bottle of wine. Well, that was the late evening plan. After a refreshing walk in the evening, observing the illumination of the city of Dehra, we come back and get busy in emptying the bottle with two lighted candles at each end of the table. My hands are freezing. Will resume at night.

Dec 24(Evening): To Chamba

            We wake up pretty late today and hurriedly change our room, downstairs, to a cheaper one because the plan was not to stay the whole day. So bunk the view; we take an inside room with no windows. We walk almost two kilometres uphill to the Tehri bus stand all through the good old Landour.

We search for a way to reach Chamba. The plan was to check out the town of New Tehri, but that could not happen, unfortunately. We take a trekker to Kaddukhal, some distance away from Dhanolti. The best part of the journey was watching the Himalayan range [huge ice-capped beasts standing proudly and expecting you’d show up someday].

            I had been once to Tenya, a village in West Bengal, falls on your way to the district of Murshidabad. That could be called a village because it looks quite backward and very laid back too. But Chamba is quite busy. It has all kinds of shops, a very spacious market place and small homes on the body of the hill.

            

Oh, I forgot! On our way to Chamba, we meet a Bengali family. As CB says “You fuckin’ find them everywhere.” Well, they’re tourists, to be specific: 'bland' tourists. And when he speaks out, I know exactly that this freak’s a Bengali. It is not about the language; it is much deeper. I didn’t speak to him because hell no, I was not interested. Listening to the driver speak in his Garwali accent was a much better option. But I could hear that bugger. The first thing he asks Rohan is what we do (now give him one day with a polite one like Rohan and I guarantee he’ll puke his cynical self out). “I am a Chartered Accountant and I was in the U.S for two years.” Awh, man! Who starts with this kinda crap? Bengalis do.

            Chamba was not very thrilling. One can take a stroll downhill for an hour or so and observe the busy lives of the people of Chamba. We board the last bus to Mussoorie. So fortunate were we!

            On our way back, a young lad from Chamba starts talking to us. He wants to know about career options. Then asks me “Why law?” and I answer him with extraordinary patience because come on, he is no bitch [SO-NO-SCIENCE-HENCE-LAW kinda 'Bitch'] like usual ones law students face. He talks about his village, Jaripani (“no Jharipani”) and how the snow and the sky looks from up there. He talks a lot about his dream of enlisting. It was good, altogether; to subtly know someone and know this too that I might never see that person again.

           Tomorrow’s Christmas. This time, no Park Street lights and no boring visits to malls. I’ll just miss the carols at St. Paul’s Cathedral and the lovely evening at St. Mary’s. But I hope this will be something as good as those. Lots of people have arrived here now. I wish to have a great lunch at Kalsang again. And of course, attend the Winterline Carnival. That’ll be all for today.

Dec. 25: Christmas!

Nah...nah...too bad! The first thing I come to know after waking up is that Rohan has fallen ill. He has hit the loo quite a lot of times and that he’d sweat a lot throughout the night. So I go out to get meds for him, but all shops were closed. The hotel reception helps us a lot, thereafter. I go to the antiques shop and I get a 60’s American Army lighter for Somraj. We go to Kalsang again. These people are absolutely great. I ask them for a few Tibetan artists whom I can listen to and they hand over a hand-written list to me and believe me, it was categorized...singers, flute, piano and others. I have fallen in love with Kalsang, I'll give it to them. And the food, after that! Wait...my bill says we’d had Veg Khaeny Phak Red Curry [funny pronunciation :p ] which is cooked in coconut oil. I stop at a book store to buy some DC and Marvel Comics...those are the our-time comics...used to come out every week...for 15 to 20 bucks...I am very fond of them and um sure, many still are. So thought why should my young cousin not have a childhood filled with flying and teleporting superheroes and adamantium and a memorable sexy wonder-woman? I just grabbed like twelve of them and then I wait for Mr. Ruskin Bond to arrive at the Cambridge Book Depot.

This owner has got some real attitude problem. Anyway, then comes a Professor Mad-Eye-Moody, after I had waited for two long hours in the store. Yeah, that was Ruskin Bond. He starts off talking some shit about his old 60s coat that he’s wearing. But, you know, people still listen to these stuffs so that they can give away a cheap “Wow!”

I just get a book signed for Olive and flee for Dehradun coz CB was waiting for us down there. As you travel through the Sahastradhara Road, there comes a signboard which says "Be Gentle On The Curves". Well, that's simply because the roads are curvy and I believe the Dehradun Transport Dept. is not as imaginative as we are. Then he takes me to Mrs. Sharmila Bhartari’s place.

She is a professional classical dancer. Well, this is one of the objectives of travelling, I guess...to know new people. Such a wonderful, inspiring person and so drowned and dedicated in what she does best. Her home is almost an exhibition hall and this whole conversation happening in a place like the doon valley makes it all the more spectacular. I get to listen to her much celebrated project on saving tigers and I so want to hear it again.

Dec 26: On my way back

Yeah! For me, everything cannot go that smoothly. So somehow I'd managed to fuck up. I wake up late and hence, I miss my morning train. So I take the bus to Delhi at 9 from I.S.B.T. Now this bus route is very good. It goes through Roorkee and Muzzafarnagar [“the Muzzafarnagar”] and again “the Meerut”. Finally, I am at the Delhi home now and have taken a bath [I’ll bullet this point]. Till now, I have felt like I am a kindergarten-traveller, but yes, I’ve started liking this. After all, this is the dream and its quite huge a dream and here is this one-man army, battling to live it.