Run to the hills – 2. Manali, local sightseeing

Manali is a quaint little town surrounded by snowcapped mountains with a river running noisily through it. The mountain sides are covered with pine trees. A few houses and hotels populate the sides of the mountain. A few vehicles run along the narrow roads that wind between the trees and buildings. Patches of snow can be seen all along the way. These patches are not large as we are in May now and the sun is out in full strength. By full strength, I don’t mean the strength that the sun shows in Chennai, but the mild strength that lets the ice from the winter to live without melting for a few days. All in all, Manali is a picture perfect town that lay hidden in the mountains.

This was my vision of Manali before I got there. Sadly, Manali did not turn out to be anything like this. 

We travelled to Manali on a Volvo bus through terrible roads. Close to Manali, the roads got better. The road from Kulu to Manali was a four lane highway that ran by the river Beas. The two lanes towards Manali were choked with vehicles. Many Volvo buses and cars headed towards Manali. When we reached the Volvo bus stand, we saw that it contained around 50 buses in it. If each bus had transported about 30 people, 1500 people had already reached Manali that morning. Many more would have reached Manali in cars too. This gave us an idea of the number of tourists in Manali on that summer morning. This also gave us an understanding of the number of the hotels in Manali. There was nothing quaint and little about the real Manali.

The hotel we booked in was a kilometre away from the Volvo bus stand. This meant that it was about a kilometre and a half away from the city centre, The Mall Road. The cab from the hotel, travelled away from the town. To our left was the river and the right side was hilly. At one point, the cab took a right towards the hilly side. Two roads ran up the hill at that point. The one to the left went to the villages. The cab driver informed us that the education minister in the current Himachal cabinet came from one of the villages. He also mentioned that the fellow had not done anything good for his constituency and will not be elected in the next election. We took the lane to the right. The lane was narrow and went up steep. As the cab continued its journey, we realized that we were surrounded by many hotels. The driver informed us that the right side of the hill only had hotels. He continued that too many tourists came to Manali and as a result Manali had the largest concentration of hotels for a place in Asia. We did not verify the veracity of the statement but our experience during the next few days has made us believe this statement.

Our room at the hotel had a reasonable view through its large windows. We looked uphill through an apple orchard. A few hotels could be seen towards the top of the hill. The room was large, and we felt comfortable in it. While having lunch that morning, a couple of women came around selling cherries from the hotel’s orchard. We got a small cardboard box full of fresh cherries for a hundred rupees. I had an odd relationship with cherries. For a long time, I believed that the sugar syrup soaked bright red spheres that one got atop cakes and ice creams were cherries. Then sometime during the 90’s the concept of pastry entered my life. It took me a few years to realize that pastry and cake are different. The pastries usually had a light red sphere atop them, and these, I was told, were cherries. The bright red spheres atop the cakes from my younger agree were not cherries but sugary crap. But I did not agree, the spheres were not sweet. Worse, I thought they were tasteless. So, I did not enjoy eating them. The cherries that we bought from the women seemed different. These looked fresh and invitingly red. I tasted the cherries and found that they were tangy and sweet. I loved its taste and immediately gobbled a few of them.

A growing number of tourists have started dreading the phrase ‘local sightseeing’. In English, the phrase translates to ‘bull shit’. Every tourist location usually has inside its limits a set of uninteresting places that various tourism websites and cab drivers glorify. Every tourist who visits the place do not have a choice but visit such locations else someone will ask them condescendingly “what you did not visit the temple dedicated to cousin of moon’s grandmother’s niece? It is such a beautiful temple surrounded by trees and a calm lake. You missed it” when they get back home. This will give rise to a feeling misery to the tourist, every time he or she thinks of the amount of money spent on the trip. To avoid such a situation, we decided to go for the ‘local sightseeing’ trip of Manali. We started off with the Vasisht Temple. Information on this temple, is available in a million websites on the internet and so I will not repeat it here.  The Ram temple had an old stone structure which was partially enveloped within a wooden structure. There were two more structure made of wood too. All the structures looked handsome. We did not spend a lot of time there as it was crowded. One of the things we observed in this trip was that almost no one wears mask in north India. In Chennai at least a few people wear masks. Here across towns and cities, we have seen people going about their lives in the open without masks. Covid is done and dusted for the people here. As the trip proceeded our own usage of mask reduced. Hope we come out this well.

All through the trip, we found good looking dogs in the streets of the different towns in Himachal. They were all big and furry. Usually, they maintained a calm countenance and went about their business without bothering or being bothered by others. At the Vasisht temple, we found one such dog sleeping outside a shop. Behind the dog was a pile of Parle-G biscuits. When the dog woke up, it walked away without even looking at the pile. 

Manali has many hot springs. There was one by Vasisht temple. Later, we saw one by the river Beas. Though this is right by the river, it’s water is hot, and the river water is cold. The driver of our cab mentioned that this hot spring gets submerged by the river during the rains. The hot springs are popular locations for tourists for they are supposed be of medicinal nature and it is believed it cures the bather of many ailments. Looking at the number of people in these hot springs we wondered if we would end up getting for ailments if we shared the spring with them. So, we did not jump into any of the hot springs.

The next stop of the ‘local sightseeing’ trip was the Hidamba temple. The background behind this temple is an interesting one. Hidamba was one of Bhima’s wives. She is the mother of Ghatotkacha who helped the Pandavas in their war against the Kauravas. I find Ghatotkacha interesting due to the movie ‘Maya Bazaar’. S V Ranga Rao played the character of Ghatotkacha in the movie and the unforgettable ‘Kalyana Samayal Saadham is pictured on him. Hidamba is associated with Manali and so she the temple dedicated to her in this place. I had seen the pictures of the temple and found it to be interesting. The path to the temple was packed with cars. This is a narrow street that can fit a maximum of 10 people walking abreast but, on that day, there were cars going in both directions and people using the lane too. It took us an hour to cover the four kilometres from the Vasisht temple to the Hidamba temple. Half a kilometre from the temple, the driver got annoyed and asked us to get down and walk the remaining distance. We managed to walk through the mass of unmasked souls and reach the temple. Besides the people walking towards and away from the temple there were also hawkers selling us everything that we did not need. If we took a moment to rest, people tried to sell us herbal medicines that strengthened our bones. Others tried to sell us genuine saffron. We shook our heads and walked towards the temple. That day was considered the birthday of Hidamba and there was a special festival in the temple. So, there were hundreds of people waiting in line to get into the temple. We did not intend to wait with them and so we went around the outsides of the temple and went back to the car.

Next, he took us someplace called the club house. Once again, we inched through the traffic at snail’s pace. The traffic was ridiculously dense, and we were getting impatient. We had reached Manali after spending a sleepless night and being stuck in the traffic seemed much worse than being stuck in a north Indian wedding reception where the DJ, to prove his lousy taste in music, plays music at one hundred thousand seven hundred and sixty seven decibels. We inquired to the driver about the attractions in the club house. He came up with a vague list of activities, like river view, zip line over the river, shopping and café. None of the options seemed exciting but we had no choice but to go ahead as turning around in the traffic seemed impossible. At some point, the driver got frustrated and requested us to get down and walk the remaining distance. We happily got off the car and started walking towards the gates of clubhouse. A few metres from the gate we saw a board with the name ‘Hotel Tirupati’ on it. We went in and sat on the deck by the river. Behind us several tourists were taking rides on zip lines. They were hooked to the zip line and then pulled (or pushed, I am not sure which) to the centre of the zipline. Then, the zipline-wallah tugged at the zipline and the person in the centre went up and down. The whole idea was to get the person’s feet to touch the river water. If the person was short or a child, he or she was too far above the water and the attempt to wet the feet went unsuccessful. In one case, the husband of a newly married couple, started filming his wife as she went up and down at the centre of the zipline. The wife did not want to wet her feet and so held it high. The husband asked her to let her feet down, but she continued to hold her legs high. After a few minutes, the husband said “kya bekaar hain yaar” and stopped filming.

I can’t remember much of food we had at ‘Hotel Tirupati’ but much to our surprise the idlis, chutney and sambhar tasted good. The sambhar tasted more like pulingari. We got out of the restaurant at around 7 PM.  It was too late to go the clubhouse, which did not sound like a very exciting place anyway and so we decided to get back to the hotel. The next day, we had to wake up early for we were going to the Rohthang pass. It was our only chance to see ice during the trip and we were very excited.

Run to the hills -- 1. Getting there

 Many years ago, I came across the song ‘Brother John’ by Chris de Burgh. Chris de Burgh sings the song with a lot of passion, like he usually does. The lyrics narrates the story of a brother in a seminary who is attracted to a woman. One day she sees him spying on her and asks him “Brother John, it’s hard to be holy; would you like to be a man?” Chris sings this line with a lot of oomph with the word ‘man’ sung in a whisper. Towards the end of the song, Chris announces “the devil laughed, and the angels cried for the soul of Brother John”. Chris de Burgh’s singing makes the song visual. This song was very popular in the hostel and for a few months we used to listen to it regularly. Many years later, for absolutely no reason, I played this song to a Christian colleague. Being a patient and nice person, he listened to the song quietly. At the end, he turned to me and asked, “you are a rebel, isn’t it?” I was shocked and could not respond. I have never considered myself to be a rebel. If anything, I was just the opposite. I tried to fit in and keep a low profile. That night, I lay on my bed with the question “am I a rebel?” running around my head. The thought of being a rebel thrilled me, but the pragmatic part of my brain had no doubts about my not being a rebel. On further exploration I had to accept that my colleague had got it wrong. I was not a rebel. He had misunderstood the display of my contempt for most aspects of life as rebellion. Without doubt, religion stood at the head of my list of aspects in life that need to be mocked and yet, on many occasions, I call out to God for help.

“Oh God! Please let us board the flight without any issues”. I had spent many minutes during the previous three days visiting the Indigo website and checking in the passengers (us) and their luggage, loading information about their health and promising the airlines that the corona virus has not possessed them during the past few days and that they were perfectly sane. I had taken print outs of some fifteen documents. Still, I was not sure, if we will be able to board the flight. So, I called out to whichever God would listen for help.

As I approached the security person at the entrance of the airport, I felt an initial relief run through me as I observed that he only verified each person’s boarding pass and the identification card. Soon we crossed the different checks points and found ourselves inside the flight. Much to our surprise, our body temperature was not measured even once. It is tougher to get into a mall than to fly to another city in the country.

Unexpected rains had brought down the temperature of Chennai by around 10  ͦ C. So, the heat that welcomed us in Chandigarh came as a shock. For a second, we considered cancelling the trip and going back to Chennai. But we laughed at the ridiculous thought and walked bravely into the Chandigarhi heat. We spent the next ten hours with my cousin whom I met after twenty years. When we started the trip, we only expected to have an occasional dose-a and sambrrrrrr during the next three weeks. But my cousin’s mother-in-law had prepared a fantastic Thanjavurian lunch for us. I will never forget the taste of her puliyodare. 

We were supposed to get into a Volvo bus from outside the Sohana Gurudwara in Mohali at 1 AM. When I booked the ticket in the Redbus application, I expected the place to be a bus stand with a beautiful Volvo bus with the words ‘National Travels’ written on its side waiting for us to board. My expectations were far from reality. The bus did not start from Mohali but from Delhi and this was only a stop enroute to the destination. Also, there was no bus stand with chairs. Instead, we were expected to stand besides a signal in front of the gurudwara. We reached the spot at 12:30 AM. The Redbus application had promised to give us a mechanism to track the bus’ location, but it did not fulfill this promise. So, I called the helper on the bus and asked him about the bus’ arrival time. He said that the bus was stuck in traffic, and he had no idea when it will reach the stop. The best estimate that I could get was that it would reach after 1:30 AM. So, the three of us were stuck by a signal in front of a gurudwara at Mohali with two large suitcases in the middle of the night. 

Earlier, my cousin had mentioned that we could wait inside the gurudwara if we had to. The large and open gates of the gurudwara seemed a welcoming sight for us. We had never been to a gurudwara earlier. So, we tentatively walked into the gurudwara dragging our large suitcases behind us. Soon, we saw two elderly men with flowing white beards sitting in a shed. They observed us silently. We approached them and one of us asked “We are waiting for a bus. Can we spend some time inside the Gurudwara?” One of them responded “Sure. Wear a scarf over your head and go in. Do you want some tea?” We did not want ‘some tea’, but it seemed impolite to say so and so we said “Sure”. He responded, “ask someone near the gurudwara”. I picked up a saffron scarf and tied it around my head. The man who had not spoken so far looked at me disapprovingly and said, “not that way”. I took off the scarf and tied it again. The look of disapproval did not go away. He was about to say something when, the other man said, “it’s ok; go ahead”.

Though it was past midnight, we found several men, women and children in the gurudwara and its grounds. We sat on chairs in a shed by the stairs of the main structure. After a few moments, we decided to take turns to go into the gurudwara. As I waited for the other two to come back, I decided to take a selfie. I opened the camera application on my phone, toggled it to the front camera and looked into the screen. Instantly, I realized that there was something wrong with the way I tied the scarf. The scarf was in the shape of a square and one had to fold it along the diagonal before tying it. When folded had two ends: one pointed and the other straight. One was expected to tie it such that the straight side was in the front, on one’s forehead, and the pointed side was at the back of one’s head. I had done the reverse. The pointed side was on my forehead and my headgear looked like Loki’s helmet without the metallic sideburns and horns. I quickly corrected the mistake.

The structure stood at a height and at the bottom of the stairs that led to it was a shallow pool of water. One had to walk through the water prior to climbing the stairs. This ensured that everyone washed their feet prior to entering the holy place. At the top of the stairs was a set of doors through which I walked into a large hall. The ceiling of the hall was decorated with coloured mirrors. I was reminded of the hall in the ‘pyar kiya tho darna kya’ scene of Mughal-e-azaam. To my left was a platform. A few men were folding large sheets of cloth on the platform as they chanted a verse repeatedly. I started circumambulating the platform. On one side of the platform, a set of weapons were placed on a wooden cot. The only place I had seen weapons like these were in the glass cases of museums. I continued walking. At the end of one round, I stood by the weapons and wondered what to do next. I turned around and walked out of the holy place. 

When I reached back to the seating area, I found that the people at the gurudwara were determined to make us consume tea. The tea was neither good nor bad. We waited for another thirty minutes. People continued to walk around the gurudwara. They busied themselves in cleaning the already clean place. Some arranged the already well-arranged shoes and slippers by the stairs. At 1:30 AM, I got a call from the bus. They informed that the bus would reach the stop in another ten minutes. We quickly picked our luggage and left the gurudwara. 

The bus seemed flashy from the outside but quite ordinary inside. The seats that we had reserved were occupied by others but there were three other empty seats towards the front of the bus. As we tried to fit into our seats, we disturbed all the sleeping bodies around. The seats were cramped, and it felt like the person in the seat ahead was sleeping on my lap. I managed to find a reasonably comfortable position and started watching the road through the windshield in the front. We drove along the highway towards the mountains. Within an hour, the roads started twisting and turning around the mountains. I closed my eyes. I did not sleep well as the journey was not smooth.

At 6:30 AM, the bus stopped near a restaurant for a short break. We were a few hours from our destination. Ten Volvo buses were lined outside the restaurant and the passengers from the buses roamed about the large open space besides the restaurant. The open space overlooked a valley through which the river Beas flowed. As plain as my words are, I believe, it still enhances the beauty of the place, which was anything but beautiful. As in many places in north India, this one too was enveloped in fine dust. The river was not much more than a sliver of water flowing between the rocks. Too many vehicles plied on the road. The pile of people in the open space were increasing due to the constant flow of buses.

The remaining part of the journey was miserable. The roads were being expanded from two to four lanes. In many stretches, the road was reduced to rubble. To make matters worse, flow of vehicles from both sides was heavy. The dust due to the rubble on the road and construction was all around and though it did not get into the bus, the sight by itself was disturbing. By this time, the bus driver had lost his patience and was honking at everyone on the road. The road ran along the river and as we climbed higher, the river seemed more like a river. The water ran and jumped over the many rocks and pebbles that occupied the riverbed. The Volvo-ness of the bus blocked the sound of the rushing river though. 

At 9:45 AM, the bus finally reached its destination, Manali.

Second hand poem

A second ago, a sixty was expected

But, the six disappeared; only the zero remained

How did the end become a beginning?

From zero to one to two to three to four

Five, the proud silver medallist 

At the multiplication table Olympics 

Six, seven, eight and nine followed

Ten, seems like a destination for many

But not for the second hand of my watch

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen

Follow one after the other

Stopping momentarily at each 

Before moving on to the next

Sixteen, considered sweet when it comes once a lifetime

But for the second hand of my watch

The next sixteen is only a minute away

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty

Twenty one, a major milestone in a person's life

But just another number on the dial of my watch

Twenty two, three, four, five

Followed by twenty six, seven, eight, nine

Thirty, the number that signals the end of youth

Not if you are a member of a political party though

Dirty one, thirty two, dirty three, thirty four, dirty five

Dirty times in a person's life means nothing for the second hand

Thirty six, thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, forty

Is making the proceedings tedious

Forty one is no longer not young

Forty two, forty three, forty four,  ...

Damn! That fellow's question is longer than the Gita

He has camouflaged his ramblings into a question

Forty five and forty six are older than twenty five and twenty six

But younger than fifty five and fifty six

Forty seven, when four christens seven, eleven results

Forty eight, when four crosses eight. thirty two results

Forty nine, when four sleeps under nine

A  quarter more than two results

Fifty, the golden jubilee

Things missed during one's twenties and thirties 

Will remain missed forever

Fifty one, shifty one, shifting quickly towards the sixty

Fifty two, fifty three, fifty four

Tick - tock, tick - tock, tick - tock

Fifty five, five and five throw their paunches at the world

Fifty six, I wonder how I ended up in this mix

Fifty seven, fifty eight, fifty nine

One full circle is a second away

Sixty, sixty, sixty, sixty

Life doesn't end at sixty

One can go on to sixty one

Or start all over again from one