Tarun's company is called Adventure Holiday Tours and yesterday they sure lived up to their name!
We left Solan just before 8 am with the aim of heading to a small but beautiful town less than 250 km away. It was breakfast on the way... The usual paranthas , curry, curd and chai for some ridiculous amount to money... Usually less than $3 for both of us. We were taking a back road so envisaged the drive taking most of the day as travel is very slow. The road was variable, but in most cases little more than a track so it was shake, rattle and roll for most of the day. Every day we drive in the mountains I remind myself how lucky I am that I don't get carsick as it's very common to see people with their head out of the window and a stream of vomit following the bus. Maybe the rough road had something to do with the puncture we got.
A long trip never means a boring trip as there is always plenty to see. I have been surprised at the number of people who live in these mountains - sometimes in cities or towns but most often in villages and small settlements. You can drive along seeing no sign of habitation for a long way then all of a sudden you see a school in the middle of nowhere... Or sometimes even a university. There was a lot of work going on on the roads, very occasionally with a digger but more often it was manual labour.... always in slow motion! I was amazed at the piles of rocks that were heaped beside the road, all broken up by hand.
The people you see are always interesting. Depending on the time you see groups of school children going to or coming from school, always neatly dressed in uniform, the girls with their very long hair plaited. These kids in uniform contrast with the other people. The women are always in traditional dress. Seeing a woman in western dress in rural India or out of places like Delhi and Mumbai is very unusual. It certainly adds to the colour. You also see the people going about their daily tasks like washing the clothes by the hand pump on the side of the road, carrying stuff on their head or on their back, herding the goats along the road, drinking chai and talking with friends or working in the fields. Their homes vary but most are simple and it's easy to see inside from the road.
In one village we passed we were lucky enough to see a group of men dancing to a drummer.... Something religious Tarun thought. Tarun has explained to me just how superstitious the people of Indian still are, and this is not just village people but city people too. Yesterday I sneezed just before I left the hotel room and he told me that after doing that many people would make me wait for a while before going out.
The scenery we saw throughout the day was stunning. The early morning in the mountains is a little misty and soft and beautiful. The sky often tends to be clearer at this time so it's good to start early. We passed many different types of vegetation during our journey, often pines and other trees (some starting to change colour and lose their leaves), sometimes areas similar to the NZ bush,sometimes rocky areas and sometimes grasslands. Often we looked down into river valleys which were beautifully terraced as there is much subsidence agriculture. Sometimes the river valleys looked similar to our South Island rivers but 100 times the size. The vastness of this mountain area is incomprehensible . I can't believe that when we were near Rishikesh I felt like I was on top of the world... It was nothing! The sunsets are spectacular and nothing can describe them.
About 6 pm we arrived at what we thought was going to be our hotel for the night... A beautiful place in the mountains with an amazing view. It had all been booked for two nights after we both looked at the website . But not to be. It turns out that we were in a military area and no foreigners were allowed there. The man at the hotel gave us chai and toast
but was quite keen to send us on our way as it could have easily resulted in big trouble. Evidently there is a case going on in the Supreme Court at the moment about some similar incident. So I wrapped my head up and we left the place with me pretending to be Tarun's Muslim wife.... Or grandmother perhaps! We got out alive even though we passed a large group of armed soldiers on some army exercise. I know I have government connections but I'd never considered myself a threat to Indian national security before.
We drove on.... Not on the back road this time so progress was faster. I am now comfortably lying on a bed in quite a nice hotel on the edge of a big city ... Dehradun or something like that.
We left Solan just before 8 am with the aim of heading to a small but beautiful town less than 250 km away. It was breakfast on the way... The usual paranthas , curry, curd and chai for some ridiculous amount to money... Usually less than $3 for both of us. We were taking a back road so envisaged the drive taking most of the day as travel is very slow. The road was variable, but in most cases little more than a track so it was shake, rattle and roll for most of the day. Every day we drive in the mountains I remind myself how lucky I am that I don't get carsick as it's very common to see people with their head out of the window and a stream of vomit following the bus. Maybe the rough road had something to do with the puncture we got.
A long trip never means a boring trip as there is always plenty to see. I have been surprised at the number of people who live in these mountains - sometimes in cities or towns but most often in villages and small settlements. You can drive along seeing no sign of habitation for a long way then all of a sudden you see a school in the middle of nowhere... Or sometimes even a university. There was a lot of work going on on the roads, very occasionally with a digger but more often it was manual labour.... always in slow motion! I was amazed at the piles of rocks that were heaped beside the road, all broken up by hand.
The people you see are always interesting. Depending on the time you see groups of school children going to or coming from school, always neatly dressed in uniform, the girls with their very long hair plaited. These kids in uniform contrast with the other people. The women are always in traditional dress. Seeing a woman in western dress in rural India or out of places like Delhi and Mumbai is very unusual. It certainly adds to the colour. You also see the people going about their daily tasks like washing the clothes by the hand pump on the side of the road, carrying stuff on their head or on their back, herding the goats along the road, drinking chai and talking with friends or working in the fields. Their homes vary but most are simple and it's easy to see inside from the road.
In one village we passed we were lucky enough to see a group of men dancing to a drummer.... Something religious Tarun thought. Tarun has explained to me just how superstitious the people of Indian still are, and this is not just village people but city people too. Yesterday I sneezed just before I left the hotel room and he told me that after doing that many people would make me wait for a while before going out.
The scenery we saw throughout the day was stunning. The early morning in the mountains is a little misty and soft and beautiful. The sky often tends to be clearer at this time so it's good to start early. We passed many different types of vegetation during our journey, often pines and other trees (some starting to change colour and lose their leaves), sometimes areas similar to the NZ bush,sometimes rocky areas and sometimes grasslands. Often we looked down into river valleys which were beautifully terraced as there is much subsidence agriculture. Sometimes the river valleys looked similar to our South Island rivers but 100 times the size. The vastness of this mountain area is incomprehensible . I can't believe that when we were near Rishikesh I felt like I was on top of the world... It was nothing! The sunsets are spectacular and nothing can describe them.
About 6 pm we arrived at what we thought was going to be our hotel for the night... A beautiful place in the mountains with an amazing view. It had all been booked for two nights after we both looked at the website . But not to be. It turns out that we were in a military area and no foreigners were allowed there. The man at the hotel gave us chai and toast
but was quite keen to send us on our way as it could have easily resulted in big trouble. Evidently there is a case going on in the Supreme Court at the moment about some similar incident. So I wrapped my head up and we left the place with me pretending to be Tarun's Muslim wife.... Or grandmother perhaps! We got out alive even though we passed a large group of armed soldiers on some army exercise. I know I have government connections but I'd never considered myself a threat to Indian national security before.
We drove on.... Not on the back road this time so progress was faster. I am now comfortably lying on a bed in quite a nice hotel on the edge of a big city ... Dehradun or something like that.
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