Bummer - Part I

You know you've gone vacationing to a really cold place when you pack in only two sets of clothes for four days, and you still return with one of those two sets unused.

One Wednesday, Nitin, Arunav (Sikder), Aseem (Suri), Abhinav (Dhar(of Leh fame)), Ayush (Nayyar (whose name at home is a dark secret that does not leave the confines of the above group)), and myself set out for a four day trip. Most of us still had that tinge of Holi colours on us, given that just a few ours ago our faces were so coloured that our own progenitors couldn't recognize us. We gathered at the bus station where we were to board a bus to Shimla, Sarahan (in Himachal Pradesh) then being our final destination. As it usually happens with trips, you don't end up going to the place that you had initially planned, but we'll get to that later.

As our Volvo rocketed toward Shimla, breaking all land speed records (250kms to Chandigarh in 3 hours), we realised how futile it was to try and sleep on a road trip. Well, four of us did. Sikder and Dhar snoozed for 15 hours on a 6 hour bus ride. While they were asleep, we hatched theories on how Sikder was really "Sik-Dhar", Dhar's long lost brother and how our dear friend "Vamshi-Dhar" was their proud father. Jokes came, jokes went, we slept for barely half an hour and found ourselves in Shimla in the wee hours of morning. While alighting from the bus, I, being the macho man that I am, declared proudly that it was hardly cold, only to retract my words in half a minute and rush for the nearest available sweatshirt and some tea.

The beauty of most of the trips I take is that hardly anything is planned completely. We also wanted to visit Sangla and Chhitkul, which we had read about in our beloved copy of Lonely Planet (everyone must own one). After about half an hour of arguing over how to reach Sarahan, we decided to take a rickety bus ride to Rampur. As luck would have it, an hour later, we found ourselves, standing outside an overheated bus, waiting for a replacement in the middle of nowhere. The replacement did come eventually, and would change cause a significant change in plan. The replacement bus was smaller, and already had people sitting in it. Add all the passengers of our bus with all their luggage into it, and you have yourself a sardine tin. The hills work slightly differently from a city like Delhi. What do you do when you see a really crowded bus in Delhi? You let that one pass, sure that another would turn up in a few minutes. In the hills, there is just that one bus, so you get on to it even if you need to emulate Spiderman just to stay in the bus. By the time we reached Rampur, there were people standing on our luggage. And as we got off, it would be safe to say that the general consensus was to never take a bus again for the duration of this trip. (Below : Sunrise from the bus to Rampur)

After having seen rather disgusting goat liver sausages at some roadside food stalls, we decided to get ourselves some breakfast (not the goat liver sausages) before proceeding on to Sarahan, which was hardly a two hours' drive away.

Breakfast packed into our stomach, Nitin's lifelong desire for snow (if you remember the Dalhousie trip) kicked in. I have to admit that it served us well. It was quite hot in Rampur, and there were lynching threats issued against me because I'd proclaimed that the temperature could go as low as minus two and it felt like thirty at that point. We were also told that we wouldn't find snow in Sarahan. We were feeling recharged and we decided to attempt reaching Sangla that same day. It would involve an additional four to five hour drive, but it would give us a chance to visit Chhitkul (where snow was guaranteed), an hour's drive away.

Our driver to Sangla was well suited to our group. Ours was a group of what Nayyar calls 'Happy Campers' (and me). He gave my friends permission to smoke funny things, and sometimes cared to declare that he himself was wired on the stuff while driving us on some of the steepest and narrowest roads we had seen. It is here that I made the statement that gave this post and this trip it's name. "Dude you know what would be a real BUMMER? If the driver turned out to be an undercover cop!", said the wise SK. Nonetheless, we trusted him, and the divine plan. About 10 kms before Sangla, our driver stopped at a hermit's hut. This gentleman we have come to know as 'Cheel Baba'. 'Cheel' not as in Eagle. 'Cheel' as in an extension of the centre syllable in 'Chill' which is short for 'Chill with Chillum' (which was Cheel Baba's legendary dialogue). Three of us stayed away, while the other three (unnamed) and the driver found their way into the hermitage, and had the impossible task of finding their feet before they found their way out. An hour later, however, much to the surprise of all, we found ourselves driving into Sangla, safe and sound and in one piece. Two hands, two legs. All working.

(Below : On the way to Sangla, Cheel Baba's Lair)

At Sangla, we faced a peculiar problem. We had worked on the assumption that we would receive massive discounts in hotels owing to the fact that it was off-season and that were the only idiots out touring the most desolate areas of the country in winter.

However, because of the off-season, practically all the guest houses were shut. The houses in Sangla are forced to cut off their water supply in winter to avoid pipe bursts due to the freeze. Most of these guest houses hadn’t restored their supply yet and were not ready for service.
With great difficulty however, we were able to find a guesthouse with three rooms. All we had to do was to hunt down the owner at the local Nag festival. Sikder and Nitin decided to stay back while the rest of us went off to explore town and look for the owner.

Our short walk around town yielded few results. We couldn’t enter the Nag festival for the want of traditional Himachali headgear. However, we were able to catch a glimpse of the dazzling sunset behind the snow-clad mountains that surround Sangla. (Below)

It is on this walk that we hatched another plan. We would go to Chhitkul the next day, stay there overnight, and do a cannonball run down to Shimla the day after. Sarahan would not be visited on this trip. Poor Sarahan.

Upon returning I found that the owner hadn’t returned yet. It was beginning to get very cold and Sikder had already started one of his famous ten-minute power naps (Above). A short while later, however, the aforementioned gentleman did return and showed us into our rooms. At night we lit ourselves a nice fire, poured ourselves warm glasses of rum and relaxed after a day that had involved almost nineteen hours of travel. Suri began to tell his famous horror stories, which freaked out some of us (unnamed) so much that they couldn’t return to their rooms alone at night. The day did, however, wind down to a close with the temperature dropping to about 1 degree and all of us going to sleep in about four layers of clothing each.