The Dull ' n ' Lousy Travelogue - or the Wonderful Walks of Dalhousie

And now.... JUNOESQUE joins the party. You can read more of what she writes here.


“Dull and Lousy. ”

That was the disparaging comment that my teenage son threw at me when I announced my decision of trying a new location for our annual summer holiday.
After all, it was a bit much for him to get used to this new situation.

One which offered no skating. No video games. No cable car rides. No boating. No “mela” with its array of kitschy offerings – no balloon shooting, no magic tricks, no junk to buy.. and worst of all…possibly even no TV !!

But I had made up my mind. This time it was going to be Dalhousie.

My parents often spoke about their long summer vacations there in their young days in the 1950’s. Memories of long walks, “jalebi and samosa” evenings, names like Bakrota and Moti Tibba , Thandi sarak and Garam sarak, sounded quaintly enchanting. Notwithstanding Junior’s protests, I took the risk.
Short of being pulled along kicking and screaming, he had no option but to board the Jammu Mail on a sultry June night at Delhi Junction, with a very determined mother behind him.

I had it all planned. A bit of scrabbling around on the net well in advance of the summer season had me stumble upon the Silverton Estate located on Moti Tibba in Dalhousie.
A heritage property built by its present owner’s grandfather in the 1930’s its charming appearance plus a few phone chats with its warm and affable owner Vickramjit Singh and I had my stay worked out.


We didn’t have a particularly spectacular start.

Post an overnight journey, the drive up from Pathankot was.. well…like any other journey in to the mountains. The saving grace was a light drizzle which seemed like manna from heaven.

Carrying detailed instructions from Vickramjit, a brief stopover at a quaintly cute garden restaurant called “Maama’s Rasoi ” took care of breakfast pangs. Then on it was all the way up to the mountains.

Even after reaching Dalhousie and negotiating the steep climb up to Silverton which is located above the Circuit House, it still didn’t hit me. The place was as charming as it looked in the pictures. Lunch laid on especially for us, was just the way one would have it at home, albeit with extra attentive service thrown in. But was this all that one had come here for? Where was the “wow”?

SILVERTON ESTATE

Thankfully we had a lovely room with an attached dressing room and bathroom with a tiny living room and wonder of wonders, a portable TV !! I began to thank my lucky stars that at least I had this option to fall back upon.
On day one, things were nice enough. Though not outstandingly, ecstatically so.

How wrong I was…


Once settled in, Vickramjit handed me a slim guidebook to Dalhousie. It had all the necessary information that any first-timer would lap up in a flash. Notwithstanding the information and the pretty pictures, what set my mind working was the way our day ahead was planned by our host.

Knowing my dislike of doing the routine stuff and the need to avoid the crowds at the market places and that I also needed to keep child’s interest levels going, he painstakingly and meticulously worked out a daily schedule of activity for each day of our holiday.
In advance.

Dalhousie is a walkers paradise. Its charms are best discovered on foot. One can walk as little or as much as one wants to. Even unfit city slickers like yours truly can get royally hooked, as I discovered.



A DOWNHILL WALK IN THE EVENING

You get to enjoy clean, fresh pure mountain air. The clouds play with you as you walk though them, occasionally teasing you with a drizzle or warning you with a shower. The greenery is almost too green to be true. It is hard to believe that one is technically still “in” Dalhousie.

Day One:

Vickramjit had lined up the Inner Bakrota Walk for us. Armed with his detailed instructions we walked down to the GPO Chowk and took a cab up the 3 kilometre drive to the top of Bakrota Hill. As instructed, we got off at the water works and discovered the beginning of our walking trail. I had been reassured that this was not a “climb” but a level walk. Thank goodness. The trail was quiet and peaceful with accompanying birdsong. It was also wide and easy.



THE INNER BAKROTA WALK...

An occasional vehicle would drive past and occupants would gaze at us in wonder. I guess not many people would be seen walking on this stretch, let alone people who obviously did not seem to be locals!! Passing by well spaced out cottages and old fashioned bungalows with surrounding gardens and landscaping, one spotted name plates of service officers who lived there. An iron gate leading to a cottage located some distance away, was partly shrouded in the mist and looked straight out of “Harry Potter”!!
It’s pretty easy to go shutter happy over the trees and the lush foliage. As I did.
It was only later that I did my review-delete routine and kept what I thought were my best shots.

The trail twisted and turned around the reverse side of the mountain that we had climbed up in the car. It was so easy to get caught up in the stillness and quiet of the place that the sight of a young girl dressed in black who appeared from behind a bend in the trail made me stop for a second and wonder if she was real or a ghost !

The moment passed quickly enough and we emerged on the main road whence we had come from.

As instructed, we stopped by at a little fast food joint called “Chill Out” for lunch. Parked in the balcony of the restaurant, we amused ourselves by watching a bus and a truck trying to pass each other on the road which had been narrowed down due to a dump of bricks left there by some construction workers.

Walking down past colourful prayer flags fluttering in the breeze and in to the Kendriya Vidyalaya set up for the Tibetan settlers, we wended our way past their temple after turning the prayer wheels, to their carpet weaving centre.


Pure wool carpets are hand woven here and are also for sale.
One has to scrabble around a bit for unusual colour combinations and designs. Though not priced particularly cheap, I did not mind paying that tad extra for all the effort the weavers put in at their looms.

As we stepped out of the Tibetan Centre, I noticed a little path trailing away behind the building in the general direction of the main chowk. On impulse, I took that route, disregarding instructions to use the main road back.
The path twisted and turned through the trees, sometimes with stone steps to enable our walk, at times narrow, at times broad. Local folk were questioned time and again as to whether this was the way back in town. Affirmative replies emboldened us and the steep twists and turns became fun since we were going downhill.
The wind shushed through the trees approvingly. And life seemed suddenly so …light. The path brought us on to the main Bakrota Hill road and we walked past groups of fellow tourists struggling up the steep climb. Before we knew it, civilisation had retuned full force to hit us smack between the eyes.
It seemed almost sacrilege to wait for child to finish playing a much begged for video game. Even the prospect of buying a newspaper seemed so depressing for it would bring me back to reality with a hard thump.


Things righted themselves once we got back.
The pretty lawns of Silverton are made for idling away the hours. A glorious sunset was followed by a candlelight dinner under the stars. With limited guests and no walk-ins, we were far from the madding crowd.


Day Two:

The night had played host to thunder, lightning and rain.

Morning saw the sun peeping through scattered clouds. Today would be a walk from the Jandrighat Palace. We chose to drive one way and walk back the 3 km distance from the palace to the GPO Chowk. Once at the palace , we waited at the gates for the resident chowkidar, who we had been told we would need to request, for a quick tour .

Located on the edge of a mountain with a breathtaking view of Dalhousie, the Palace, originally part of the erstwhile state of Chamba, is now an official Government residence and often has local politicos and big-wigs staying there.

JANDRIGHAT PALACE

Despite having managed to get in to the grounds due to a partly open gate, the caretakers seemed unhappy at having us outsiders wandering around. A short, sharp shower enabled us to wait in the verandah and take a few pictures and observe the hunting trophies and old pictures on the walls. The other claim to fame that the Palace can make – portions of the movie “1942, A Love Story”, were shot here.


Post the shower we were quietly but firmly ushered out of the grounds. Not that I was too bothered. The mist and the quiet, deserted road beckoned us.

WALKING IN THE MIST IS BLISS

Passing a little tea-shop the world seemed to be ours and ours alone. A mostly level walk (again ! ) bought us to a little spring called Subhash Ki Baoli.


Though now it looks like anything but that.

Its only a pipe jutting out of the hillside, with a trickle of water falling in to a cemented pool, with a raised ledge around it is further surrounded by benches on a marble floor.
Tourist vehicles congregate at the bottom of the steps leading up to the spring, with their boom boxes thumping out Himesh Reshammiya .

And to think, way back in 1937, when Netaji Subhash Bose was in jail and was suspected to be suffering from TB, he was sent by the British to Dalhousie to recuperate. He would take the walk from the main chowk to the spring every single day and return after drinking the water from it.

I frankly doubt if any one of us would be foolhardy enough to do what he did in this day and age. The place, too, could have been simple and peaceful. Instead, the tacky benches, the dirty looking spring and its water, the muddy floor and the hordes of tourists do nothing to preserve its sanctity.

Peace returned as we walked back on and reached the town centre again.

Lunch today was at Kwality’s restaurant. The same Kwality’s that we all know about and have grown up with. The wood panelled interiors, old –fashioned fans and the menu draw throngs of visitors and we were no exception.

Post lunch, child had to be bribed with his daily video-game fix and a pony ride back to Silverton while I cooled my heels and then huffed and puffed my way back uphill.
In the evening, I went for a short walk to the “garam sarak” to check out a place called Crag’s.

THE COTTAGE AT CRAG'S

My parents used to stay in the cottages during their summer vacations. The place is now in rather a run-down condition but seems popular with foreigners. Of course, it was rather nice to meet and reminisce with the owner about days gone by. On the way back, a short visit to St. Francis’ Church could have been nice but with the swarms of tourists milling around, I beat a hasty retreat.

Day Three:

This was the long awaited trip to Khajjiar. Do I really need to say anything about its Swizerland-ish appearance here ?

Be warned that if you are hiring cabs in Dalhousie, you are virtually at the mercy of the local taxi union’s pre-fixed rates. This irritant aside, the drive is through a thickly forested road that twists downhill, and one can spot tantalising glimpses of a green carpet far away below the mountain.

At this moment, the dark rain clouds threatened to spoil our day. It was so dark that it seemed like twilight. Our sharp descent however, enabled us to leave the clouds behind and suddenly the lush, emerald-green carpet of Khajjiar was below our feet.
Despite the vastness of the meadow and the dense deodhar forests surrounding it, which gave the place a look straight out of our childhood fairytale books, the place stank of pony droppings and the grassy ground didn’t appear too clean up close.

A clutch of eating joints on one side of the meadow, were a little distance away from a little overbridge that led on to a pond in the centre of the saucer-shaped meadow.
Up close, the whole place was noisy, smelly and dirty. The Khajji Nag temple after which the place is named lay deserted and was full of flies.
Open drains behind and around the buildings and loud mouthed touristy types made us cut short our visit. Abandoning plans for lunch at the Kwality’s branch at Khajjiar, we munched our way through packets of chips and biscuits in the car.
Now the town of Chamba beckoned. As we traveled further down hill in to the valley of the Ravi river, where the town is located, the hillsides grew browner and rockier. The weather grew warmer.

We drove past a tiny ledge jutting out of the mountain-side, with a forlorn looking Shiva temple. Looking beyond and across the mountains in the distance, albeit now covered by monsoon clouds was a little gap between the craggy ranges, where we were told nestled the mighty Mount Kailash. Never have I wished so much for x-ray vision as I did right then…

Chamba was a curious mix of the old and the new. Capital of the former princely state, it nestles deep in a valley and is known for its annual Minjar Fair.

Today, as flying visitors, we could only take in the Lakshmi Narayan Temple and its State Museum.

The approach to the temple was through a maze of narrow alleys and “gallies” which didn’t smell too good.. but we persevered up the short climb.
Built in the typical pahadi-style ( is there a genre such as that ?? ) the main temple building was surrounded by smaller versions of itself, scattered around a stone paved courtyard, each one dedicated to a different deity. The floor was hot enough to burn the soles of our feet so we stuck to the carpeted pathways created across it.

On the way out of the temple complex we came across a little shop fully equipped with Sony Play-station machines hooked up to large 29 inch flat screen TV’s with stereophonic sound effects blaring out of the speakers. Offering a full thirty minutes of play time for a princely sum of ten rupees.

So while young man in life was gainfully employed in using his thumbs and fingers on the gaming console, I wandered off the State Museum.

Walking past tiny jewellery shops and “kaarkhaanas” engaged in creating artifacts and statues covered with gold foil...I resisted the urge to stop and check out things. Else would have run out of both time and money.


The Chamba Museum is a comprehensive and impressive documentation of what the state is famous for, and showcases bits of its history.

Things to marvel over included intricately carved wooden doors, Chamba “rumaal’s” -intricately embroidered with incredibly detailed scenes from royal life of yore, costumes, footwear, jewellery and even a metallic coat of armour which may have been a silent witness to many wars.

Leaving Chamba and the heat behind, we drove out and parallel to the Ravi river.
Our driver proudly pointed the shooting locations of the movies “Taal” and “Gaddar” to us. Having been suitably briefed by our host, we stopped at a relatively safe spot where we could walk down and perch on the rocks and dangle our feet in the cold waters of the river.
Further downstream, the Chamera dam made a breathtaking sight from the road high above.

Day Four

Dainkund – the place where the “dain” or witch lived in olden times. Vickramjit had told me in detail and raved about this particular walk. At the end of which was a temple devoted to Palaani Mata. There was much to look forward to as we drove up to the point from where the walk began. I wasn’t disappointed.

The path was a tiny one and twisted and turned uphill for a sizeable distance. We had already driven uphill before commencing our walk and this was about the last stretch before we reached the top of the mountain. Huffing and puffing and rueing my lack of fitness, I was determined to get to the top, from whereon I had been told was a level walk to the temple.

The walk was lush green and the path manageable. I realised that we had reached the limit of the tree line and our surroundings were now meadows carpeted with wildflowers.

The silence was bliss and the walk was unlike anything I have ever experienced before.
We were surrounded by mountains on almost three sides. To the south was an expansive view of the Ranjit Sagar Lake opening out in to the plains. To the West were the Pir Panjal and the Pangi ranges. Beyond them lay the plains of Punjab, with the rivers Ravi Chenab and Beas flowing through. On a clear night in October, the lights of Amritsar are visible from here. And through binoculars one can spot the lights of Lahore as well.
The north and the east were surrounded by layers and layers of mountains of the great Himalayan range. Again, on a clear day, Mount Kailash is clearly visible from here.
In order to grab as breathtaking views from here, make sure you have a high end camera with a telephoto or zoom lens to max out your mountain images.
The utter stillness of the place and the forks in the paths made us wonder if we were on the right track.
We were.

The temple of Palaani Mata is a tiny one set in a little niche on top of a cemented platform. The resident dog in attendance would happily wander around and muck up all the offerings laid out in front of the goddess but no one seemed to mind. Amidst a cluster of tinkling bells we tied a red chunri as our offering. Grabbing a cup of tea and packets of aloo bhujia from the makeshift shop nearby, the walk back was tinged with regret at leaving this magical place….
On our way down at the Lakkar Mandi Chowk was the entrance to Kalatop Wildlife Sanctuary. The 3 km walk inside can and should be done on foot, but lacking the time and the energy we took the easy way out and a permit to drive inside.

The thick forest and the utter stillness of the place was simply amazing. I made a note of a paricular spot which was like a clearing between the trees, with a grassy carpet. Just the place to take a picnic basket and laze the day away…have stored it away for future reference. The Forest rest house in the middle of the sanctuary is a charming cottage built on British times and if one wants to spend a night there one needs to book in advance.

Little pathways around and behind the rest-house are made for exploration but the arrival of a horde of cars with people spilling out with their coke cans and packets of chips and loud voices made us shiver and beat a hasty retreat.


Wish we could have stayed on and done more…

Our time in Dalhousie was nearly over.. there was a tiny twinge of regret at leaving behind such beauty was coupled with delightful memories of all that we had seen and enjoyed. I plan to go back and do the Dainkund trek again when the skies are clear and with a better camera.

There are other walks and treks that we missed out on – the one in Kalatop and the trek down from Lakkar Mandi to Khajjiar. Those are on my “ must do ” list .

As always, child had the last word on the dusty drive back to Pathankot.

When asked if Dalhouse was still Dull and Lousy the answer was succinct and spot on ..
“ No Ma, its bright and shining !!”


Dalhousie Fact Sheet :

Dalhousie is a town with a colonial past and located along the Dhauladhar Range in Himachal Pradesh, 80 kms from Pathankot at an altitude of approximately 7,000 feet. It’s the perfect place to be as active or as lazy as you want to be. The days move by at a gentle pace everything seems different and the appetite multiplies enormously.

Getting there :
By train: Take an overnight train to Pathankot from Delhi (Jammu Mail Rs 836 2 AC). From there drive up in a taxi ( Rs.1,150 upwards )
By road: 555 km from Delhi, 190 km from Jammu, 300 km from Chandigarh

Where to stay :
Silverton Estate Guesthouse, above Circuit House, Moti Tibba. Rs 800- 3,000 (EP)
Tel: +91 9418010674
www.heritagehotels.com/silverton (Closed Jan 15-Mar 25).

When to go :
Summer: May-June is the best time. The weather is cool, but fickle.
Autumn: Mid September-first week November. Crisp cold , clear skies..

What to Carry :
Woollens and a windbreaker. Sunscreen. A pair of sturdy walking shoes is a must .

Walks of Dalhousie :


Mini walks :

- Thandi Sarak which connects Subhash Chowk and GPO Chowk – good only on weekdays and in the evenings or in the mornings since vehicular traffic moves here.
- Garam Sarak which is a walk on the other side of Moti Tibba again connecting Subhash Chowk and GPO Chowk. No traffic here so walking is a breeze. Check out the St. Francis’ Church at Subhash Chowk or walk down Court Road to DC Khanna and Sons – departmental store that’s over a hundred years old. The gracious owners let you mooch around and even click pictures. Park yourself at the next door verandah cafe and watch life go by..

Longer walks / treks :

- Inner Bakrota walk from water works around the Bakrota hill down to Chill Out Café and then to the Tibetan Centre. Past Neelam Hospital on the path behind, ( Vickramjit calls it “Sudden Death” ) down to the Bakrota Hill and further on to GPO Chowk. Total distance should be approximately 3 - 4 kms
- GPO Chowk to and from Jandrighat Palace - 3 kms one way.
- Lakkar Mandi to Khajjiar – about 12 kms of steep downhill trek one way. A local guide would be needed.
- Kalatop Sanctuary from entrance to Forest Rest house - 3 kms one way. You can also explore the forest path ways around the rest-house.
- Dainkund – At 9,000 feet. A two kilometer distance each way, some of it is uphill. Post that it’s a level walk.

Use sunscreen and carry drinking water to rehydrate you on the walks and to prevent muscles from cramping up.