Rohtang Pass is a place that marks many divides. To the south are the green slopes caressed by monsoons every year and to its north is a stark landscape often called the forbidden valley. Beyond Rohtang, the landscape begins to start resembling Tibetan, and so do the people. Temples give way to monasteries and Shiva makes way for Buddha. Apple orchards are replaced by potato and sweet peas. It is as if you just changed the DVD and a different movie started playing on the gigantic 16:9 screen.
The fabulous setting of the town of Keylonw, Bhaga River and the road from Tandi
People north of Rohtang have an unusual pride about the altitude they live in. Every village along the way lays some special claims about its location. In Spiti Valley, a deviation on the Leh highway, people at Kibber Village once loved to call it as the highest permanent inhabitation in the world. When the record was broken somewhere else, they were not ready to give up. They came up with more possibilities instead: highest village with electricity, highest village with a motorable road, highest village with a post-office, and so on. A quick web search reveals all possible versions and may even give ideas to cook up new ones. Just below Kibber at the base of Spiti Valley, the petrol pump in Kaza doesn’t fall behind in making the ‘highest in the world’ claim.
Going past Keylong, probably every named place has something highest attached to it. It is only a matter of finding out highest ‘what’!? Indian Army takes bulk of the credits for creating all these highest hypes. In Pang, a tourist stopover on the way to Leh, is an army camp labeled as the “world’s highest transit camp.” Far north in Ladakh is Siachin glacier with its notorious claim for being the world’s highest battle field, where India and Pakistan have been fighting and wasting away lives and resources for a land that neither party can put to any good use. Once you have the privilege of making claims for world’s highest battlefield, the highest airfield is obviously not going to be far away. And Khardung-la, the world’s highest motorable pass doesn’t need any introductions. But Khardung-la’s days are probably numbered: everyone speaks of motorable passes in Ladakh and Tibet that raise much higher. I am sure they will find a new title for Khardung la when another pass officially becomes the highest motorable road.
That’s much digression from Rohtang Pass where we started from. It is a quick and steep descent from the pass, down to the valley of Chandra River. The small village of Khoksar next to the river is more a food court than a village. Dhabas line up the 100m or so length of the road, which is as long that the village spreads. A Himachal Pradesh Government PWD bungalow in the village may be open for visitors, but most people prefer to continue to Keylong. Despite the charm of Chandra River, Khoksar is not a pretty place and is too close to Manali for a halt.
Mighty mountain peaks seen from Keylong town
The way further is parallel to Chandra River, going downstream after crossing the river at Khoksar. It is usually muddy and flows swiftly in the months of July and August – the peak season for travelling to Ladakh. Photographs taken in later months show it in a deep hues of blue, a color that eludes most people who are on their way to Ladakh. The tall peaks along the way tend to have last snow of the season, and many tall waterfalls come down from the steep hills to merge with Chandra.
Tandi, 10km before Keylong has the last petrol pump on the highway. The road here turns right and continues along the valley of Bhaga River. A sign at the confluence of Chandra and Bhaga reads [not verbatim; recreated from memory]: “Welcome to Tandi, the confluence of blue waters of Chandra and green waters of Bhaga.” Unfortunately, the colours are all mixed up with plenty of earth, and what is there to see is two muddy currents coming together into one.
Chandra and Bhaga have an interesting origin. They both begin at different faces of the mountain at the same location – Baralach la. Chandra flows east and then turns west traversing through the valley of Lahaul, while Bhaga flows south through Darcha and Keylong. They meet again in Tandi, like two long lost sisters getting to see and hug each other. More like we see siblings separated at birth rejoining in an emotional drama in a Kannada movie, with the lead actor playing two roles.
Keylong is a quick 20 minutes drive upstream Bhaga River. It is the place where most people prefer to spend the night on the way to Leh, as we found out on arrival.
This post is part of a series on ‘Walks in India‘.
Place: Shimla
Highlights: Traffic Free Mall Road, Celebrations during festival days, Wooded sections, Restaurants.
Season: In Summer. March to June
Time of the day: Any time of the day is good.
Distance: Approximately 3kms
Difficulty: Easy
Map. This is an interactive map of the walk. Zoom in or out to get the desired perspective. For a more concise map with the important locations marked, click here.
The Walk.
Shimla’s Mall Road is closed for traffic, making it a pleasant walk with no pollution and noise from vehicles. The Road is usually full of tourists from the plains walking up and down in lookout of things to do or just searching for a quiet bench to sit on. It has an easy going, festive air.
Begin the walk at the eastern end of Mall Road, near Oberoi Clark Hotel. It is good to start with an empty stomach, which would help you in stuffing up variety of eatables all along the way. If you are feeling lazy, you can find a bench as soon as you start, just above Clark Hotel where you get good vies of Shimla’s valley. It takes less than five minutes of walking to find a few dozen option to eat and drink – it could be a coffee, light snack, ice cream or a full meal. But don’t get tempted, there is lot more to come. Just take a cup of take-away coffee and continue walking.
It is only in Shimla that you can use a lift to move from one road to other. Cart road runs parallel to the mall a hundred feet below it. The city corporation runs a lift between the roads near Combermere Hotel. Take it to Cart road and come back just for the fun of it.
A five minute walk from the lift, you will reach the ridge – the highest point in the walk. Climb up the ridge using the steps leading to it from the road. If you are there in the evening on a good day, you might be lucky to see some dance, song or other cultural performances from local artists. Gaitey Theater on the ridge is one of the charming Raj era buildings in Shimla that has still survived.
Just ahead of the ridge is scandal point where tourists love to hangout. There isn’t much to do though, just sit and watch the world go by, which is what everyone else would be doing. The walk further gets easier, since you go downhill on a gentle slope. Within five minutes of walk, you see an India Coffee House to your left. Walk-in for a snack and spend some time here. If you are hungry and it is lunch time, just next to it is Devico’s Restaurant which has good views of the valley.
Buildings start disappearing after India Coffee House and give way to wooded sections. You will find vendors along the road selling exotic fruits like litchi, apricot and plums. Pack some fruits and continue down the road. You will see less and less people as you walk, and some stretches of the roads have no buildings. Find a bench here and spend time quietly munching the fruits. Walking a little more will take you to the western end of mall road, where the walk ends.
++ More about Shimla on paintedstork.com
* A Day in Shimla
* Touts in Shimla
Travelling in Himachal in June – 2007
Shimla >> Manali >> Rohtang >> Chandratal >> Ki/Kibber/Tabo >> Kalpa >> Shimla
+ Previous: Tabo Monastery and Nako Village
+ Next: Highlights of Kinnaur
+ Go to beginning of the story or index page
The guesthouse we stayed in Nako was run by a mother and her daughter. A bus load of tourists who had arrived on the day had taken up most of the places available in the town. There weren’t any rooms available at this guesthouse too, but the women of the house had offered a room inside their house, and we took it happily.
The mother and daughter made an interesting company. They would talk in a sing song pahadi manner and go on an on without pausing for a break, and without even putting a fullstops between sentences. ‘Today we went to the fields.. we irrigated the potatoes.. we brought some firewood.. it is very hot these days.. afternoons are very sunny.. tomorrow I have to go to Puh town..,’ the mother would go on and on.
It was hardly a few minutes of talking and she had told us everything about them without us asking anything. They had a potato field in the village where the mother and daughter worked. They had built a small building with a few guesthouses and a couple of shops in front of the bus stop. The bus stop saw only handful of buses every day, but it was at the center of the village and was the hangout for most people. And the daughter, who had studied till 9th class, spent her mornings hours teaching at the government primary school. They had little time to relax and kept hurrying from place to place, trying to address something or the other.
And then they had very little trust in people. The daughter came to our room sometime around 9pm, a few hours after we checked in, and asked that we pay the rent right away. ‘What’s the hurry, we will pay in the morning when we are leaving,’ said our driver Mangal. She gave an embarrassed smile and said ‘It is all the same, paying in the morning or now,’ and waited for the money. We cleared the bills quickly, not wanting to upset her. Mangal asked her to take a seat and chat for a while, but she hurried away saying that there is lot of work to do.
Next morning, we asked the daughter to make some mint tea for us. We then headed out to a nearby mountain pass for a short trek while Mangal stayed back. It was nearly 9am when we came back and were greeted by a laughing Mangal.
‘What happened?’ I asked out of curiosity.
‘It’s the daughter,’ he said, ‘The mother has gone to Puh town. The daughter kept asking me to pay for the mint tea we had in the morning. I told her to wait till you folks return, but she was worried that we might run away without paying for it.’
Funnier things were yet to come. We had a quick talk between us and decided to check out and continue on the road after freshening up. I went for a bath little later, and was disturbed by knocks on the bathroom door. It was the daughter again. It was time for her to head to school, but since our room was in the house, she could not leave us behind and go to work.
‘I am getting late,’ she kept shouting and banged the door once in a while! This was getting too much for me and I decided to ignore her, all the while listening to her shout. She almost pounced on me when I came out and hurled some more ‘I am already late, I will be in trouble now’ dialogues. Others were already driven away to the jeep when I was in the bathroom, and she was doing everything possible to throw me out as quickly as possible. She was not the kind who could be calmed down easily – she even followed me to the room and kept telling me to hurry up. It was hard for me not to laugh, but I managed a concerned look and asked her to wait for me to change.
When I eventually checked out, which I did as quickly as possible, she locked the house and swiftly ran towards the school. I was beginning to feel sorry for her at the end; she had simply taken up too many things beyond what she could handle.
Continued at Highlights of Kinnaur