Getting down at Shimla I felt like I had reached a place located inside a refrigerator arriving from Delhi that felt like the inside of an oven. In a span of nine hours which is the time it took the Volvo bus to travel from Delhi to Shimla I had swung from one extreme of weather to another. I waited for an hour for two more people who were arriving from Delhi in another bus. A cab was waiting for us to take to Mashobra which, I discovered, was at least sixteen kilometers away from Shimla. In the night traveling in the cab it felt like we were going deep inside some jungle. Mashobra turned out to be a small village that we passed through. The driver, Deep, informed us that our hostel was three more kilometers away. The road was bad and also tortuous. There was nothing around us except tall trees as the cab wound its way to the hostel. It was a good thing I had kept in touch with the local contact who had arranged the cab or I would never have found the hostel even in the day time. It was located at a place with a lovely name- Craigneno.
Only the other night at Delhi I had slept almost without any clothes on and here at Mashobra I was cursing myself for not bringing any woolens as I snuggled deeper into the warm blankets. My two roommates too felt the same as we tried to sleep after dinner. In all there were about thirty of us in the hostel which had two whole floors below the ground level opening on to another slope.
One thing I always try to do when I go to a new place is to check it out the sunrise. But at Mashobra it was so cold I could not get myself out of the bed so early. Later I saw all the trainees in the dining hall where everyone gathered for breakfast. Outside, it was beautiful with a fantastic view of rolling mountains and valleys carpeted by tall and majestic pine trees. In the distance I saw tiny villages clinging to the slopes of the hills. We could see Shimla from our hostel and if any of us had wings it would not have taken more than a minute to reach the place. Birdcalls echoed constantly as we made our way on the sloping path to the meeting hall of the training institute. It was a sunny start to the training I felt as I clicked at everything in sight, even the flowers that dotted the sides of the path. It wasn’t surprising that everyone had brought along cameras. The training institute itself was a picturesque cottage like building with a sloping roof.
The thirty trainees, including six of us from my state, were from almost all over the country including the Andamans. I was surprised to see Prasad who I had met four years ago at Port Blair. There were officers from W.Bengal, Bihar, UP, Jharkand, Gujarat, Assam, J&K, and of course, from Himachal Pradesh. I was surprised to see the hatted gentleman I had seen on the bus was a fellow trainee from Sikkim. The introductions over, the training began. It was a hectic schedule that we had in store for the next five days. On the first day, in the evening, I made the plan to go to Shimla to which my two room mates agreed. We got the same cab we had taken to reach Mashobra and for the next five days Deep’s cab ferried us to Shimla every evening. The next post will be all that I saw/did or did not see/do at Shimla.
Getting down at Shimla I felt like I had reached a place located inside a refrigerator arriving from Delhi that felt like the inside of an oven. In a span of nine hours which is the time it took the Volvo bus to travel from Delhi to Shimla I had swung from one extreme of weather to another. I waited for an hour for two more people who were arriving from Delhi in another bus. A cab was waiting for us to take to Mashobra which, I discovered, was at least sixteen kilometers away from Shimla. In the night traveling in the cab it felt like we were going deep inside some jungle. Mashobra turned out to be a small village that we passed through. The driver, Deep, informed us that our hostel was three more kilometers away. The road was bad and also tortuous. There was nothing around us except tall trees as the cab wound its way to the hostel. It was a good thing I had kept in touch with the local contact who had arranged the cab or I would never have found the hostel even in the day time. It was located at a place with a lovely name- Craigneno.
Only the other night at Delhi I had slept almost without any clothes on and here at Mashobra I was cursing myself for not bringing any woolens as I snuggled deeper into the warm blankets. My two roommates too felt the same as we tried to sleep after dinner. In all there were about thirty of us in the hostel which had two whole floors below the ground level opening on to another slope.
One thing I always try to do when I go to a new place is to check it out the sunrise. But at Mashobra it was so cold I could not get myself out of the bed so early. Later I saw all the trainees in the dining hall where everyone gathered for breakfast. Outside, it was beautiful with a fantastic view of rolling mountains and valleys carpeted by tall and majestic pine trees. In the distance I saw tiny villages clinging to the slopes of the hills. We could see Shimla from our hostel and if any of us had wings it would not have taken more than a minute to reach the place. Birdcalls echoed constantly as we made our way on the sloping path to the meeting hall of the training institute. It was a sunny start to the training I felt as I clicked at everything in sight, even the flowers that dotted the sides of the path. It wasn’t surprising that everyone had brought along cameras. The training institute itself was a picturesque cottage like building with a sloping roof.
The thirty trainees, including six of us from my state, were from almost all over the country including the Andamans. I was surprised to see Prasad who I had met four years ago at Port Blair. There were officers from W.Bengal, Bihar, UP, Jharkand, Gujarat, Assam, J&K, and of course, from Himachal Pradesh. I was surprised to see the hatted gentleman I had seen on the bus was a fellow trainee from Sikkim. The introductions over, the training began. It was a hectic schedule that we had in store for the next five days. On the first day, in the evening, I made the plan to go to Shimla to which my two room mates agreed. We got the same cab we had taken to reach Mashobra and for the next five days Deep’s cab ferried us to Shimla every evening. The next post will be all that I saw/did or did not see/do at Shimla.
2 comments:
Nice pics
Thanks, Hari. More to come in next posts.
Post a Comment