Returning to the road.
And now, I return to my world of Tramping around India. This time, I will take you to McLeod Ganj in Kangra District. I hope that you now understand why I have been writing posts about Kangra’s history.
Those days, I used to travel with an old friend, whom I shall refer to as KO. We’ve drifted apart since those innocent times, and we don’t travel together anymore. Much sadness has flowed beneath the bridge, but sometimes we must move on and leave sadness behind.
He and I live about twenty-five kilometers apart, and to be efficient, I spent the night at his house before we drove to McLeod Ganj. You can drive to McLeod Ganj in a day. The two towns are 475 kilometers apart, and to cover the distance in a day, you need to start driving around 5 am and keep going like an absolute maniac to arrive before the sun sets and darkness sets in. Few people like driving along the winding hill roads at night.
My approach is different: I believe the journey itself is the destination, and if you don’t enjoy the journey and take time to appreciate the surrounding landscape, you lose half the experience.
Controlling the stops.
The two of us left around 6:30 am to avoid heavy traffic. I remember the dense fog rolling in over the roads. We used to have dense fog in Delhi, which made driving difficult but added a weird, romantic charm to the city. When I returned to North India a little over a decade ago, I had resolved to photograph the Aravalli Forest in the fog. This project has yet to be born, along with my broader Aravalli Forest project. In the last decade, both the fog and the forest have receded, and if I don’t act soon, they will pass into mythological lore.
I was driving, so I controlled the stops. Since I drank a lot of water before leaving, I needed to offload the excess fluid a few times, so we pulled over on the side of the highway to water the plants.
Ham. Cheese. And excess fluid in the system.
We had packed a lot of ham-and-cheese sandwiches and coffee in a thermos. If you are dashing along the highway, with blind insanity filling your eyes, you will not experience the sheer pleasure of sitting on a highway milestone, sipping coffee and munching on ham-and-cheese sandwiches as the fog swirls around you and the trucks roar past, their acrid exhaust smoke leaving a slight tingling in your nose.
We stopped a few times on the highway to have chai. At one such dhaba stop (the sun had risen by then), I photographed this older lady walking along the road. I don’t know if life had fatigued her, or if she was disgruntled, or if she noticed me pointing my camera at her and was annoyed. Whatever the reason, she scowled at me, and I hurriedly packed up my camera and put it away before she marched up to me and pulled my ear, as if to treat me like an errant schoolboy.
I was also aware that if she pulled my ears, it would arouse the ire of the dhaba owner and the other patrons sipping their chai. Discretion, as they say, is sometimes the better path to walk, and angels (I am not an angel) do not walk the path of fools (I am not a fool either).
The Map.
Stealing a glass.
If you look at the map, you will notice that I have circled a place called ‘Karnal.’ We stopped at a famous dhaba here – the Jhil Mil Dhaba, where we ate pakoras and drank chai from glasses. Chai glasses are special. They are inexpensive and designed for chai. Nowadays, you may find yourself drinking masala chai out of a dhaba glass when you visit a five-star hotel in India. Remember, though, that sanitized masala chai cannot match the authentic experience of chai in a glass by the roadside. When you sanitize the experience, you rob it of its essential spiritual core.
We asked the Jhil Mil Dhaba if they’d sell us two glasses, but they refused. Miffed, we each stole a glass, planning to drink chai from it for the rest of the trip. I wore a jacket and slipped a glass into my pocket.
KO was a rather corpulent chap in those days, wearing baggy trousers and an equally baggy shirt. After he slid into the passenger seat, he urged me to drive 50 meters away from the dhaba, telling me he didn’t need a seat belt for that short drive. Then, he stretched his legs out in the car, reached into his underpants, and pulled out a glass, a complacent smirk spreading across his face. I don’t remember if I managed to maintain a poker face while waves of extreme disgust rose in me, threatening to engulf my soul. I refused to touch or drink from his glass, and nothing he could say about how his groin was just a natural part of his anatomy could convince me to use or touch that glass.
KO accidentally left his glass in my car when we returned to Delhi, and I held the glass with a tissue before disposing of it in a roadside bin.
Towards Kurukshetra.
After leaving Karnal, we turned left toward Kurukshetra, home to paddy fields, an engineering college, and sites made famous in the Mahabharata. I had visited Kurukshetra for a ceremony to honor my father and our ancestors’ souls. I remember asking myself why there was no version of the ‘Pitrapaksh’ for my mother, grandmother, etc. If you’d like to relive the stories of my wanderings in Kurukshetra, read the blog posts I am appending at the bottom of this post.
Crossing Patiala.
Then, we drove past Patiala. One of the Maharajas of Patiala was famous for his excesses, sexual and otherwise. I remembered Patiala because of its excellent pineapple pastry. Patiala is also my late mother-in-law’s hometown.
After that, we drove along a country road and passed an outlet called ‘Burger Singh.’ ‘Burger Singh’ became moderately successful and opened branches in Delhi-NCR. I don’t know whether the business still exists or has collapsed. I also don’t know whether his product is good or bad, never having had the courage to eat at his esteemed establishment.
Driving through Patiala was a nightmarish experience, with traffic worse than in Delhi or Gurgaon. Worse, the roads were little strips, intended for two lanes of scooters, not cars, jeeps, trucks, and buses. I refused to let the incessant, angry honking push me to drive any faster than 20 kmph. The people of the city believe that the only way to drive in that mad, bad traffic is to pretend they are all Formula One race car drivers.
Arriving at Ludhiana. Chiken tikka and beer!
We finally reached Ludhiana at about 7 pm. A four-hour journey took us almost 11 hours, but we did not care a hoot. The hotel did not look promising, but breakfast the next morning was fantastic. KO and I went out for dinner and had some of the best chicken tikka money can buy. Then, I bought a couple of beers from the market, guzzled them alone (KO is a teetotaler), and allowed the warm, fuzzy glow of alcohol to send me off into a blissful slumber.
I didn’t have a problem with insomnia that night, unlike ‘The Ancient Mariner’ after he shot the albatross. Gentle sleep slid into my soul.
Tomorrow would be another day!
I shot all these images with my Nikon F-75 camera, using Kodak Tri-X film.
