The Icing on the Cake
‘If we get to see some snowfall in the evening, that would be the icing on the cake,’ these were the exact words. Maybe not, but whatever it was, it was very close. And, as Bhide would put it succinctly, “Emotion samjho yaar”.
The bottom line is ‘We were having some serious fun’. Pine trees laden with snow and the whiff of a breeze spreading part of its whiteness to you as you pass by, pristine white slopes beckoning you as you look up, and the green-interspersed-in-white fir-dotted slopes waving goodbye as you look down. We were in Kufri, a place where we were not meant to be, and a last-minute compromise. Narkanda is where we were headed to. And the ‘we’ here is a curious mix of people. Because, for once, bachelors were outnumbered by married folks. Nity & family, Shourya & family, KD & Gargi, and Dipanjan, bhide, rahul and me without families. Shourya’s personal connection had got us a mini-bus, a mini-bus of the comes-with-a-cleaner type, a mini-bus of the pushback seats type, and basically a mini-bus of the luxury type.
The plan was very simple. Leave Delhi at 5p.m, Reach Barog at 11p.m, check in at Pinewood, leave Barog at 5 a.m., reach Narkanda by 9 a.m., ski on Saturday, trek to Hatu on Sunday and drag ourselves back to delhi at some ungodly hour on Sunday night. Things were looking alright. The road to narkanda had been cleared of snow, there was brilliant sunshine, and the moods were up. From here, there was only way for things to go; and that way was down. We got stuck in an endless crawl in Delhi and by the time we reached Karnal, it was obvious that the night halt idea had to be thrown out of the window. Of course, the bus implied certain advantages. We could have some fun inside with no consideration of the bus-truck-honking-world outside those curtained windows. And fun of the non-serious kind followed by fun of the serious kind. So, we had the usual rounds of DumbC and the routine leg-pulling. After dinner, with food in and lights out, the focus shifted to serious discussional-type stuff that does not quite gel well in a travelogue and so I will give it a skip.
By the time, we decided to retire, Shimla was beckoning us. It was around 4 when we had our first skid. Frost on the road, a plains-bred driver on the wheel and darkness overall. Perfect recipe for a skid. However, before your adrenaline level rushes high, let me dampen your spirit a bit. The Kalka-Shimla highway is not your run-of-the-mill hill road, rather it is a 2-laned highway with railings. And so, only a really innovative driver can guide (rather misguide) a bus down the hill. And, as I have said, since we were saddled with a simple-minded plain-bred driver, he simply switched the engine off, took a deep breath, collected his wits, restarted and slowly got us back on track. And, most of us missed the fun, partly because the curtains were drawn and mainly because most were fast asleep (My insomnia allowed me to recount this incident).
And then soon enough, it was time for the second and defining skid of the trip, the one that defined our destination. This one caught everybody awake for we were foretold by the locales that the road was blocked. The protection offered by the railings handed us the luxury to go as far as possible which, as it turned out, was not much. The black ice was again the culprit, only this time, it was very clear that there was only one way out of it, and that way was back. What happened was again a typical skid-in-black-ice, the type where the wheel close to the edge skids, and the instinct-driven driver steers towards the protected side, which in turn aggravates the situation. However, logic soon took over instinct and the driver released the pedals grounding the bus. Then, followed the fear-coated excitement of getting the bus out of the mess after getting the passengers out and after an hour or so, we parked ourselves in a hotel just outside Shimla.
That was probably the lowest point in the trip. And from here, the only way things could go was up. Chakrata had taught me something; snow and friends are all you need on a hill station to have a good time. And so, we were on to scale a snow-covered hillock near the hotel. 2 hours and a good amount of frosted-sweat and adrenaline-laced-climbing later, we landed back at the hotel to get the news. The road to Kufri had opened and soon enough we were Kufri-bound.
This is when the cake starts to bake; for Kufri, unlike earlier when I had visited it, was breath-taking. The pine trees were always there, but it was the phenomenal snow that gave it the Swiss-look (The famed Swiss-look, the greenery near the road, the snow-laden trees at the sides and the snow covered peaks out there in the distance; it is something that every Indian is aware of, even if like me, he has not visited the Swiss Alps). The ski slope at Kufri was a mitigated disaster; the lack of a real slope for skiing mitigated by the white blanket of snow shrouding everything. A few disappointing skiing attempts and the inevitable snow-fights later, we were back to the bus but glowing in the memory of the long walk in snow, the brilliant white slopes, the interplay of green and white on the pine trees, and the return-to-child exhilaration that snow still brings out of us.
The next day was spent in the standard tourist circuit; the Church, the Mall Road, the pics in Himachali Dress at the Ridge, and the walk to Jhakoo peak. On second thoughts, Jhakhoo was a little out of the tourist circuit simply because of the snow that had closed the road. Jhakoo provided some really cheap thrills to Shourya, Bhide and Nity in form of a snow-slide down the steep road for the measly price of Rs 10. I restricted myself to the free thrill of combination-of-ice-skating-and-slipping down the slope.
Soon enough, it was back to the long road to Delhi with the typical DumbC accompanied by some atypical games like Matthew-Matthew-Mark-Mark. Of course there was this game of cakes-n-pastries-induced-pukomania on the way back but let us leave that incident for some later time, when people would have forgotten about my pastries-khane-ke-sau-fayede speech, lest I get bumps for it. The end. Yes, this is the end. And of course, we did get snowflakes but not a full-fledged snowfall. So, the icing eluded us and as for the shimla-cake, the less that is said abt it, the better it is.