The trip that almost didn't happen - Memoirs of Dalhousie

Banikhet and Chakki Bank - these names wouldn't have made sense a week ago. Now they bring memories of time spent well. The trip to Dalhousie would have never happened for more reasons than one. In fact, it was not even on our radar, when we first decided to plan a trip. It was just that somehow, one thing led to another in a way only nature can, and we found ourselves lapping up one breathtaking view after another in Dalhousie. Below is all the spice.....read on...

The script begins at...

Wednesday, 6th February - 1: 30 Pm - Vinay, Pooja, Priya and I step out of office for a post lunch break.

Wednesday, 6th February - 2: 00 Pm - Out of the blue, we decide that we should plan for a team offsite, the coming weekend. Vinay suggests Patnitop in Jammu as a possible option. Once back in office, we check out pictures of Patnitop on the net. The decision is an unanimous Yes.

Wednesday, 6th February - 5:00 Pm - We take a headcount of the interested people. Most have some or the other plan for the coming weekend. We decide to go ahead with the earlier plan as an unofficial excursion as opposed to a team offsite.

Wednesday, 6th February - 6:00 Pm - We book train tickets for nine (Uttar Sampark Kranti - Delhi to Udhampur).

Thursday, 7th February - 7:00 Pm - TV channels beam images of heavy snowfall in J&K. News is - road to Patnitop would be blocked for next few days. We make frantic phone calls to people, we know, in Jammu to check whether this is the case. Some of the nine ask for cancellation of train tickets. We plan to board the same train, but plan to stop on the way to Dalhousie in Himachal Pradesh, instead of proceeding to Jammu.

Friday, 8th February - 10:00 Am - Number shrinks from Nine to Seven as two drop out for personal reasons.

Friday, 8th February - 8:45 Pm - We are on our way to Dalhousie.

We (Pooja, Priya, Sireesh, Rajendra, Abhishek, Vinay and I) reached Chakki Bank railway station, in Pathankot, on Saturday morning at 5:00 in the morning.(~ 490 kms in roughly 8 hours). The city of Pathankot lies in the Gurdaspur district of Punjab and serves as a meeting point of the three nothern states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and J&K. There are two railway stations in Pathankot City- Pathankot railway station and the Chakki Bank railway station. Except for few trains most of the trains use the Chakki Bank railway station.

The name, Chakki Bank, I am assuming derives its name from the river Chakki flowing through Pathankot. Apparently, efforts are underway to rename Chakki Bank - check out this link - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/63159.cms - the trouble is - the article is dated June 2003. Lol.

Reaching Chakki Bank, we decided to hire a innova to take us to Dalhousie (70 kms). The other option was ofcourse to travel to the Pathankot railway station (4 kms) and then board a bus to Dalhousie. The cab driver offered to take us to Dalhousie at an off-season rate of 1800!! Further, he reasoned that since Dalhousie had received a major snowfall since last few days, the bus could take us only so far. Frankly, we didn't have an option. It was around 5:30 in the morning and we were stranded in almost pitch dark at the railway station. But the price - 1800 bucks seemed too steep. So we did the next best thing - we haggled our lives away, till he agreed to take us at off-season discounted rate of 1350 :P.

Hiring a cab, in hindsight, was the right choice, because no sooner did we hit the winding roads taking us uphill into Himachal Pradesh, a few of us developed some serious bowel problems. And we had to take a number of pit-stops or rather puke-stops to make us feel lighter. I cannot imagine a bus stopping that many number of times to accomodate our puking :) Neways, the cabbie also put a movie - Cheeni Kum - on a small video screen - for us to be entertained while we were on our way up. But it was the scenic beauty on offer that kept us captivated most of the time. The movie was no good anyway and in a way only gave us one more reason to look outside.

Our journey uphill was abruptly halted as the road got too dangerous for the innova - leaving us stranded almost 3 kms from Banikhet. The city of Banikhet lies in the Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh and from here the road bifurcates - one towards Dalhousie and the other towards Chamba. Banikhet is 7 kms from Dalhousie - meaning we were almost 10 kms away from Dalhousie. The cab driver nonchalantly informed us that we would have trek from here onwards!!

After an hour spent hoping that the road would miraculously get better, we decided to start walking towards Dalhousie. That started, what i would call the highlight of the trip. We partly walked and partly hitchhiked on 4x4's to Banikhet. We lunched at Banikhet before proceeding to trek the remaining 7 kms to Dalhousie.

Here's what the official website of Himachal Pradesh ( http://himachal.nic.in/mapbig.htm) has to say about Dalhousie -

Nestled on the spur at the western end of Dhauladhar, Dalhousie in its present shape was founded in 1850’s when the British acquired five hills from the ruler of the Chamba State for developing the area as a sanatorium. In 1853 the five hills of Kathalagh, Potreyn, Terah (now called Moti Tibba by the locals), Bakrota and Bhangora were acquired by the Govt. of India from his Highness the Raja of Chamba who was allowed a reeducation of Rs. 2000 from the annual tribute of Rs. 12,000 paid by him. Since the estate was founded in the time of Lord Dalhousie the sanatorium was recommended to be called “Dalhousie” by Sir Donald McLeod. You could also visit the website - (http://hpchamba.nic.in/destdalhousie.htm) for getting more travel-related information for Dalhousie.

If ever a written word could fail to do justice to the content - this is one such instance. I cannot possibly begin to explain what it felt like - looking at one breathtaking view after another while trekking up to Dalhousie. Hopefully, some visuals will try to put across the point i am trying to make -

Stranded

Try bettering this for a view

We walk a lonely road.....

sCARy

Picture Perfect

View from the hotel balcony

Hotel Himgiri

To tell you the truth, we were expecting to see a typical hill station. We were told that we would see British row houses nicely lined up. We also planned to visit Khajjiar (described as mini Switzerland), which is only 24 kms away from Dalhousie. But the snow fall changed all that. The roads to Khajjiar were snow-blocked and the British row houses disappeared in the pile of snow. Forget Khajjiar, i couldn't even tell u a thing or two about Dalhousie if you asked me. All we saw there was snow, snow and more snow. One of the locals told us that the last time Dalhousie received this kind of snowfall was in 1970's. (Ya the guy was old enough :)).

But, i couldn't have been happier the way the trip shaped up. We had a ball of a time trekking in snow - and the the whole experience was simply overwhelming. It was like walking in a never-ending white cave. Most travel sites would recommend May onwards as a suitable time to visit Dalhousie. If you are expecting a regular run-of -the-mill hillstation then may be they are right. Methinks, Feb is the time !!!

Looks like Patnitop in Jammu will have to wait :)