Colourful Adventures in the Mountains

Its that time of the year again, when Delhi is in bloom. A slight nip remains in the air in the early morning though the days are getting pretty hot. The scorching summers will be here soon and you desperately want to linger in this moment just a bit more.

To add to the flowers, the festival of colours also comes along around this time. That magical festival which binds people from all walks of life, filmstars to rickshawpullers, politicians to school children to even grandmas who lose their permanent frowns for just this day. since no deity worship is required, nor any rituals to be followed Holi is almost secular in nature allowing other communities to also join in the fun.

All my life I have been in Delhi during this festival apart from two occassions when I was in Kolkata and Mumbai. This year the plan was to escape to the remote hills and see a different version.

Since its the end of the month and not to mention end of the financial year, the plan was to do a SSB trip, i.e. a Shoe String Budget trip. As per SSB rules the car was not to be used and we hopped on to an Uttranchal Transport bus, a rickety thing which made noises like an out of tune but all playing at the same time orchestra. click clack, tick tock, dhak dhak, phish phash it went, then as the bus gathered speed it became click tick dhak phish......phaaaash.

The conductor informed that the destination we seeked was a 12 hour journey away, We settled down with biscuits, chips, cakes and loads of water for drinking and other unmentionables. The bus took ages to get out of NCR stuck between rickshaws, tractors, trucks, cars and bulls. Finally around 11 pm it stopped for a dinner break at a place which can be best described as a primitive Drive in Food Court. An open space with vehicle parking in the center surrounded by food stalls on three sides and a rudimentary loo in a corner. The stalls sold eggs, oranges and orange juice, dhaba food to chilled beer. We were groggy with sleep by then and ordered and ate up the first thing we saw on the menu.

Back to the bus and the orchestra resumed, the bus halting at every conceivable place to either pick up people or drop or generally because the driver felt like. Early morning saw us in the foothills and the the bus stopped yet again at an ancient looking stall for breakfast. The passengers all but us trooped out and quickly gobbled up pakoras, chaat (early in the morning!) and lots of hot tea as I sat wondering if they were a special breed with just a one way flow. None seemed to need the services of a washroom. A few who bothered to brush their teeth did it right there standing next to the bus and then quickly proceeded to chomp their way through the deep fried in rancid oil offerings of the stall.

The bus moved again and we started climbing the mountains. It was marvelous to see the driver negotiate the neandrathal vehicle on the steep cuts and curves. The view was quickly changing from urban to the natural untamed beauty of the Himalayas. After Champawat where the bus stopped yet again to allow people to buy sweets, the road became very narrow with landslide zones every hundred meters or so, at places parts of the road were just not there and the bus had to almost cling to the mountainside inorder to circumnavigate the holes.

Green peaks on all sides steep sheer drops of a few hundred feets, an ever narrowing road and the realisation that the the driver was getting high on something (after all Holi Hai!) made the ride exhilarating, life threatening and fun at the same time.

Finallt 16 hours after leaving Delhi, we set our eyes on the hill town of Pithoragarh, the furthest district of Uttranchal which touches Nepal and is as yet untouched by chole bature/pizza tourism.

We got off the bus and thats when the real adventure began....