26 Dec 09
Goshaini, Kullu, HP
Silence, sometimes we can be led to believe, is an overpowering force. Rising from the first step we holler off the tarmac, stretched across the dust, the barrenness of altitude and a stream cut valley gloating below. If eyes could talk, this would be a parliamentary session on women rights in full blow.
The valley of Goshaini is somewhat like that overbearing force. It hits you with the humility of its virginity, lying nonchalant yet hustling up, dusting its backside the moment you set a bedazzled foot upon its naked green soil.
We took an unassuming hill for the acclimatization, the mule trail a slap upon the anti- skid neon streetlights. The flat bare rock face trying to void off the brown glass blades punctuating its breast.
The way up has always been a pedestrian's folklore. The panting march up, the soft breeze caressing the melody of a mellowed stream, the lone shepherd ruminating on his trademark
bidi atop a panoramic rock, the sheep scattered across the beauty in feeding, and the village womenfolk with fodder and wood spewing forth what technology resists.
The portrait of centuries robed in its scrubbed off colours yet reveling in its royalty on grayscale, the kid ordering along its cows in his worsted blue blazer, replete with a bow and arrow that actually works; the lone dog that gives you the silent company for a mile or two downhill, and the glistening snowtop bathing in twilight upon faraway hills.
The greased out rickety iron cage taking you across the greedy stream, and the pine cottage embracing in its scented womb.
To you, to me, and to the one house village atop that barren hill.
27 Dec 09
Goshaini- Sojha- Jailori Pass
In flora, of fauna are whatever riches mountains possess. Some take the dark alpine richness and stay put at the bottom of the valley. Some climb up and fritter away the pine needles for the darker, moot oak and rhododendron. The ones on the top are the sages, indifferent to this wealth and satiated with whatever crumb of grass happens to chance and camp across its path.
Sojha falls somewhere in the middle class of this segmentation. Steeped in pines and cloaked by
deodar staring stoned at the chilling stream, it just spares a glance for the rickety steel cage on six wheels called a bus around these parts, and settles back into drinking whatever little of the solar flares it gets; hoping the vehicles succeed in the treacherous strive to the top.
With Jailori Pass the battle is won, the valley overcome by a three sixty panorama of the valleys- Shimla on one and Kullu on the other; half of which is blessed by a frontal (full) sight of the
Dhauladhar, drunk and overburdened with the white sereneness of snow at this time of the year.
The battle, carried forward on foot f0r another couple of miles, leads us to a wide
upaat, or a high altitude grassland, with patches of snow vying for a glance or two away from the
Dhauladhar into its own humble abode; a slate temple looking furtively at a dried patch of small dug (partners in loneliness), watering hole for the cattle in the summers; being all monitored by
Raigarh, once a hunting shelter for the British, now licking its own bullet wounds, not game enough for a tale, but to a limerick or two they might relent.
To snow, the glistening white crunchy powder of peace.
28 Dec 09
Goshaini- Great Himalayan National Park
This one is a favourite. Small boards indicating single digit distances that promise a feast for the cornea, the dust overpowered by leaves dropped by trees tired of lugging all that weight through the autumn, the
Tirthan growing fiercer as one climbs up- the water frothing angrily over boulders that refuse to give it the right of way.
For company we three mortals have a party of five canines, from one year old restless spirit to a twenty year old maid, cursing its decision to tag along as she pants her way up and down the trail.
We cross the two mile motorable and three six house villages to the five miles of trekker's haven- a narrow trail with rickety wooden bridges, at each turn a waterfall, each one fiercer than the last, punctuating the oak leaves pattering beneath our soles and the roughed out barren hill across the river.
Three and a half miles further up leads us to the official entry of the park, the check post huts deserted for the clod and left to the mercy of any gust of wind strong enough to win over the rusted iron, hanging for life structures which would otherwise have been fondly called padlocks in their prime; the entry preceded by a decently big waterfall termed as Emily's, overlooked by a frail but wise deity, now retired in a twelve inch shrine.
As the water starts sounding real mean and the bridges get longer, the canines no longer lead us prefer to glance across their back after every dozen steps or so, the maid preferring to the sweep right after the first mile of the trek.
A mile or two further up and we chance upon an odd meadow here or there, we come to the first bunch of camping huts, desolate since the last summer.
We lunch exploring the graffiti now bound for the oblivion and ruminate for the magnitudeof abuses to be hurled upon the ever so graaious donors of chocolate and cookie wrappers, and settle down for a half hour nap in the the arms of silent bliss. The rest behind us, we retreat towards an equally beautiful reversal.
To the human- cum- canine spirit.
