Travels with S: Barog

It was September 2015. At the first opportunity provided by a long weekend, S and I escaped our dusty concrete Gurgaon jungle in search of some much-needed fresh mountain air.

A co-worker had recommended a hill station called Barog, tucked away in the depths of the Solan district of Himachal Pradesh. I had never heard of this place before.

And that was good enough for me.

We made reservations at a hilltop property called The Barog Heights, hired a car for the weekend and took off on a Friday morning armed with the bare essentials – Avomine for motion sickness in my case, and the DSLR camera in S’s.

On the way, we stopped only at a roadside dhaba for a breakfast of tea and steaming hot stuffed paranthas topped with a dollop of white butter. Thus, ensuring a nap for most of the journey (don’t be alarmed, we had a driver), we awoke some 5-6 hours later to find the car doing a near-vertical climb of a rather steep hill.

Perched atop this hill stood The Barog Heights, majestically overlooking the lush valley with blue mountains in the distance. We checked into our accommodation, a charming semi-circular room with floor-to-ceiling windows all around the curved portion, which was surrounded by trees offering glimpses of the mountains beyond.

After freshening up, we hurried to the viewing decks of the hotel which offered generous views of the landscape. Rejoicing in the pleasantly cool air that was gradually turning chilly as the evening wore on, we clicked away happily till the sun had set.

 

That evening, S informed me of his intention of waking up in the early hours of the morning to return to the viewing decks and capture the sunrise. I concurred with this plan, though with markedly less enthusiasm, and so we decided to turn in after an early dinner.

As promised, S woke me up a few minutes before 6 am the following morning. Humming happily, he proceeded to affix the monopod to the window as I stumbled sleepily around the room to get ready. When asked, he explained that he wanted to fix his phone to the monopod and capture a shot of the light moving over the landscape as the sun rose. “Then we can watch it at super-speed in hyper-lapse mode,” he proclaimed gleefully. Not really ready for this onslaught of tech terms at 6 in the morning, I uncharitably thought that this is what you get when you marry one of those annoying morning persons.

But as we stepped out onto the viewing decks, all sleep was forgotten. The hotel was covered in clouds moving across the hill. We watched fascinated as a thick carpet of white gradually covered everything in sight, and happily occupied ourselves with taking photographs.

Dawn breaks over Barog

Above the clouds

 

As the morning sun made its appearance, everything around us seemed to come to life. The hills seemed greener, the valley exuded warmth, the flowers seemed brighter, the monkeys came out to play.

“Wow that’s a lot of monkeys,” S pointed towards the trees just outside our room.

“Ummm.. honey, you do realise that the window is open…” I began.

“My phone!!” shouted S, taking off towards the hotel entrance at high speed.

I ran after him, and together we entered our room in nervous anticipation of the wreckage we expected to find.

But the room looked just as we had left it. The phone was still propped up on the open window, recording. The room service dishes of the previous night lay stacked in the corner, untouched. We breathed a sigh of relief. So, the monkeys hadn’t entered after all.

That’s when I noticed a trail of red drops leading from the table to the windows. My gaze followed the trail to a monkey sitting on the ledge right outside calmly tearing open a juice box that had been sitting on a table in our room when I last saw it. Later, the footage captured by the phone (in hyper-lapse mode) revealed a fleeting glimpse of the intruder as he entered our room in search of goods to purloin. We can only marvel that he did it so neatly, that those few drops of cranberry juice were the only evidence of his break-in.

We quickly locked the window and proceeded to formulate our next adventure. The monkeys outside were a bit of a distraction, as they ambled across the ledge and periodically peered in through the windows from different vantage points. Eventually, we had a plan in place.

We spent the morning in Kasauli, mostly ambling along winding mountain paths. We also visited a charming little bazaar and stopped at a hillside resort for refreshments and a view.

The picturesque Kasauli roads

Our next stop was the Barog railway station, from where we intended to take the Kalka-Shimla train to Dharampur – two stations away.

Barog is known for its picturesque railway station and its railway tunnel. According to legend, the hill station is named after one Col. Barog, who was involved in designing a railway tunnel near the station in 1903. He supervised the digging of the tunnel from both sides of the mountain. Unfortunately, he made a bit of an error in calculations, and the two sides of the tunnel did not meet in the middle. The British government fined him Re. 1. Unable to withstand the humiliation, Col. Barog committed suicide. He is said to have been buried near the incomplete tunnel and also to, quite understandably, haunt it.

Eventually, the railway tunnel, as originally intended, was completed under the supervision of Chief Engineer H.S. Harrington. Stretching over 1.1 km, it is known for being the straightest tunnel in the world.

But they still named the place after the guy who’d messed it up.

We returned from Kasauli, and the driver dropped us off near the station telling us that we would have to walk the last 500 metres. We set off along a vaguely discernible path meandering its way downhill till we reached a pretty little station done up in blue and red, featuring a narrow gauge railway.

Once the train pulled in, we boarded along with the rest of the passengers and found our way to our allotted seats. The locals seemed highly amused by the fact that we had actually booked tickets for this train and were intrigued by our monopod/selfie stick. After some thirty minutes of taking pictures and explaining ourselves to the curious locals, the Dharampur station loomed into view. We stood at the doorway, waiting for the train to stop.

It didn’t.

It only paused for some 3 seconds, and that too with no platform in sight! The locals assured us that this was where we had to get off. S was forced to act quickly and jumped off beside the tracks. I followed close behind, but he didn’t trust clumsy me to make the jump on my own and practically lifted me off the now-moving train as I squeaked in high-pitched protest.

There we stood among the tracks, taking a few seconds to recover from this rather unique experience of alighting from a train. I declared that I could have jumped off the train and landed safely on my own. “Yeah right, on your bum maybe,” S’s smirk said the words that he would never voice.

Our driver was waiting for us at the Dharampur station and ferried us back to Barog and our hotel. We sat on the decks for a round of hot pakodas and chai against the backdrop of pink skies lit by the glow of a setting sun.

Watching the sunset from the hotel viewing deck

There is nothing quite like the chill of the mountain air against your cheeks combined with the warmth of a cup of tea in your hands. Twilight eventually gave way to darkness, marking the end of the last day of our brief getaway. The city lights twinkled like stars in a black sky.

I looked across at S, happy just that he was there sharing these fleeting moments with me.

“So, I thought we’d take another crack at that sunrise tomorrow morning,” he said enthusiastically, launching into an explanation of why this was important and selling the morning wake-up for all it was worth.

Oh well. I’m still glad I married him.

Even if he is one of those annoying morning persons.