A trav­el­ogue on Auli, Uttaran­chal, via Delhi, Dehradun, Rishikesh, Harid­war and Joshimath

An intro­duc­tion to speed dri­ving, Dilli ishtyle:
We made the mis­take of telling our Delhi cab fella that we had a train to catch. The jour­ney from the air­port to Old Delhi Rail­way sta­tion will remain imprinted in my mem­ory for­ever as the inno­v­a­tive guy found spaces where there weren’t any and bul­lied every­thing on the road. He raced like he was on an F1 track and nearly got us into a ditch a few times. After all his dare­devil tricks, he got us across to the sta­tion in about 45 min­utes, which I believe is a good time in peak hour traffic.

How I nearly spilled my guts in the Himalayas:

The bus jour­ney from Dehradun to Joshi­math was unfor­get­table. We got the last seats as we had not booked ear­lier. As it so hap­pened, half of Dehradun seemed to be headed to Joshi­math that day. We bumped up and down all the way, thanks to the awful seats until my innards protested loudly.

It was an 11 hour jour­ney. My head felt like it was being pounded by a ham­mer, while my back felt like it would never recover. Thank­fully, I hadn’t eaten much that morn­ing. Oth­er­wise, I was half expect­ing my guts to fall out all over the seats and onto aisle. Just like the old man in front of us.

Rid­ing up to Auli in a cable car (sup­pos­edly the longest in India):
The cable car ride from Joshi­math to Auli was so thrilling, I nearly tripped out of the car. They had the good sense to keep the door shut, of course.

It took us from the town of Joshi­math, upto the town of Auli. Because of the snow, the road had all but dis­ap­peared and this is the only way to com­mute. (I wish we had cable cars in Ban­ga­lore). As the car went higher, we were treated to some fab­u­lous views of snow cov­ered conif­er­ous trees and peaks all around. What a sight! I drank it all in greed­ily. The cable car deposited us at a tower, from where we then had to walk to another chair car that trans­ported us to the GMVN resort, where our 7 day ski­ing pro­gram was to be held.

Facts about ski­ing — Rum­ble and Tum­ble (or a taste of how Humpty Dumpty felt when he kept falling off the wall):

The first two days at the begin­ners’ slopes were the great­est fun as we kept falling and rolling down the hill every­time. And laugh­ing at each other. You can land up in the strangest posi­tions. Legs, hands, skis entwined in such a way that it takes some time to fig­ure out how to “unentwine!”

Walk like an Egypt­ian:
The ski boots were bulky and made me feel like I was doing a Michael Jack­son moon­walk in the for­ward direc­tion (and of course, the much clum­sier ver­sion)! The skis were heavy and kept slid­ing. When I com­plained loudly, the instruc­tor says, “Skiis are meant for slid­ing, Ani­taji.” I had to shut up, then.

Walk­ing in the snow proved to be a real chal­lenge. Actu­ally, you can’t really walk. It’s more a com­bi­na­tion of slip­ping and slid­ing and every­time I fell, it would take me a few years to get back on my feet again. In the end, I would just slide down the steps in the sit­ting posi­tion if I need to go down – that turned out to be the fastest way.

Hilly peo­ple are friend­lier…:
I’ve noticed this in the North East too. When in the hills of Arunachal Pradesh, the peo­ple seem more laid back and easy going. When you come down to the plains (like Delhi) there is a huge change in atti­tudes. Peo­ple are more aggres­sive, nosy and rude. The peo­ple at the Auli ski­ing place were really friendly and nice. Basic obser­va­tion: Peo­ple from hilly towns are gen­er­ally nicer (please note, obser­va­tion not based on data but on experience!).

Pre­cious peo­ple:
Ski­ing appar­ently is a pop­u­lar sport. I met some lovely folks:

Emma: A dancer from Wales, UK. A lovely girl who sings like a dream and has been trav­el­ing in India for more than 5 months. I’ve asked her to keep a jour­nal once she gets back from the 24 day Nepal trek she’s doing next as I’m sure it’ll make for inter­est­ing reading!

Romain: Her com­pan­ion, a French­man who lives in the UK. Both dancers and two of the most flex­i­ble peo­ple I have seen in a while. They brought a new mean­ing to the word ‘elas­tic­ity’ of the body! Some of the moves they demon­strated will def­i­nitely land me in hospital.

Grishma: The sweet girl from Mum­bai who would chat nine­teen to a dozen and avoided the slopes like plague after falling too often on the first two days! After that, she was a per­ma­nent fix­ture in front of the bukhari. She refused to go any­where else!

Rani: The Israeli guy who we so teased mer­ci­lessly regard­ing his name that he con­tem­plated chang­ing it while in India. He’s been trav­el­ing all over India and has seen more of it than prob­a­bly most of us have. When quizzed about his future plans, he comes up with his favourite response: I don’t know!

Tim: The Eng­lish­man from Birm­ing­ham who kept us opti­mistic every­day with his pre­dic­tions of “glo­ri­ous weather”. And we did actu­ally get some great weather!

The Ban­ga­lore Boys: Sharath and Uttam who are now plan­ning to get their own URL where they will host mainly cen­sored stuff. And Tim promises to be a daily visitor.

George and Mel: Who stuck to each other like glue dur­ing most of the trip. The fact that they’re still recently mar­ried might have some­thing to do with it. Mel also received an award for the most num­ber of tries at going up the slopes on the ski-lift. The poor girl didn’t have much success.

And all the oth­ers – Suruchi, Meeraj, Mayur, Ailush, Rakesh & Pooja, Gay­a­tri etc.

Hills = Increased appetite + more hot, steamy food!
The food at GMVN, Auli was nice and homely. After a morning’s ski­ing, we would head straight for the mess and not be dis­ap­pointed as the food is usu­ally hot and well pre­pared. I ate like a hog dur­ing our 7-day stay. I was also pretty hun­gry most of the time and I’ll blame it on the heights.

Refin­ing the art of time pass – Poker!

Rani taught every­one how to play poker so we pre­sume it’s an Israeli ver­sion. After that, there was no look­ing back. We would order some lemon tea and soup and spend hours in the very cold restau­rant. But thank­fully, they never threw us out. The last day was the best when Romain and I made a killing at the table at the expense of another Eng­lish­man called David. We’re so happy he joined in the game.

Our third most favourite place:
After the slopes and the can­teen was the bukhari – a fire­place that we would have prob­a­bly frozen to death with­out. In the evenings and nights, when it hit about –100 degree centi­grade (or there­abouts!), many of us would spend hours in front of it before hit­ting the cold beds!

Our very cool ski gurus:
The instruc­tors, Ajay, Vijayant, Mahesh, Seema etc. at the course were really good. As we strug­gled to get our snow plough right and not keel over in a most unflat­ter­ing man­ner, they would come ski­ing down the slopes from the top­most part with panache; swerve, curve around and come to a screech­ing halt just 2 inches before us. Oooh! We gaped in the meanwhile…

Women on top!
The ladies dorm actu­ally was a envied place as we had run­ning water, hot water brought in for us (when there was no elec­tric­ity), some­one to light our bukhari, some­one to serve us bed tea. The guys unfor­tu­nately suf­fered in their dorms, where even run­ning water had been cut off because of the snow block­ages in the pipes :) So we were a really pam­pered and lucky lot in comparison.

Every­one can sing:
The singing ses­sions in front of the fire were good fun. Rani turned out to be an accom­plished gui­tarist. A few great singers were dis­cov­ered in the process. The Ban­ga­lore Boys actu­ally car­ried around lyrics for songs so they looked like choir boys as they sang out from their sheets. Emma treated us to her lovely voice (if she wasn’t a dancer, she could prob­a­bly look at singing as her other option!) and Rani who strummed along and kept us entertained.

The slip­pery con­trap­tion that trans­ports you up the slopes:
<img src=http://photos4.flickr.com/6177663_5e5011fddb.jpg align=left alt=”[The strangest con­trap­tion, I tell you!]”>This cause a lot of grief and amuse­ment. Com­ing down the slopes was one thing. You ski some and slide down some. But going back up turned out to be another chal­lenge. At the bot­tom of the ski slopes is a con­trap­tion called the ski-lift. It’s a really strange device that has been invented and I am not sure whose bril­liant mind was respon­si­ble for this, but I must add that that who­ever was, obvi­ously did not know much about usability.

So this long han­dle with a rub­ber disc comes hurl­ing towards you. You need to get hold of that firmly, hang on to it with your dear life, make sure the skis are straight and let the con­trap­tion pull you up. Unfor­tu­nately, it turned out to be quite a pain for sev­eral of our mem­bers. The first attempts were espe­cially hilar­i­ous as peo­ple were falling all over the place! In fact, poor Mel even got an award later in the week for the most num­ber of unsuc­cess­ful tries at the ski-lift!

The sec­ond high­est peak in India — Nanda Devi:
The sec­ond high­est in the Indian sub-continent (7817 mtrs), tow­er­ing above the ski slopes. On the 4th day, we had really good weather when it was clearly vis­i­ble. Later, it went into hid­ing amongst the clouds and we were lucky if we could catch a glimpse.

The dogs of Auli:
I fell in love with Kallu, who was the cutest dog ever! Rambo (who earned his name because of his “don’t come into my ter­ri­tory, or I’ll kill you” atti­tude, towards other dogs) and a dozen oth­ers gave us com­pany on the slopes. They rolled in the snow like it was soft car­pet and not freez­ing cold. Kallu often came into the mess to beg for food once to often into the can­teen. And when he made those beau­ti­ful eyes at me, I couldn’t help but slip him a cha­p­atti or two.

Those Mut­ton momos:
The lit­tle town of Auli boasts of 3 restau­rants (besides the can­teen) and Tim men­tioned eat­ing momos at one of them so we decided to give it a try too. We had to give the guy a day’s advance notice so he could pro­cure the meat. George was very sus­pi­cious about what meat it was, but we decided to over­look the fact that it might not be mut­ton! The guy, who also lived in the shack, he called a restau­rant cooked them in rather large quan­ti­ties as about 15 of us cud­dled into his tiny shack. About 20 plates dis­ap­peared in no time. Yummy!

Reli­gion and adven­ture in the sleepy, peace­ful town of Rishikesh:
On the way back from Auli, we stoped at Rishikesh. We made a quick trip to the famous Lax­man Jhula and Muni-ki-Reti where the sad­hus are sup­posed to con­verge in large num­bers. Unfor­tu­nately, there were only a cou­ple. We did how­ever catch sight of a large num­ber of rafters. Reli­gion and adven­ture rests side by side on the river Ganges. We walked across the famous Lax­man Jhula and it’s rather scary when it moves from side to side. Just before the Jhula is a Ger­man Bak­ery filled with for­eign­ers (but I don’t think either the con­fec­tionary or the for­eign­ers were German!).

Where’s the reli­gion in Harid­war?
Noiser, uglier and def­i­nitely a more aggres­sive town than Rishikesh. Every­one wanted to sell you some­thing! From porters at the Rail­way Sta­tion to peo­ple on the road (rooms, tourist guide, reli­gious stuff). The atmos­phere in the town left me unim­pressed as did the peo­ple. We attended the evening aarti at the Ganges and were accosted with about a dozen men ask­ing for dona­tions (all for Ganga main­te­nance!). Per­haps they should just treat the river bet­ter and not pol­lute it so much.

The aarti turned out to be quite a long drawn affair. The money col­lect­ing human machines went around again (this time for the aarti fund!). Finally, at about 6.30 pm lots of flowers/coconuts/and other holy stuff was immersed in the river. This might be a part of the main­te­nance plan, but I’m not sure it’s doing the Ganges any good.

Peace­ful Dehdradun:
I’d def­i­nitely rate Ooty and Coorg higher than this town, espe­cially in terms of atmos­phere and clean­li­ness (a lot of plas­tic lit­tered every­where). And it was very crowded. The weather how­ever was really pleas­ant. And we passed some very pretty scenic sights on the road. We made a trip to a place called Sahasra Dhara, where thou­sands of stream con­verge mak­ing it some kind of a holy place, but that’s all we had time for.

The Plas­tic Men­ace:
The amount of plas­tic strewn around these small North Indian towns is alarm­ing and fright­en­ing. The place looks like it is clogged with plas­tic (side roads, drains, bins). I am not sure whether the peo­ple and the gov­ern­ment real­ize what they are doing to their nat­ural resources but it’s a sorry sight indeed.

A case of the Delhi Belly:
In Delhi, I had inten­tions of going to Paran­thawala Galli at Chandni Chowk after rec­om­men­da­tions from a Del­hi­ite I met in Auli. Unfor­tu­nately, I felt rather lost when I reached the place. And very alien. Do I imag­ine it or is it for real that peo­ple in Delhi stare a lot? In Jama Masjid, I felt like a hun­dred eyes were on me as I strolled down the road infested with beg­gars and peo­ple sell­ing the weird­est stuff. Delhi always makes me uncom­fort­able, and this time was no exception.

After a quick round of the Jama Masjid, we went across to CP instead and had a huge Chi­nese meal at a place called Chi­nese Room. Later in the evening, a pal from Delhi, Abhishek joined in and accom­pa­nied us for an inten­sive shop­ping round (Delhi Haat/Sarojini Nagar) and some inten­sive eat­ing — fudge, lemon tarts, apple pie, gol gap­pas (ooh, spicy!). Abhi seemed to have an immense appetite for food and I guess we very good com­pany for him!

Ban­ga­lore Blues:
Back in Ban­ga­lore, sud­denly, after Delhi wide and tree-lined roads, it’s sud­denly dif­fi­cult to drive in Bangalore’s pot­holed, speed­breaker infested nar­row lanes. The day after I landed up, it took me 2 and a half hours to get to office – a dis­tance of 12 kilo­me­tres. I nearly tore out my remain­ing hair in frus­tra­tion. My knee hurt like hell and I must have cursed every truck dri­ver (who had, by the way, decided to drive on the wrong side of the road!). I wished that we could trans­port all of Delhi’s nice roads here. Ah, I think we’d have the per­fect city then!

The Auli Album