A Voyage Through The Echoes — A Travelogue
By: Prakriti Writes
Tags: Travel Writing, Travelogue, Books, Storyofmylife, Storytelling

Chapter 1: THE JOURNEY BEGINS

On a fine winter day, my wish to travel to different regions of the country came true. I was not very hopeful about going on the tour — not because of my family, college or health, but because of a person. I had promised him that I would not go anywhere without him. The tour was a part of our academic curriculum, and it was compulsory for all students in my class. A part of me was super excited, as my parents had bought me a new camera and I was very excited I would get a chance to capture the beauty of unseen places and the people there. I was ready to learn about different places, their history and culture, apart from all that I would learn in college. Moreover, I was eager to leave behind the boring daily routine of college and hostel life, and wanted to live the life of a ‘wanderer’.

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The tour was to start on January 2, 2012, from the college. A day before that, I was still at home, trying to muster my guts to tell my parents that, yes, I wanted to go on the tour. Although they were also keen that I go, the cowardly part of me was undermining my enthusiasm and telling me not to go. However, the cosmos wanted something else.

A night before the tour, my father called the Dean of the college to inform him that I did not want to go for the tour. In turn, the Dean told my father, “The tour is compulsory. It’s not just for excursion but a part of the professional degree. If she can’t go this time, she has to go next year with a junior class.”

My parents gave me a convincing look; I was confused. I asked myself, “What am I doing? I’ve got a chance to live my dream — something that not everyone gets — but I’m behaving so stupidly.” After the call, my enthusiasm was boosted and I told my parents that I would go. They were satisfied at last; my father asked me to pack my bags, as we had to leave early next morning to get to the college. I could not sleep the whole night. Earlier, I had packed my bags, eatables, sleeping bag and everything else. Then, after getting into bed, I started thinking about all the places I was to visit.

We reached university in the afternoon. The bus was to leave in the evening. I still had some packing left. Our seniors instructed us to take some summer clothes, as we were to visit the coastal and southern Indian states, which were much warmer than the north even in extreme winter. Accordingly, I packed some summer clothes and slippers from my hostel room. Considering the cold weather of north India, I packed some sweaters and jackets as well. My mom helped me pack those things; I think she was more excited about the tour than I was. I checked my camera, added extra batteries and kept them safely in my handbag. Everything was done in a hurry, and I did not get enough time to organise my things properly.

Later, we reached Kranti Chowk (a name given to a junction near the campus health centre and the statue of Dr. Y.S. Parmar — the first Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh and the founder of our university). The tour bus was waiting there. My parents helped me load my baggage, and then I went inside. As soon I entered, my classmates began to bombard me with questions: “Why didn’t you want to join the tour?”; “Why did you come late?”; “What happened to you?”.

I was surprised that everyone knew about my situation and wondered who would have told them about it. I didn’t know how to answer their questions. I was about to say that I had been sick when mom, who was standing behind me, answered in a loud voice, “Dear, she was having a bad stomach.” What! I stared at my mother and whispered, “Why did you say that?” The whole bus burst out laughing; it was very embarrassing for me. I immediately gathered my handbag and sat in a corner seat. Meanwhile, mom surveyed the whole bus and chose a seat in the front, just behind the driver. I had to sit there to avoid any unnecessary arguments that would attract everybody’s attention again.

When mom was leaving, one of our classmates, Girish, wished her “Namaste” in a loud and excited tone, and tried to start a conversation. Again, everyone in the bus started to laugh. My mother was surprised. She looked at me but I was unable to explain, so I forced her to leave the bus in order to avoid any further embarrassment.

Actually, that boy had been interested in me and I used to avoid him. We had been good friends in the first year of college. Then, he suddenly proposed to me, which shocked me. I started to ignore him but he did not lose any chances to attract my attention. Sometimes, he would even try and act funny — like he did on the bus.

We started our journey in the late evening and travelled the whole night to reach Dehradun. We reached the Forest Research Institute (FRI) in Dehradun the next afternoon. We were tired, and just wanted to go to our rooms and rest. The rooms of a hostel on the FRI campus were allotted to us; we had to share the rooms in groups of 4 or 5. When we finally got our room, I went inside, threw my bag aside and jumped onto the bed.

The last few days had been very exhausting and I wanted to sleep endlessly. The day flew by and someone woke me up for dinner. Though I wanted to sleep more, I gathered all my strength to get up so that I could quell the groans from my stomach. I walked outside; the eating area was organised just beside our rooms. It looked like a feast as different stalls had been set up for different food items, and students were present along with the helpers and cooks. The place looked crowded. I took a plate and a glass and moved through the stalls. I searched for my gang of girlfriends, who were not to be seen in the crowd; not much could be seen in the faint light anyway. Finally, I settled down wherever I got space. After dinner, our teachers instructed us to go to bed, and get ready early the next morning.

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The next morning, we got ready quite early, as directed. To our surprise, we were far too early, as the teachers and FRI staff, who were to take us on the campus tour, were late. So, we had enough time to explore the campus by ourselves.

The institute was beautifully built, with art and architecture from colonial times. It was astonishing that it remained intact even after a century. Although the British may have introduced poverty, corruption and suffering to India, one can never dispute the fact that they had been perfect artisans; their farsightedness in terms of construction is laudable.

As we walked around the campus, someone told us that many Bollywood movies such as Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein, Krishna Cottage and so on, had been shot here. This was enough to get us all excited and we started posing for photographs. After about 3 hours, our teachers finally arrived and instructed us to note down everything that would be taught by the host faculty. We were taken to a museum-cum-exhibition room in one of their buildings. Each display in there was a perfect work of art. Whatever we had studied in our forestry textbooks was present there in the form of a model or painting. There were different displays for different disciplines, such as pathology, displaying insects and pests and the harm they cause; non-timber forest products, displaying different seeds, animal products, forest products, and even the hides of wild animals such as deer, sambar, tiger, bears, wolves, and the tusks of elephants (which were most likely installed during the British period). The whole museum hall was a place full of prized resources and each one of us was spellbound by the level of perfection and creative arrangement.

The faculty then took us to their woodwork stations. This part of the campus was typically Indian, and the workshops there gave a glimpse of the traditional wood industry in India. We saw the wood-seasoning platform, which was a big steam baking cabin-cum-oven in which the wooden planks were stocked so that they could be dried out completely by using intense heat. The procedure may look weird to a common person but it helps in removing every bit of moisture from inside the wood without burning; at the end of it, the wood does not shrink and is not infested by insects or pests thereafter. We sincerely wrote down every bit of information in our notepads. Although it was winter, the sun was beating down on us and making us feel hot and uncomfortable; it was made worse by the fact that we were wearing sweaters and jackets.

In a while, the information that had seemed interesting started to sound boring. Except for 2 or 3 students, the rest of us began to move away in search of a comfortable place to sit. At last, the lecture ended and we all fled to our rooms, much like how cattle disperse into the grassland when left loose. We were hungry and tired, so we immediately set upon the food placed outside the rooms. After lunch, we were instructed to get into the bus, as we had to visit another institute.

At the Water Conservation Institute in Dehradun, we saw exhibits depicting the works and success stories of the institute in and around the state. We walked out of the establishment after reading some of the stories. We were sitting outside the main door of the building, waiting for our teachers to come out, when Yeshi (one of my classmates, who was from Bhutan) decided to indulge in a prank. He went up to a scooter parked alongside the door, sat on the backseat and acted as if he were a girl; he wrapped a stole over his head like a veil and put his hand on another girl’s shoulder. His actions were hilarious; we captured the scene in our cameras and laughed heartily.

After an hour, our teachers finally came out. We were then taken to the hills of Garhwal. I had visited the place twice before, but had never fully observed its beauty. Though much of the hill station and its adjoining areas were similar to our place, what I found to be particularly interesting were the evergreen Juniper trees. No pines and deodars existed in this part of the Himalayas — a fact that intrigued me. Later, I researched on it and found out that Juniper trees had been introduced by the British.

An engineer from the Water Conservation Institute accompanied us to the hills and took us to a secluded area, from where we could see only the forest all around and a metalled road cutting through the edges of the mountain and the lush green foliage. Later, our bus stopped alongside a village. From there, we had to walk for around 5 km towards a catchment area where the local people, in collaboration with the institute, had constructed water tanks, canals and rain water harvesting structures in their fields. Bunds were also constructed from stones, along the gullies, to slow down the flow of running water.

As the sun began to set, cool breeze started flowing through the narrow clefts of the mountains. I was tired; the cold breeze made me shiver. I wanted to get into bed with a thick blanket, but the instructor was not moving from the site. Everyone started behaving as if they were bored of his lecture; he finally got the hint and told us to get back to the bus. That was good but the bus was a long way off.

The instructor started walking in the front, and everyone else followed him. The air became colder, and I started shivering. I was getting impatient, so I decided to walk faster; a few others did the same. The path seemed to go on and on. I kept walking faster but it didn’t prove to be enough. At one point, I literally ran ahead, much to the surprise of the others. As soon as I reached the bus, I jumped onto my seat and wrapped a thin scarf around myself. That was all I had; it was not enough to end the shivering but it gave me some comfort. When I reached the room, I put on a few sweaters, wrapped some blankets around myself, and went to sleep without even having dinner.

The next day, thankfully, I was feeling well. That day, we were to visit some adjoining tourist spots. After breakfast, we were taken to some interior parts of Garhwal and Kumaon. We visited a village named Sahasradhara, which was mostly inhabited by Tibetans. The villagers had painted their houses and monasteries beautifully with traditional art. There were many roadside stalls that displayed traditional Tibetan artefacts, jewellery and decorative items. I wanted to buy everything but could only afford a key ring that contained a rice grain, on which the artist wrote my name; it was astounding to watch the artist write the name on the grain with a minute brush.

After walking through the stalls and markets, we reached an open area. In one corner was a group of houses clustered together; the houses were painted in different colours. The other side had a concrete walkway that had staircases on the side; a rivulet flowed from the centre. Our teachers told us that the water in the rivulet carried natural minerals like sulphur, phosphorus and some trace amounts of mercury, as it flowed from the limestone-based stalactites and underground caves. Because of the presence of these elements, the rivulet was considered holy. There were exotic caves surrounding the place as well, but we could not visit them due to lack of time.

Then, we visited a beautiful waterfall that was a few kilometres away from Sahasradhara. The clean, blue water was tempting and we dipped our feet in it. We played in the water and had a great time taking photographs.

On the way back to Dehradun, we paid a visit to Kempty Fall. We spent some time there; some of us even went on a ride through a ropeway from the top of the waterfall. In the evening, we went to the marketplace at Mussoorie, a hill station located in the Shivalik Himalayas. We were allowed to wander around for 2 or 3 hours. The market was crowded; we could see tourists from different parts of India as well as from other countries. We started to talk about where we would go and what we would eat. The people I stayed with (Mami, from Mizoram, was my hostel mate and closest friend in the class; there were some other Northeasterners as well) were all non-vegetarian; they decided to go in search of non-veg food. I was the odd one out, so I had to find someone else to have dinner with. I told them that I would go with another group. I went to the marketplace alone in the search of the others. Soon, I found a group of girls who invited me to join them. We walked around Mall Road for some time and then went to a sweet shop, where we sampled different types of traditional sweets. I also bought a few necessary items from the market.

The Mall Road was very clean; there were shops on one side, while the other side faced the open valley albeit with a railing along the boundary. At the very start of the road was a beautifully carved wooden wall that was put up to welcome visitors. I was besotted with the beauty of the figurines that were carved on the wooden wall. There were many restaurants and fast food stalls there. We went to a dhaba and feasted on channa bhatura.

That night was our last in Dehradun, so we decided to have fun. Some of my classmates walked around the campus, while some played games in their rooms. Our group, made up of boys and girls from the northeast (Yeshi, Mami and others) and a few others decided to play cards in our room. I did not like to play cards but everyone convinced me to join in. We were playing a game when Girish opened the door and shouted, “P.S. Dawa is not your brother. He is your devar (brother-in-law) because you are my wife!” Then, he slammed the door shut and ran away. There was a weird silence for 2 minutes, and then everyone burst out laughing. I was confused and shocked. I did not know how to react, and asked everyone what had happened.

Mami said, “The boys had dared him to say those words to you. They were just playing.” Everyone else was still laughing, which annoyed me. I threw my cards down and went out of the room. People standing outside the room were talking about the incident, which made me angry. I went to a dark corner of the hostel, where no one could see me. I sat there for a while and then went for a walk along the silent pathway behind the hostel. The area looked very spooky but my anger overpowered my fear and I kept on walking. Then, I saw one of my classmates coming towards me. I stopped walking and turned around so that I could avoid any conversation. Luckily, he just walked past me without saying anything. I was relieved. I calmed down myself and then laughed at the situation. It was really funny how Girish had shouted and run away. After an hour or so, I went to my room. There was no one inside, so I went to sleep.

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The next day, we were to leave for Ambala Cantonment. We had enough time to pack our things. Nobody talked about the previous night’s incident; later, the boys apologised for upsetting me, but they also advised me to be cool about such silly things. I tried to ignore and forget what had happened.

We heard from our seniors that Dehradun market had many bookstores that sold materials related to our subject (forestry), which were otherwise not easily available, at very cheap prices. So, later that morning, we convinced our teachers to give us some time to explore the marketplace before leaving. They gave us only an hour, so we hurriedly rushed through the bookstores in Dispensary Road. There were many important books that I wanted to buy but I did not want to carry a heavy load at the same time. At last, I bought one important book and a travel diary to write down my travel experiences.

That afternoon, we left the city and started our journey to Ambala. On the way, we stopped at a few places, one of which was an artificial lake site created by a dam. There was a Forest Conservation Centre in the vicinity. We explored the place and had a very peaceful experience while watching different species of birds that hovered around the lake, I enjoyed photographing them. After an hour, we carried on with the journey. We stopped at the roadside, where some farmers had put up stalls to sell grapefruit. I was seeing the fruit for the first time, and was amazed by its gigantic size and the beautiful peach colour of its pulp. Mami said that the fruit was native to her place, and convinced me to buy a few. However, the fruit was sour and we could not digest it properly. As a result, we both caught a cold and cough immediately after eating the fruit. Although I recovered a while later, Mami was down with fever.

We reached Ambala Cantonment Railway station in the late evening. Our train was at midnight, so we had some time to explore the city. Unfortunately, Mami had a high fever and was shivering severely. She fainted and we helped her lie down on a bench in the waiting room. Many students put their blankets over her but she did not feel better. The teachers finally decided to take her to the hospital; they instructed the rest of us to stay in the railway station until they returned. We were now bound to be in the station, so I started to explore the shops inside. I saw a bookstore and went inside. There were books of all genres, and they all tempted me.

Meanwhile, a few of my classmates had followed me and we explored the store together. I was not sure whether I should buy a bigger book, because it would become harder to carry the load. Someone had once told me that we should have a few books for company while travelling long distances by train. Without thinking too much, I chose a spiritual book written in Hindi, titled Marne Ke Baad Humara Kya Hota Hai (‘What Happens To Us After We Die’). This was one of my favourite genres and I was ready to pay the price shown on the bill. To my surprise, the price I was charged was much less than the MRP on it. Later, I came to know that booksellers in the railway stations offer books at lesser prices than the original. I was elated to have a good book and, that too, at a lower price. Finally, Mami came back. She felt a little better but had not recovered fully, so the teachers decided to keep her with them until she regained her health. I was worried about her, and about myself as I was going to be alone for a long time.

That was my first time travelling by train. Our state of Himachal Pradesh does not have a good railway network, so many Himachalis have not even seen trains. I did not know how to board, where to sit or anything else about them. I asked my classmates, and they told me about the coaches, seat numbers, berths, types of people that we could encounter (especially robbers and thieves), toilets, food and so on that I could have during journey. I also came to know that all our tickets were held by Manoj, our class representative.

Finally, our train arrived and we were asked to sit according to our ticket numbers. Most of my classmates were not satisfied with that instruction, as everyone wanted to be with their group of friends — and that was not possible if we went by our ticket numbers, which were randomly distributed. Spending a long journey with unfamiliar mates was not an easy task. However, I did not care too much, as I was friendly with everyone and could easily adapt to any situation. Luckily, I got the top berth in the centre of the coach — the best location according to those who had travelled before. The journey was long, and I spent most of it reading the book.

We travelled through the night and the whole of the next day. The train stopped at various stations, one of which was Suratgarh. It was early morning when our train stopped there. I peeped out of the window. The station was covered with fog; people were walking around. A chai wallah came near my window, and I asked him for a cup. The hot tea was satisfying in that chilly morning. Meanwhile, a group of entertainers entered our coach — 2 children who were dressed as clowns and their mother, who played a khamaycha (a traditional Rajasthani musical instrument, like a violin). The mother played beautifully, while the children performed acrobatic stunts. I was saddened by their condition — at an age when they should have been in school, they had to earn to fill their stomachs. After they finished, people started giving them money. I had read somewhere that, when a child asks, one should give him food instead of money. So, I took out my bags of eatables, namkeen and sweets and gave them to the kids. They took them happily and then left the train.