{"id":242,"date":"2007-12-09T04:53:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-09T04:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/indiatravelblogarun.wordpress.com\/2007\/12\/09\/the-first-morning-in-himachal\/"},"modified":"2007-12-09T04:53:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-09T04:53:00","slug":"first-morning-in-himachal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/first-morning-in-himachal.html","title":{"rendered":"The First Morning in Himachal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Travelling in Himachal in June – 2007
Shimla >> Manali >> Rohtang >> Chandratal >> Ki\/Kibber\/Tabo >> Kalpa >> Shimla
+ Previous: Loosing things during the journey<\/a>
+ Next: Giri River Camp, Himachal<\/a>
+ Go to beginning<\/a> of the story or index page<\/a><\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

Next morning, I had to get down from the bus at Solan – a little before Shimla, and head to a riverside camp owned by a friend, which was another hour’s drive away. “I will be picked up by someone at 5.30 at Solan by-pass”, he had told me. Unfortunately my bus had reached there much earlier – at 3.45 and I had to wait till 5.15 in a nondescript place which, to some extent resembled a bus-stand but did not have a proper place to sit. Being up north, dawn broke earlier than I expected and people started moving up and down the streets a little before it was still well lit.<\/p>\n

I started a conversation with the driver the moment I was in the car. He lived in a small village near the river camp with his family and they depended primarily on agriculture. Working as a part time driver earned him some additional income. He said “we are eleven people in the family”. Most of the houses in the region had a lot of people living under one roof. I asked the same question to another guy later on, and he did not have an answer ready. “Bahut log hein”<\/i> – There are many, he said without bothering to get a count! Despite living in the hills and having to do some tough physical labour, most of the locals did not look very strong, but seemed a bit frail instead. Neither were they talkative, smiling and enthusiastic lot that you normally get to meet in the high hills. <\/p>\n

We drove through winding hilly roads which offered vistas of the valley below. “You must be finding Himachal very beautiful”, said the drive, without really giving me a choice of an answer. I nodded. He suddenly stopped the car at a place nowhere, overlooking a valley and said – “spend some time and have a look at those beautiful hills”. It was very unlike any driver and I got down from the car, surprised. His motto became clear when he walked a little farther to quickly relieve himself and got back to continue the journey! We deviated from the main road, crossed a river on a narrow bridge and continued on a road that got narrower, lost its tarmac, and eventually terminated at a river-front. He halted and said “you need to walk on this track along the river bed”, and we parted there.<\/p>\n

Continued at Giri River Camp, Himachal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Travelling in Himachal in June – 2007Shimla >> Manali >> Rohtang >> Chandratal >> Ki\/Kibber\/Tabo >> Kalpa >> Shimla+ Previous: Loosing things during the journey+ Next: Giri River Camp, Himachal+ Go to beginning of the story or index page Next morning, I had to get down from the bus at Solan – a little before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-himalayas","category-mountains"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xrJt-3U","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3747,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions\/3747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}