My brother Robi and mother had just landed up from Minneapolis on the 6th of February 2009 and my son Jishu was studying hard for his final year in school ; they felt that he needed seclusion, peace and quiet at home so that he could study. My wife Pallabi volunteered to stay back in order to look after him while he slogged, and me and my brother started knit-picking about where we should take off for in the Himalayas. The immediate and unanimous choice was the Manali-Leh highway, and we packed light as food and staying facilities were plenty en-route. Having got brand new tyres for my 8 year old Palio GTX 1.6, I felt that the car could take whatever the road would throw at it, but would not risk it beyond Manali. Beyond Manali it would have to be a jeep or SUV as the road would be boulder strewn and the low height of my car's undercarriage could prove disastrous like our Badrinath trip when the engine had been shook of it's mounting due to the rough roads. From Vasant Vihar we drove off to Connaught Place where we felt that a great breakfast place would be the Metropolitan Cafe in the centre of Pahargunj where a satisfying typical English breakfast complete with porridge, rashers , mashed potatoes with sausages and eggs could be got at affordable rates unlike the 5-star hotels which would take us to the cleaners for such. As usual the friendly waiters and kitchen staff never failed to satisfy and with orange juice, banana and yoghurt lassi and coffee in the end, we came out knowing that this late heavy brunch would allow us to avoid feeling hungry en-route. The other option for us would have been was to rely on Haryana's road side Dhabas to cater to our needs with their greasy potatoes stuffed bread with yoghurt as a side-dish.

The road to Himachal was the usual National Highway 1 which lead to the border from just behind the Red Fort leading to the Interstate Bus Terminus of Kashmiri Gate and then Burari which was the exit point for Delhi. Kundli, Samhalka and Sonepat followed uneventfully with my brother remarking how much building activity was going on around Sonepat. I dreaded the arrival of Panipat where humongous traffic jams awaited us but was pleasantly surprised to find the highway having been diverted over a series of flyovers which lasted till the end of the city. Soon we arrived at Kurukshetra and finally Ambala and the outskirts of Chandigarh meant we were soon to reach the Kalka border which would be a good diversion as Shimla would be a good place to sleep in our favourite hotel next to my friend Dominic Fernandes's house above Kali Bari Marg. Dominic was alerted about our arrival over the phone as he was teaching at his catering college in Kufri. Then followed a circuitous climb from Kalka's bazaar area to the mild climes of Simla over a series of switchbacks where we stopped to buy walnuts very cheaply as they were the variety which required the ministrations of a pin but of good fresh quality nevertheless. A horrible problem lay ahead in the form of a government dairy truck carrying milk cans driven by a totally drunk driver who caused the truck to sway all over the road causing the traffic ahead to scatter helter-skelter. I wondered how to alert the police as our mobile phones were beyond the reach of any Airtel tower ; and after many heart stopping moments the driver took a side road leading to some village and we drove on towards Shimla. Dominic met us just below the hotel and we all excitedly started to talk as my brother was meeting him after 24 years when we all shared a flat in Kashmir's capital, Srinagar. Arriving at our hotel we promised to met up for dinner at some nice restaurant and retired for our hotel rooms for a bath.

                                  Dominic arrived at exactly 7 p.m. and we walked or rather climbed towards the Mall where a nice restaurant called Baljees was suggested to us by Dominic where we tucked in heartily as this was the first meal after Pahargunj's Metropolitan Cafes's brunch. Next morning it was Dominic who woke us up as he wanted us to drive towards Kufri to see his college, but before that we would have to come over for breakfast at his home. We met his wife who we learned was from Kerala unlike Dominic who was from Goa but a naturalised Mumbaikar and now a Shimlaite if there is such a word !! Their children were very sweet and got us biscuits and tea as we gracefully refused breakfast having had a late dinner the night before. Then we walked towards Kaitho where my mother wished to see her late father's home which was their home after the Japanese invaded Burma causing the family of eleven individuals to walk the land route via Manipur to Chittangong's Cox Bazaar which was their original home. This was because the British convoy of trucks had taken off in the early morning deserting the unfortunate Indian civil servants. Chittagong which now is in Bangladesh was in the throes of the Great Famine of Bengal which is attributed by some due to supplies of rice from Burma drying up due to the Japanese invasion causing 1.5 to 2 million artisans to perish from 1943-44. Many Bengalis blame the British for an economic blockade as Bengal was in the forefront of the revolutionary movement against the British started off by the Chittagong armoury raid.

                                      Reaching Upper Kaitho we started asking for Prairie Lodge which my mother found with utter ease and we are now talking about a lady relocating her house after 67 years and her markers were simple as she could see the Annadale grounds from above where her house was situated. On the Annadale grounds is now situated the helicopter landing pad, and we knocked on the door of one of the flats where we were invited in for tea by an eighty year old Sardarji and his wife ho had a daughter who was a lecturer in the university of Shimla. Small talk about what the place held for the inhabitants and problems of procurement of water in summer months took place between us while my mother looked wistfully out of the home's rear window and reminisced the times when she was a little girl of ten who had to look after her brood of younger sisters and brothers who were six in number. My mother Bakul had two elder brothers Monu and Tunu who she called Monda and Tunda who never hung around the younger brood. The gang in Shimla constituted four sisters Mukul, Parul, and Putul and of course my mother Bakul, and three younger brothers Sudhir, Adhir and Sushil and they would roam around the hills of Shimla naming different locations in their own peculiar dialect of Chatgaiya from Chottogram which is very different from Bengali as spoken in West Bengal. My mother's memoirs of Shimla always started with the fragrance of long grained Basmati rice as they had all suffered eating a coarser and smelly version of rice which was available in famine stricken Chitagong. It was still a far cry from the famed jasmine rice of Burma that they would eat with their dried fish like Bombay Duck and prawn curry, but the Basmati rice brought cheer into the children's lives after the interim deprivation caused by their stay in East Bengal.

                                             Soon it was time to leave and we photographed the winding by-lanes of Shimla and walked through the old carriage track that went through woods past the Vice-Regal Lodge of Annadale. On reaching the Mall we were shown some remarkable structures like Dalziel House, Chelmsford Club and one building which Dominic claimed was the home of Rudyard Kipling. Another arresting feature of Shimla were of course the monkeys who were totally in charge of the place and hung around menacingly in little groups and would snatch food stuffs when desperate as per Dominic. Driving out of Shimla towards Kufri was encountering rutted and duty roads which showed how heavy commercial vehicles had torn the macadam to ribbons and we came across some lovely scenery and then soon we were in Kufri thirteen kms away from Shimla where my friend's government run catering institute was placed bang opposite a very well known landmark hotel The Oberoi Wildflower Hall which looked like a white Gothic structure. The Wildflower hall was once home to Lord Kitchner, the Commander-in -Chief of the British army in India and was a relic of the city's colonial past. Having seen the sights it was time to leave for Manali and bidding farewell to Dominic with a heavy heart as he was once part of our life in Kashmir we took off for Darlaghat which was a winding short cut to Manali via Bilaspur and Mandi instead of having to climb down to Kalka.

                                                              m    Soon we reached Bilaspur and then names of cities flew by in succession and I can remember a few like Ghagas, Sundernagar and then finally a picturesque town called Mandi which had old structures and temples arranged higgedly-piggedly in a jumble but still stayed attractive to the eye. Then came a tunnel which was the entry point for the kingdom of Kullu and this engineering marvel cut about 3 kms through the mountain and slowly the evening fading light gave rise to night and I could see my mother sleeping in the backseat and my brother snoring happily in the seat next to me. I was feeling sleepy already and being dark i could only sense and not see the valley enclosed by the Dahuladhar range and Pir Panjal and off we were through the Mandi-Larji gorge. A sign post said " Bhuntar 5 kms " and old memories came flooding through of another time when my wife and me had visited a paradise called Pulga in 1991. We two had packed hurriedly and left Delhi at 8 p.m. from the Interstate Bus Terminus at Kashmere Gate and had reached Bhuntar next day early morning and then took a local bus to Manikaran from where we trekked to Pulga and Kheerganga which was a Himalayan hideaway like no other. There we learned the true meaning of spending life with one another and trusting one other's actions. Seeing how easily I blended into the scenery, realisation dawned on her that her man was one who loved to spend time in peaceful environs such as these. For the first time my wife realised the real kind of man that she had decided to hitch her wagon to was not the usual career minded person whose life was planned like a graph that always pointed upwards. But unlike other weaker souls she did not get deterred by such revelations and with steely resolve and grit she decided in her mind's eye that she would make a hard working man out of me. On the other hand I knew of no such plans and after ten days of travelling in these beautiful hamlets ringed by snowy mountains we came back to Delhi and with a few friends in attendance got married. This place meant a lot to us as we always had talked of coming back to the beautiful village called Pulga but the drug trade and tales of disappearing tourists who were often found murdered deterred us from from doing so.

                              On reaching Bhuntar my car instead of following the road to Kullu and then Manali pointed at right angles towards Manikaran and started climbing a rough dirt track in the darkness which woke my brother up and he remarked that this did not look like the road to Manali. I told him exactly where I was going to and instead of stopping en-route at Kasol which has better resorts and is more aesthetically laid out, my mind was more set on eaching a destination which was connected to my past. So we reached Manikaran which used to look like a hovel with it's ramshackle hutments and now the hutments had become compact with other hovels having filled up the space. I searched out the best hotel away from the mess and just before the bus stand from where one used to cross a bridge to enter town where plonk in the centre lay a Sikh temple which is known as the Manikaran Gurdwara surrounded by the hovels and hutments which looked now like permanent structures. Manikaran is a pilgrimage centre for both Hindus and Sikhs and most of the temples are built around the hot springs. according to legend when Shiva and his consort were walking in the valley, Parvati dropped one of her ear-rings which was siezed by the serpent deity Shesha. Parvati on complaining to Shiva about the disappearing trick of Shesha, Shiva performed the cosmic dance, the Tandava which caused Shesha to shoot the jewel up in the air. Till the earthquake of 1905, jewels continued to be thrown up in the waters of Manikaran. Jewels or no jewels, I remember how my wife wept seeing the condition of the place as this was no Swiss paradise and this was no ordinary honeymoon in a resort.

                      I do not remember the name of the hotel but memories of a neat and clean hotel at Rs 500 a double room with a thin stream of hot water diverted from the hot springs with a distinct smell of sulphur from time to time. This hotel was just before the bus stand and on the extreme left just before the small restaurants and Dhabas of Manikaran came into view. Night was a visit to one such small eatery with hot lentils, Punjabi Kadhi and chapattis. Night had already set in and sleep came in waves of trees flashing by, different sights and sounds all from the travel of the day gone by. It was as if I was still in the moving car, but soon it was morning and I got up, took a bath and I was ready to explore the area from my past. Then I went out to find my friend Anil who was a blast from the past and ran a photography shop in Manikaran and loved to trek and show people from Delhi what a beautiful place they had. My brother Robi was not at all impressed with the place as he felt intimidated by the slum like feel of the surroundings but I knew I had to take him further by car up the valley to show him the real beauty of the Parvati valley. Anil hired a Tata Indica taxi for the drive from Manikaran to  Barshaini as I did not wish to take my car along the dirt track for the local bus that they had built since I had last visited in 1991 when it was a goat's track what is known in Indian places of pigrimage as a Che Footiya or a six-footer which describes the width of the track. I had heard of it but still the shock of seeing the hydro-dam project with it's party built dam wall plus  a large crane and construction equipment sheds below Barshaini was not lessened by the knowledge of what to expect. One could see the switchbacks leading to the southern side of the valley opposite Barshaini where three villages could be seen which were Kulga, Tulga and Pulga. Towering over the villages were the mountain ranges which was the path which I followed to Kheerganga, Tunda Bhuj, Mantalai lake finally to reach the 15,500 feet Pin Parvati pass to exit into the Pin valley.
                               Finally we decided to return to Manikaran as our mother was waiting in the hotel in deep sleep when we had left her, as we did not wish to disturb her having undergone a tiring journey the day before from Shimla. We hurriedly clicked pictures of the villages below from where we stood as our camera lenses could only capture hazy pictures of huts in the distance of which I knew some were built in the design of two storied chalets, even though of ramshackle built. Barshaini where we stood was an ugly dusty ramshackle hotch-potch of rooming houses meant to house the construction crew who were migrant labour. Anil our friend en-route to Manikaran told us of a burgeoning problem, that of  fresh Israeli conscripts just out  from the army whose only aim was to smoke hashish grown in the fields beyond Pulga and also indulge in the drug trade business by carrying off vast quantities of hashish by motorcycle to sell during the carnival season at Goa for a premium. Due to this lucrative cottage industry lots of foreigners had vanished in the Kullu area bringing police, detectives from investigative agencies of foreign countries thus bringing disrepute to the region. Coming down to Manikaran we packed our bags and our mother wondered where her adventurous sons had taken off for as the car still lay in the hotel compound. Driving off from Manikaran I could see in my car's rear-view  mirror the presiding peak of the village towering above like a deity. Soon we reached Bhuntar from where we joined the road to Kullu village for which we had to cross a bridge to the left and continue towards Manali.