Country Roads

We stood at a teashop in the small town of Pinjore, near Kalka, in the state of Haryana. Spread out on the bonnet of our car (an Ambassador that wouldn’t be ten again) was a map of Himachal Pradesh. The Kalka-Shimla road was clearly marked on the map, along with places en route. Our destination, Kiarighat, was clearly marked too and, driving at a comfortable speed, we could be there in just under two and a half hours. But something else on the map caught our eye. A thin blue line (blue for an all-weather road) running at right angles to the Kalka-Shimla road and cutting straight as a die from Pinjore to Nalagarh to Swarghat, Bilaspur, Mandi and Kulu. We looked at each other. Wasn’t Kulu close to Manali, the hill resort that everyone was raving about? We’d never seen Manali but we’d been to Kiarighat several times before, on our way to Shimla. So why the Kalka-Shimla road again, why not this new road, all the way to Manali?

Be it said in our defence that we did check with a few locals and they all said the road was fine. So we dumped our plans for Kiarighat, filled up at the nearest petrol station and headed out for Nalagarh.

Whoever said it was a fine road was, quite simply, talking through his hat. For much of the way, what was once a road had been pummeled out of shape by the rains and passing trucks. Beyond Nalagarh, a tributary of the Satluj had swept away the metalled part altogether and there was no choice but to bump along from boulder to boulder. By a sheer miracle the axle held out and we emerged at the other end with the car still in one piece. People stared at us. “It’s been months since a car came this way,” said a strapping young Sikh. “Even trucks avoid it. But why didn’t you take the main road?”

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Why indeed? We had no answer and, through long practice, have learnt to avoid similar, awkward questions. And then there was the time when we took a trip to the foothill resort of Morni, in Haryana. The day was young and Morni did not exactly prove to be an extensive place. Having seen all there was to see, we decided to pep up things by taking a different road back. It was an intriguing looking road, looping down a densely wooded hillside. It was wide too, with a smooth, if kutcha surface. “That’s the way I go home to Panchkula,” said the caretaker at the Tourist Bungalow.

“Saves me 15 km, if not more.” Since we were bound for Panchkula too, it seemed like a very useful tip. Till we reached about half-way, that is, for suddenly the road shrank in size, pinched to almost half its width. The smooth surface grew slushy with water from a nearby spring. Deeply rutted too. And we realized, a shade too late, that the caretaker probably rode a two-wheeler!

But there was no going back, so we went ahead, hugging the hillside on the left and pretending not to see the earth crumbling on the right. At the umpteenth bend we ran into two young men atop a motorbike and they were thoroughly startled to see us. “How on earth did you get here?” they asked in utter disbelief. “There’s virtually no road between here and Morni!” We came to the point. “How about the road between here and Panchkula?” “Oh, that’s still there,” came the reply, flooding our souls with relief. They gave us a sip of tea and waved us on. Panchkula was barely half an hour away and the road opened out its heart to us as we rolled along…

People going from Dharamsala to Chamba normally take the highway via Chakki, a small town on a busy crossroads. But we’d have none of it, for hadn’t someone mentioned another little-known country road that went past mustard fields and mountain villages, to join its metalled counterpart at Bakloh and on to Chamba? The traffic on this particular road was negligible too, he had said. And as time was to prove, he was on the dot! In all the 40 odd km comprising the said road, we saw not a soul. But anthills there were a-plenty, some as tall as a three-storeyed house back in Delhi. Weird formations, standing guard over the desolation of the landscape. We took comfort in the purring of the engine, though sometimes the Ambassador coughed and then we swore never again to buy a car more than five years old and never again to take a road that had not been certified ‘Negotiable’.

But lessons are easily forgotten. Our second jalopy, like the first, was in her early teens. Temperamental too, for come summer and she wouldn’t run for more than half an hour before beginning to gurgle menacingly at the front end. Naturally we had to stop. People thought us wonky not to change the car, little knowing that our confidence stemmed from a thick coil of towing rope, permanently stacked away in the boot.

Country roads make some of the tallest tales. Once two youngsters from our family took the kutcha road from Mashobra near Shimla, to the sculpture springs at Tattapani, some 30 km away. Few people ever braved that densely wooded road, but our youngsters hired bikes, took a packed lunch and off they went.

The way out was great fun, the sun shining bright and clear and the wind whistling past as they raced down, all the way to Tattapani. But a wash at the hot springs, followed by a hearty lunch made them so drowsy, they slept on the grass till the sun was touching the tips of the pine trees. To their dismay, huge black clouds had piled up in the east and the wind blew sharp and cold. The boys grabbed their bikes and made for home, only to discover an unalterable fact: no road can be downhill both ways. Home was a long, hard climb away. They had no lamps on their bikes and with all that cloud cover, couldn’t bank on more than one hour of natural light.

That one hour and more were spent lugging the bikes uphill. A sharp drizzle soaked the boys through, while the mud and stones underfoot added their bit by turning into ankle-deep slush. The wheel picked up the slush and plastered it neatly under the mudguards, layer upon layer, slowly bringing the bikes to a grinding halt. Every 200 yards or so, the boys had to stop and remove the slush with a spanner. Since they had only one spanner between them, progress was slow. Darkness fell and, out in the wilds, with no human habitation in sight, it was very lonesome indeed.

Suddenly they heard a rustling sound on the hill to the left and a blur of white, too large to be a dog, leapt on to the road, not 10 feet away. Even in the dark, some of the rosettes on its back were distinguishable. The boys froze. But one look at them and the leopard bounded off, crashing away into the forest cover on the other side of the road. When the boys had recovered, they began to yell at the top of their lungs, as the only means within their power of keeping wild animals at bay. Gasping for breath, shouting through pouring rain, they lumbered on, all but ready to drop from sheer fatigue when they saw a light among the trees. A little later they fell into the arms of a forest guard who was spending the night in a shelter meant for that purpose and had a roaring fire going.

Many years have since gone by. Now the same road has a smooth, tarred surface that will take you places, sans adventures you had not bargained for.