I used to walk 33 km in less than 4 hours. Not just any road, but mountain roads. But that was long ago during my high school days.What made me possibly think that I could walk 14 km now without any fuss? I wasn’t thinking right. I’ve been incubated in the sloth of Delhi’s heat for ages. I’m soft and fragile as a chicken! You need time to build up your stamina. But sometimes the heart wouldn’t listen. It is stronger than reasoning.
- A guest house in Old Manali and the snow-covered mountains behind
- View of snow-capped Rohtang Pass on my way to Solang Nala
- Old Manali from the outskirts of the Village
- A narrow road towards Solang Nala
- Apple Orchrds at Solang Valley
- A cabin amidst Apple orchards and the Solang Valley below
- The old man lives alone at a cabbin in the Apple orchard
- Fruit sellers on their way to Solang Nala
- Houses near Solang Nala
When you are in Manali you are surrounded by deodars and canopied mountains that looked like postcards from Switzerland. You have to be there, on those mountains.
Another reason why I wanted to be there so bad was because of the tempting apple orchards. Manali to Solang Nala is nothing but acres and acres of apple farm. I have a weakness for succulent apples hanging off a tree. I wanted to try to live on one apple a day.
I woke up to a perfect day that looked as if nothing could possibly go wrong. I was wrong again. Snow covered mountains belie the brooding heat in the valley by day. Midway, I thought I had made a great blunder but when I reached there I forgot all about it.
The best map you can get on your travel is from people who was born, raised and had lived on that piece of land. I was instructed by the guest house owner sufficiently, not to get lost.
There’s a road heading towards Solang valley through Old Manali’s Manu temple. At the edge of the village a narrow footpath leads you into the woods. The forest is covered with young deodars and bushes. Warm morning light trickled trough the trees and painted the place like a scene from fairytale. Within half an hour the mountains began to turn towards Solang valley from Manali. Here, emerging from the deodar forest, you got the first glimpse of apple orchards. You could see the dale spread below; houses dotted among apple orchards.
Here I had the first hand experience of eating fresh plucked apples. It was absolute fun- as I thought it would be.
There was a lone cabin in an apple orchard. The road ended bluntly at the fence. While I was trying to figure out, a voice said, “Come this side.” I saw an old man seated under a shade. Only a loose frame of skin and bones remained. A pregnant cow mooed around him. A small pipe gushed out water from the earth and sloshed on a rock.
He asked me if I was hiking towards Solang Nala.
“At least 10-20 foreigners passed this place daily. I gave them direction,” he said
I asked if anyone had gone ahead.
“What’s the time now?”
11am.
“Too early for them…they wake up late,” he said. “Indians are lazy. All these time I had seen only few Indian tourists.”
He asked me if I wanted some water to drink. I showed him my ‘Rohtang’ bottle. He laughed.
“How much is that?”
Rs.20
I told him the irony of it. You could get fresh water at your doorstep and yet bottled waters are sold pricier than inDelhi.
“It’s the private company. It wasn’t like these before,” he said.
He washed his steel tumbler there on the gushing pipe and filled it to the brim.
“Best water for free. Straight from the mountains,” he said pointing towards the peak.
I drank it in a gulp.
I asked how far the mountain peak was from there.
“2km maybe…I’ve been there.”
I wanted to know if anyone lived nearby.
“There’s a restaurant owned by a Japanese guy maybe 10 minutes walk from here. He had lived here for more than 30years. He lives alone with some 30 dogs.”
Why would people want to go there?
“He sells drugs. He was arrested recently for it but they had to let him go because there was no one besides him to look after those dogs. And it was too much trouble for the police to take all of them in.”
Here in the rustic countryside, we have a story straight out ofHollywood.
In the mountain you meet people who think they are better off alone. The have remained, while the world moved on. The old man enrolled in the army as a teenager when the Sino-Indian war broke out in 1962. He came back and lived in Old Manali. The cabin was built as a rental guest house. Its last occupants were Korean couples who came there to stay for 3 months to participate in a mountain bike race. The old man still has some photos to remember by. Now he had lived in it alone for more than two years.
The place had crumbled. There nothing worth saving in the house except for a pair of bamboo chairs.
“My son does the running for me. If I go to town my eyes popped out, my nose gets blocked and I became mad,” he said.
He asked me if I have had my breakfast. I nodded.
“If you come back, I’ll cook some lunch for us,” he said invitingly. I craned my head into his kitchen. I saw a hearth at one corner, a packet of match box beside it, a pouch of sugar, and half bottle of mustard oil on the shelf. How much more does a man need?
He took me to a small knoll and we watched the valley unfold in front of us. He dissected the valley with his fingers, carving out a map for my journey. As I sauntered down the sloppy trail I could still hear him telling me to come back the same trail if I give up halfway. I looked back and saw the lean frame waving back to me. I presumed he had done that to any traveler who needed some help. And in return, maybe he needed some company.
And I wondered how many travelers he must have overseen from that place. The World kept changing, People came and moved on- but he refused to adapt to the changing world.
