January 10 2006

Beauty and the Beast

H likes just one kind of holidays, going to the mountains and walking there a lot. On our recent trip to Hadsar, we walked 12 kilometers evey day, for three days.

I try to protest initially. I crib that I want a resort kind of a holiday once in a while but in the end I almost always find myself on the train/bus with him. I have to, because he has shown a slight tendency to take the train/bus without me. Last year, when I was still employed in one of my jobs from hell, I fell ill just before a vacation and H took the train/bus alone! All I can say is, he has paid for it many times over. I will not say more because H has a tendency to check my blog occasionally.

So, this time when we took the train first and then various buses, soon we found ourselves looking at a different kind of a high-rise. Lovely, is it not? But you see, I am showing you only a partial picture. Want to see the complete one? Brace yourself and scroll below.

This is how the approach to the Pathankot station looks like. When I clicked my camera, H almost fell off the train. He saked, “Why on earth are you taking this picture?” I told him that because in my own lazy way, I care just a little bit about this earth.

We later walked half way through the Mani Mahesh pilgrimage route that starts at Hadsar. It is a 13 kilometer uphill walking route (one can take a pony too) and we walked 6 km up and 6 km down on the same day. Some of the most beautiful pictures were taken on this route. Those of you who have seen my previous post of this trip and admired the frozen waterfall, it was on the Mani mahesh route. Below is another pleasing view.

And this is not such a pleasing one after all. The pilgrims and others have littered all along the way with abandon- ##@&#%#@#.

And this one is a scene from Bharmour. Lift your head up and you see lofty peaks and snow somewhere high up and look down and you see this. @#$%%**@## is all I can say.

I had a discussion about the same on the India Mike forum. I said, H and I would take a spare bag (as big as we can manage) and then bring back some of the plastic from the routes we visit in the future. But I am stuck with what to do with it after that? Throw it in the heap above at Bharmour? Even if I bring it all the way to Delhi, what do we do? What happens to the Bharmour heap? I have no answers.