A Trek down the road

Date-22/06/2019

It’s another beautiful morning in Solan. It’s our Second day here and its 10:00 in the morning and we are ready to get out of our Hotel. We booked a hotel onto the main road of the city. It’s a perfect place to stay as it’s near the main hub of the city, just a 5 min walk down the hill and you are into the main Hustle and bustle of the city. By 10:15 am we are out of the hotel and marching on the Mall road of Solan. It is the main hub of the Solan.

The road is crowded and one can see the locals marching towards their work and tourists seeking the views. The weather is pleasant today, although it’s sunny today but it didn’t bother us much.  As discussed earlier we are in Solan only for the day and will be going to explore some local places. But most importantly a good day can’t start without good food. So we are here at a local restaurant to feed us before we start our today’s journey. The smooth flowing of the cool breeze stirring onto the body demands for a chai (Tea) along with a parantha (parantha is a type of bread or roti stuffed with potatoes, onions, cheese etc.), that was our breakfast and it’s time to start moving. Try not to eat too much when you have to cover more distance on foot. We are out of the restaurant and now heading towards the main market, exploring local area is always a good idea. If you ever go somewhere don’t be reserved to see only the historic or famous places, try to go through the local area. It’s been 20 minutes or so since I am exploring the market and I have already come through so many different things such as spices, handicrafts and also the natives performing different dances, these things might look small but these are things that take you close to their culture and how they earn their livelihood. After spending a couple of hours of going through the local area it’s time to move on the next thing. The next place I am going is a mountain or shall I say a small hill where we can find different species of flowers. The hill is downwards to the area named Sunny side and from main road it will take around 25 minutes to reach there. You can reach there only by foot. Its 2:30 in the noon and my friends are calling for  food, but I have been drinking water constantly today so my stomach is not craving for the food at the moment. But just for their sake, we stop at a bakery to grab some snacks. Being a Punjabi guy, it is very disrespectful to sit on a table with a company of foodies and not to eat anything. It literally becomes a crime, so just not to do so I ordered a coffee. After 45 minutes of fueling up ourselves, we Marche down to our next stop. The way to the hill is quite good, despite you have to climb around 30-40 stairs and going through the tiny streets, but the view you get along is simply pleasing.

We are now here at the hill, the first words spills out from the mouth is ‘YES, we are here’. It’s a tremendous place to be, surrounded by the flowers and trees and in front nature showing its magic and playing with clouds. It is such a beautiful place. Most of the city can be seen from here and it even becomes more beautiful when stars start to cover the sky, truly magic.

We spent 1 hour in clicking the pictures and sitting there admiring the beauty. It’s around 5:30 in the evening, the clouds have started to become grey. The weather is always unpredictable in the mountains and we need to get back to the hotel before it starts raining. Coming down a slope is too easy but now when we are going back up the hill it suddenly becomes difficult for us to catch our breathe.

The backpacks suddenly puts a terrible burden on us. These steep slopes check your real physicality. After 35 minutes of trekking up on the main road, it’s finally a plain straight road. Our bodies seems to be relaxed here. The weather is continually changing and it is showing the signs of thunderstorms with heavy rain. So without any further delay we head towards our hotel. Going through the market, we can see the shopkeepers preparing themselves for the coming storms. Say it our Luck or whatever, but as soon we step into our hotel there is a cracking sound, like a cloud burst and its starts heavily raining. We feel lucky enough to reach the hotel before the rain. We loosen up ourselves, freshen up and got ready for the dinner. We had dinner in our hotel room today. After the Dinner, we went to our hotel lobby. We sat there looking out of the window, it’s still raining but it has reduced what was before. We talked with our receptionist about our plans for tomorrow, we planned to visit Ashwani khad waterfalls near Chamba ghat, few kilometres from Solan. I have went there before and its situated in such a beautiful place that words can’t express. The receptionist told us there is a fair tomorrow that is held every year here. There will be a huge crowd in the city, so it will be difficult to leave in the morning. He told us it’s better to leave by 1:00 pm tomorrow.  Tomorrow is ‘Mata Shoolini Devi’ mela which is held in Solan every year. All other things will be decided tomorrow after seeing the situation. Today has been a good day and we all enjoyed every part of it, but our body demands rest now. We head back to our rooms to end this day with a peaceful sleep. To be continued…

Thank you

Next Chapter unfolds on next Saturday in which we went to the Waterfalls.