7 days in Himachal Pradesh — Part-3
I had not realized how quickly time passed, but I had already spent 7 night on the road. It had been a week since I had started from home, and I felt neither spent nor home sick. On the contrary, I found the thrill in these new experiences everyday to be addicting. In a parallel universe, or maybe with an infinite budget, I would have happily perpetuated this trip. But my cash reserves were fast depleting and I had already overshot my budget a bit.
My plan for the day was to cycle to the Palpung Sherabling Monastery which was a 6.5 km ride on mountain cycle trail. I found myself a geared cycle for a good deal from a nearby shop and was soon on my way. The trail is flat for quite some time before you get to your first uphill patch. I had to stop mid-way on the first patch and stroll my cycle to the top. I asked myself what I was upto. But then the trail got more gentler, and I learned to better deal with uphill patches, carefully selecting my gears and finding a consistent comfortable power. I then started to enjoy the journey. I put on my earphones. I was all on my own.
The trail is a perfect mix of uphill and downhill patches. Just when you feel the uphill won’t end, you hit the downhill and just when you start getting too comfortable, another uphill stretch comes along. I wondered if someone had curated these stretches for the rider but obviously I was stretching my imagination. When I reached the Sherabling, I was warmed up and a tiny bit exhausted. I sat in the shade and spent about fifteen minutes there before heading to the monastery.
Sherabling is a big secluded monastery in Bir. I made friends with a dog there and just sat there seeing people come and go, enjoying the calm that pervaded the whole space. The monastery is like any other, with rooms for monks, a large prayer chamber and beautiful artwork.
On the ride back, I found a lone momo stall where I stopped for some momos and coke. The trail was beautiful. I stopped when I got exhausted, but mostly I felt comfortable with my pace and did considerable stretches at a time. At one point though, sorry Robert Frost, but two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And I took the wrong one because some fool told me to and that made all the difference.
Basically it added about 5–6 kilometers to my journey and made me circle the entire area of Bir. This is when the ride got really challenging. The road kept winding upwards, so much so that I thought I was on the road to Billing. It was peak afternoon, the trail was desolate and I was getting spent. But to my relief, I saw a milestone that said 2 km to Bid(not Bir), but I thought they must have made a mistake. I had to take a long break before restarting my journey. A pack of monkeys blocked the way and be one traveller long I stood and waited for the next car to escort me through them. But I got the best reward for having taken wrong road. For all the uphill cycling, I got to do downhill for many kilometers and it was exhilarating, the wind perfect. When I returned my rented cycle, the guy told me that I had cycled for around 20km. I was surprised at myself. Back at the Zostel Common area, only when I stretched my legs did I realize what had transpired.
That evening Abhay and Nishit departed. With Ankit, I went to the landing site and we hung out there till the sun set. Then we went to dinner at the Moonlight cafe where Gayatri and the gang joined us. We played a game of darts and downed some Himachali wine. That night I went to bed as soon as I hit the bed.
My last day in Bir, I rented a Scooty to go to Dharmalaya, which is a sustainable living institute in Bir. They profess a zero waste live-style and lot of architecture interns go there to learn eco-architecture. I however did not know that they had visitor timings. I showed up at their door after being on very treacherous roads that lead to it. However, they were uninspired on seeing us and told us that they were not willing to relax the visitor timings. Ankit and I felt facepalmed. But we made the most of the situation and walked around their campus. Later we found nice shaded place by the mountain side to chill and read our books. The sky were brimming with moisture filled clouds and we expected that it would rain soon.
We sat there in the tranquil setting reading our books and napping till it started to rain and we drove back to Bir. On the way back we visited another monastery. and had lunch at a cafe. It was almost time for our buses back to Delhi.
I had no major epiphany, that people associate solo trips with, I never expected one either. But this experience taught me that its O.K. to go without a plan sometimes and be with the flow, and to acknowledge that chance and that which we can’t control has a tremendous bearing on our lives. Hiking and cycling on those long trails made me comfortable in my own company and gave me the feeling that I will be fine when I choose desolate roads too. If only I had set out on my trip a few days later, I would have never met Nishit, Abhay, Lichi, Kamakshi and all the other wonderful people I met. Nor would I be telling this same story.
