Travel Punctuations
On good days, the drive from Mussoorie to Delhi takes seven to eight hours, and when I arrive at my destination, I am bent double, looking like a question mark. It takes two or three hours and a couple of whiskies with my hospitable publisher for me to unwind and look my usual self, i.e. an exclamation mark!
In spite of the discomforts of a long road journey, I prefer it to other forms of travel. You don’t see much from trains any more—the windows appear to be made from some sort of opaque, frosted glass (or are they just dirty?), so different from my boyhood journeys when you pulled up the shutters and countered the telegraph poles rushing past. The romance has gone out of rail travel. And as for flying, there appears to be a general reluctance on the part of planes to take off. Last month, I was given air tickets to visit KIIT (Kalinga Institute of Technology) in Bhubaneswar, and dashed down to the not-so-jolly Jolly Grant near Haridwar, only to find that the flight to Delhi had been cancelled due to fog on the runway. Grabbed an ever-ready taxi and got to Delhi in time for the scheduled flight to Bhubaneswar at 7 pm, only to find it being postponed again and again until it was finally cancelled around midnight. Fog on the runway, of course. Scores of flights were being cancelled and the departure lounge (‘lounge’ is a misnomer) resembled a chaotic Howrah railway station. Two days later, on my return, I had to again take a taxi to Dehradun. Jolly Grant was still fog-bound.
Grand Trunk Diary
Road travel has several advantages. You can stop where and when you like, buy a gur-cake or a stack of sugarcane, enjoy a snack at a wayside dhaba, or gaze upon the mustard fields in full bloom. But avoid travelling at night. It’s hazardous and can also lead to confusion.
On one memorable occasion, between Shamli and Thana Bhawan (lovely name), my driver stopped to talk to a friend at a petrol pump. I’d been sleeping in the back seat, and, thought it was a good time to get out and ease myself. While I was thus occupied, the driver returned to his car and, without looking to see if I was still in it, drove off! There were no cellphones then, and he must have been driving for more than twenty minutes before he discovered that his passenger was missing! It was January, and I was freezing by the time he came back for me. And, of course, he blamed me for the mix-up.
Usually I avoid the main thoroughfare and take the Saharanpur-Shamli route which joins the GT Road at Panipat. Or you can drive alongside the Ganga Canal from Roorkee to Khatauli, emerging near the Cheetal Grand.
Pardonne the French
The Cheetal restaurant is really grand with its beautiful flower garden, radiant with colour and fragrance. And along the way there are many cafes and roadside dhabas, some catering to truck drivers who use the road by night. At one of these less sophisticated resorts, I stopped for coffee and an omelette. A little later, a car stopped and a ‘foreign lady’ got out and approached one of the helpers.
“Excuse me,” she said, “do you have a la carte?”
“Yes, madam,” said the boy very courteously, and led her outside and directed her to the toilets. Obviously his French wasn’t as good as his English.
Passing through Purkazi, I noticed a shop-sign that simply said ‘Books’. ‘Stop!’ I said to the driver, thrilled at the prospect of discovering and exploring a hitherto unknown bookshop in the heart of rural India. Perhaps I’d find it full of rare books. The shop did have books, stacks of them—school exercise books, from floor to ceiling. I should have known better. Although a first folio Shakespeare did turn up in Roorkee a few years ago....
Mango Pickle Fraternity
‘On the road to Delhi, I met a hundred brothers.’ That’s an old saying that goes back to Mughal times or possibly earlier. And in those days you travelled by tonga or ekka or bullock cart, and there was time for the making of friends and acquaintances. Today, we are in too great a hurry and making friends along the way is not a priority. But being a “regular” on the road I have, at least, got to know a few people—the newsagent at Khatauli; the pickle-makers at Manglaur (just near the police station in case you’d like to try some), the mango-sellers outside Saharanpur; not to mention the numerous taxi drivers who have ferried me to and fro.
The Circus Returns
Meanwhile, Mussoorie starts coming to life after a long but not too arduous winter. Schools reopen, restaurants print new menus (prices having gone up), leaking roofs are repaired and the celebrities who own houses atop Landour start reappearing like cuckoos and other rare birds. They provide some entertainment for the locals. What would we do without them?
