Gallivanting gorillas: Dalhousie

• Base: Nizamuddin East, New Delhi
• Destination: Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh
• Ride: Chevrolet Trailblazer
• Travellers: 6
• Purpose of travel: Soul detox
• Stay: Birdwood Cotttage, Dalhousie
• Experience: 5 star

Background: It shows 6 in the office timepiece and no one wants to go to the same bar on this Friday evening. My landlord has just informed me that there’s no water in the tank and I will have to make my own arrangements. My mind is working on innovative cuss words for the asshole. I’ve decided to crash at a friend’s house and rent a new place next month. Life is an irritating mess.

An idea: Hari is clicking on website after website to order food from a new place as is the case every evening. Suddenly he calls us to his desk, seemingly excited. We expect to see pictures of seekh kebabs with unusual names, but an old colonial mansion appears on the screen and it’s not his wallpaper. “Guys... Birdwood cottage in Dalhousie. It’s an Airbnb property. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves to chill over the entire weekend. Wanna go?” He proposes animatedly while showing us more pictures on the website, as few of us are already on phone cancelling our weekend plans and informing our girlfriends that the Saturday movie won’t be possible because of a work project.

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The execution: Sudhakar has lost his way to Hari’s place in Nizamuddin East, where we are to meet. Defying google’s instructions he reaches a good hour late. We have bought aluminium foil and plastic bottles for obvious purposes, and the trip is on. Anna’s wife is elated at our sudden plan but warns us to bring her husband back in one piece as we pick him from under a flyover in Rajouri Garden. Sachin is dressed as a local Himachali guide and has brought us the most ridiculous combination of a midnight snack – aloo parathas and a bottle of warm milk. It’s 10 o’clock already and Devika is still packing. Being the only girl in the gang she can’t be left behind or we’d be stuffed with endless bewailings. Half an hour later we climb up the enormous ride at the last pickup point at Piragarhi and zoom our way to the most beautiful solitaire in the Chamba sautoir.

My travel playlist is playing at full volume and our voices are booming on top of it while we try to have a conversation about making this a monthly affair. The car is a miniature meteor, speeding on the smooth highway like a dead star being sucked into a black hole. We have over 550 km to go and like an excited amateur marathon runner we’ve started with full vigour. Sudhakar informs us at Karnal that he’s hungry and Hari pacifies him by promising a McDonald’s in 10 km. Four hours and 250 km later we are still looking for that McDonald’s. Finally somewhere in the outskirts of Jalandhar we stop at a Subway attached to a Punjabi dhaba. Hari has been collectively banned from making restaurant suggestions on the highway in future.

We reach Banikhet, the gateway to Chamba district, with the sun at a pleasant angle in the morning. Dalhousie is only 8 km away and the air is chilly. We have no plan as to how we’d spend our days in the hill station. Should we explore tourist spots, click selfies and shop in the Tibetan market or take strolls in the forest area? We’re soon to find out that despite all the beauty around we’d find our solace in the couch at the cottage. We’d need nothing else but water bottles, papers and pens to uncover serenity. And our weekend would be spent listening to the wordless music of the night.

Bittu is waiting for us 3.5 km further away from Dalhousie on the Khajjiar road, where Birdwood Cottage stands robust on the hill below the road. He takes us to the two stone cottages that have been reserved for us right next to each other. The interiors take us to a Victorian style of double storeyed houses with wooden floors and fireplaces. We park ourselves at the dining area and stay there till the owners of the estate, retired Air Commodore Chatrath and wife come to say hello; the most welcoming hosts we have ever seen.

Excursion: No matter how lazy we feel, we have to get out to explore the hills. Our hosts tell us to visit Khajjiar, which is often cited as a Mini Switzerland. We drive down to the thick pine forested area where a signboard, in all seriousness, announces its distance from Switzerland’s capital (6,194 km). A voluptuous spread of green stubble covers the ground surrounding a small lake. We make an attempt to trek the hill in the background but it drizzles every 10 minutes here so the soil gets mildly swampy, making it a difficult climb. The next hour is spent in a trancelike calm in a summerhouse overlooking the lake. Deeply satisfied with the grass we head back to the couch in Birdwood.

Air Cdre Chatrath is telling us several stories from his days in the Air Force, ranging from the war with China to the ones with Pakistan. It is a delight to hear him narrate first hand incidences from the warring times, in fact, so vivid that it’s an exhausting adventure of its own. Freshly back from another trek to the base of a river we sit back on the couch and start on a meditative trip that completes our circle of complete soul detox.

We just realise that we’re running a day late on our schedule. It’s Monday and we are still sitting in the courtyard of a cabin in the woods, at peace with ourselves wondering if we want to go back to the city at all. An hour later, the car is doing multiples of 10 above 100 on the highway. Music is the only thing breaking the monotony of six sequestered souls, until we cross Jalandhar and Sudhakar asks, “Dude, where’s that fucking McDonald’s?”

From the February 2017 issue of FHM India.