Getting up (6.00 am)
Panna stopped our car to try out some persimmon (called 'Japani fal' around here).
The more keen-eyed amongst you would have noticed that we got up almost an hour earlier today. Were we going somewhere? You bet.
We had anyway planned to visit Jibhi (a mountain town) and Jalori Pass (a high point beyond). We couldn't do so till now because the tidal wave of tourists who were doing justice to the long weekend (2-4 Oct) were causing traffic thrombosis on that route, resulting in jams 4-hour long. From Tuesday, ie tomorrow, the weather was predicted to become wetter. Which meant today was Dunkirk Day. So yesterday, we had contacted our driver friend and tied up to leave at 7.45 am today, chop chop. We needed to get in and out of the touristy places before the families with four kids managed to leave their homestays and started the juggernaut to Jibhi. Ergo, we got up at 6.00 am, and prevailed upon Amarbhai to warm us up with some hot hot maggi.
Getting started (7.45 am)
One thing about Himachali drivers is that they are thorough professionals. Our driver Rohan Negi, who looked like a teenager, arrived on the dot in his Alto, and we were off. We were unsure of the weather, so I had packed a half sweater, a Kolkata-level jacket, a Canada-level jacket, and a woolen cap. Needless to say, we did a "Dance of the Seven Veils" as the day progressed, shedding woolens one by one. Rohan wanted to hit the further Jalori Pass first and get it out of the way, and we said "Jolly good" and settled down in the back seat in defensive crouches. But we need not have worried. Compared to our last driver Rakesh, Rohan would have got a Six Sigma in road skill. And in multi-tasking. While driving with one hand and one eye, he would extract a phone number from the phone and read it out to a friend. Not too safe by our standards, but our mild remonstrances elicited only a smiling : "Aap pareshan mat ho. Koi nahi."
Jalori Pass (10.00 am)
The more I ride through HP roads, the more thankful am I that I myself am not driving. Upto Banjar, the road itself was bad. From Banjar to Jibhi and onward to Jalori Pass, the road surface was good, the the roads were narrow and steep, and constant manoevering as cars faced off, reversed and scraped past each other would have raised the BP of stealth bomber pilots. When HP buses appeared, they sort of hogged the whole road, and our Alto was often in the gutters, emerging with a screech of spinning wheels when the opponent was safely past. Adding to the confusion were out-of-state private cars with gentlemen drivers who deeply believed in their innate driving skills and did not think twice before releasing their Scorpios and Defenders into roads that were probably designed for two-wheeler traffic. We thanked Rohan for pulling us out early, so that on the way up at least, we were running relatively free.
We passed Jibhi around 9.00 am, a town that aroused no regrets in us that we were not staying there. Our Jat friends had tried but not got a booking in this Las Vegas of the valleys, and one can understand their point, seeing the number of cafes and nightclubs there. But for us senior folks who would like to watch stars instead of see stars, Jibhi was not a place to mourn over. At 7,500 ft, the weather was pleasant enough though.
Jalori Pass, at almost 11,000 ft, is a nice viewpoint, with the ice-capped Pir Pinjal ranges and Dhauladhar peaks visible for half the horizon. Temperature was a moderate 17°C. Apart from this view point, Jalori Pass offers two treks or walks - one to Raghupur fort (10 km away) and another to Sarayolsar lake (5 km away), neither of which we were willing to commit ourselves to.
Instead, we thought we would take a short hike to the 360° view point, which the ticket guy said was "just 600 meters saar". I'm sure he wasn't downplaying, but what he neglected to mention was that it rose 300 m high too, in the same length. Are the locals here two-dimensional creatures? Very soon, we were struggling like the dickens, and perhaps half way up, we declared that the view was 360° enough for us.
But the views were indeed breathtaking. On one side were the snow-capped ranges. On the other side were pine-covered hills overlapping into the distance, with muslin-like clouds playing in between. The meadow slopes were replete with mountain goats and horses grazing peacefully. The tourist crowds had not yet started arriving today, and we got a version of Jalori Pass with its pristine beauty intact.
Coffee at Shoja (12.00 noon)
Shoja, around 5 km (15 mins) below Jalori Pass, is a heaven for homestays, cafes and trek-heads. With the pine-covered hill slopes rising right opposite, the views from the cafes were fantastic. Interestingly, some of the cafes that we tried to get coffee at were also running hostels, and we had to take off our shoes to enter, since the sitting areas were all mattresses/mats on the ground with short desks. We were trying for "Rustic Shoja", but they were closed that day due to water supply problems (see the level of issues in the hills), so we finally caught our coffee in "Apna Ghar", another hostel type place. Young people sitting around, playing board games, laptopping or planning their treks - totally different vibes, I tell you.
Mini Thailand, Jibhi (1.00 pm)
This is one of the seeables in Jibhi area. Our expectation was a theme park where Micky Mouse might be cavorting, a la Disneyland, but it turned out to be a descent to the river Pushp Bhadra, which was a sort of photo point for tourists who had put up in the otherwise dry mountainous area of Jibhi/Shoja. We were lucky to have a much better river in front of our homestay.
Mind you, the operative word above was "descent". Whopping high steps all the way, my friends - something we were trying to avoid today. There is a saying in Bengali: "When you are sitting with the Moghuls, you cannot avoid having paratha." When we are travelling in hilly areas, steps are almost impossible to avoid.
Jibhi waterfall (1.30 pm)
This was perhaps the most satisfying place we visited today in terms of comfort (no steps or slope), atmosphere and grandeur. The park was very well laid out with streams and small bridges, right up to the grand finale of the waterfall that was falling into a cemented pool, with the water flowing away over steps. Set inside surrounding mountains and cliffs, the shadowed area was definitely cooler than the outside. Take a look at the pics.
Lunch at Jibhi (2.00 pm)
By now we were jolly hungry. And we were through with our sightseeing. We told Rohan to drop us at a cafe, and the first one he dropped us at, quite accidentally, suited our palate to a T. "Reverberations" was providing varied fare, and we went for a shakshuka and a pizza, a welcome change from Amarbhai's excellent but rather limited cuisine. We sat upstairs facing the valley, and we loved our lunch.
While walking back to our car, we picked up a Lichi wine and some cake slices from a diffidently-named "Slightly known bakery". Very well-bred, I must say.
We give up looking (5.00 pm)
Rohan dropped us at our homestay at 4.30 pm. The drive home had exposed us to a hard truth. We were staying at perhaps one of the best places in the price-value matrix. So what was the problem?
We were booked here only till 8th Oct. Then our booking was at an Air BnB from 8-11th. We had an unbooked slot at 11-15th. Then again we had a booking from 15-22nd at Pah Valley. Today, while moving through Jibhi and Tirthan area, we were trying to identity a place that could fit into the 11-15th slot. But Walnut House had spoilt us; there was simply no comparison. We decided to come back here again for that unbooked period. We felt a bit like the cat who, even when dropped at the other end of town, managed to come back home.
We gave the good news to Kamlibhai and I think he was happy. What do you think?
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