by Sraddha Srikanth Pai
Pure Travel Writing Competition 2023
“Why am I feeling so cold suddenly?”
“Because it’s raining, idiot! I think we should head back to the hotel.”
It was getting dark and grey clouds were hovering in the sky. The mighty waterfalls were now looking fiercer and a lot more gigantic than when we had first arrived. It had been a nice evening by the waterfalls playing in the water and eating freshly prepared street food. It amazed me to see vendors hopeful of making a decent living out of providing spicy, cheap snacks at the most secluded tourist attraction in all of Mussoorie.
We had to drive about 20 kilometres downhill back to the town square in thirty minutes to make it back before the sun snatched away its last drop of light. As if dusk and dark clouds were not enough to make this downhill drive thrilling enough, the rains had made the narrow, single lane road the perfect place to slip and break a couple of bones.
We were about halfway up the Kempty hill and we had to hike back up, all the way to the parking lot, located on the top of the hill, through the souvenir shops and food stalls. Evenings in the Shivalik hills, thanks to the unpredictability of the weather, gave us no hint for keeping an umbrella or raincoat. All we had was a pair of woollen gloves and a cap that my dad had forced me to keep in my backpack. Little did we know, these were to be our saviours that night.
We started our hike back to the parking lot when it was only drizzling and the chill was bearable. The uphill hike had surely slowed us down, aided by the heavy downpour. And, of course, there was nothing to shelter us from the chilly Himalayan winds. We were forced to run up to the next stretch of shops to protect us from the piercing, almost ice-like rain drops. Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting and drying ourselves, waiting for the rain to slow down, when my friend jumped and screamed as if she’d seen a ghost. I looked to my right, jumping up in reflex, my own scream caught in my throat. It was a baby goat, wanting some of our sweet corn for her dinner. Seeing us scared out of our wits, the shopkeepers did us a favour and guided the baby animal out of our way.
Once it was a few feet away, we had to admit that being scared of the adorable baby goat munching on the hem of a shopkeeper’s kurta was embarrassing. We could tell that it was still eyeing our food, and the side-eye that the shopkeepers were giving us didn’t help, so we decided to move on. Thankfully, the rain was lighter now, no longer pouring. We set out on the second half of our hike back to the parking lot, panting, shivering, and completely drenched. But the real thrill had not even begun.
We cleaned our wet, dusty scooter, put on all the jackets and caps we had, to shield us from rain and winds. We drank as much water as we could to keep us hydrated on the way back and put on the directions on google maps as we prepared for our downhill drive. As our scooter made its way out the parking lot and past the street vendors’ arena, the bustle of human activity died out almost instantaneously. Now all we had for company was the rain’s pitter-patter and the chirping crickets.
The roads were slippery and our speed was minimal. My friend was silent, her full focus on the road as she navigated the narrow, hair-pin bends. Brought up as city girls accustomed to the plains, the maximum driving challenge for us is the rush hour traffic and idiots coming through the wrong side without indicators. No amount of swerving on our city streets could have prepared us for these unnerving swerves of the mountains. The route to be taken was clear—a single lane with no diversions or multiple turns. There was no sunlight anymore and it was pitch dark. Apparently, the hill station municipalities don’t care much about street lighting; all we had was the dim headlight of our jalopy scooter. My hands were cozily resting in my warm, woollen pockets. My friend’s fingers, on the other hand, were almost frozen steering the scooter handle.
We decided it would be wiser if we took out the gloves from the compartment to save ourselves from hypothermia. We halted on a broad corner and took out the gloves. I unlocked my phone to check the current temperature, expecting it to be below zero, or at least, very close to it. Looking back, we were being a bit dramatic for it couldn’t have been that cold. We had no way of telling at the time because there was no internet; there was no network. No internet meant no GPS. Oh, were we in trouble now!
My friend was in no mood to be funny or joyful. She was crabby—frustrated from the uncomfortable drive and biting cold. The inaccessible network just added more fuel to the fire, if only there had been a literal one. She constantly asked me to check the phone and reload the maps, yelling at me for not downloading it beforehand. We had been on the road for almost half an hour now with no civilisation in sight. Some temples and huge villas were the only random landmarks we had to assure us that we were on the same route which we had come through this afternoon.
Now she had the gloves, but I had to keep my hands out of my pockets to check if the network was kind enough to appear for a snap moment. Even with the weakest signals, I struggled to check our destination which was still about seven kilometres downhill. My nerves had given up on sensing the cold and I just couldn’t feel my hands anymore. My cheeks were so numb that even my frozen palms provided them warmth. With great hesitation, I gathered the courage to ask my friend to lend me the gloves for a few minutes. And to meet my expectation, she not only refused, but also gave a well-reasoned explanation on how she needed them a lot more for us to safely be back at our hotel and not be in a hilly ditch the entire night. I shut my mouth and kept track of the google maps for I couldn’t ease her troubles by taking up the task of driving us for the remaining way.
When the maps showed it was only two kilometres now to reach the town square, my friend eased up a bit and expressed how she would fancy two whole plates of dumplings and spicy, hot-and-sour soup from the first shop we could find. Civilisation was now in sight and there, we saw two people walking up the street. That was two more than we’d seen in the past hour. We could hear the traffic and people chatting loudly. For the first time, I was not annoyed by crowds and people laughing at the top of their lungs. Shivering and with my bones stiff, I couldn’t wait to get off my seat.
It was only when we located the first shops did we believe we were safe. How grateful we were at the prospect of not having to spend the night fallen in a ditch. We parked our scooter right by the dumpling shop and I snatched the gloves from my friend. She had a better idea, running to the stove where the lady was boiling the soup and placing her icy hands on the hot lid of the pot. I did the same, finding it far more effective. The extremely hot pot of soup was only warm on my hands and I could keep them like that for a long time. The ladies preparing our soup and dumplings giggled as they heard our story, how afraid we were and we honestly thought we would die of hypothermia.
It was an hour’s drive from the falls back to the town. In retrospect, the dumplings were average and the soup could have been spicier. But after an amplified terror of driving on a dark, slippery hill, it was the tastiest, most rewarding meal we ever had.
Image: Kunal Parmar, Unsplash
