Random Expressions

I am sitting near the poolside, which is on the lower level than the lobby. Yet, the view from here is breathtakingly beautiful. A few minutes back, in my hotel room, I had the chance of seeing a rainbow. The colorful arch is a rare and nearly extinct in the smog covered Delhi skyline. Here, it dazzled in its splendor.

The more I want to write about the views that I see, the more the words fail me. Words like magnificent, awesome and picturesque are so small and confined in their meaning and description. So I will refrain from using any such repetitive and monotonous phrases and words and just write what I see.

The sky is overcast with light gray and fulsome clouds. There is a drizzle - gentle, very gentle, barely perceptible, yet nonetheless, imparting the atmosphere a fresh, moist and fertile hue. A couple of birds whiz past overhead, like two naughty schoolchildren seeking shelter from the rain.

I wrote in my previous post that Kathmandu is surrounded by a ring of mountains (the Himalayas). Today, they are covered in a muslin veil of the clouds, peeping out occasionally like a shy bride and then quickly covering themselves up.

It is cool, though neither windy nor breezy.

Hill stations and mountains have fascinated me since childhood. I do plan to settle in one after retirement. In India, I had the chance of visiting lots of them. Here I present some of the hill stations visited by me:

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The state of Rajasthan presents a delightful collage of vibrant colors. From the greens of Bharatpur to the pink of Jaipur to the ochre of the deserts, this state should be nominated as God’s own palette.

An opportunity to traverse a small slice of this rustic and splendid state presented to me yesterday. Traveling in the sturdy Ford Endeavor, we were three of us, who started the tour from Behror, a small, mid-way village between Delhi and Jaipur. From there on, we broke off civilization and the highway to course our way through ill-constructed and bumpy road towards Alwar, a town famous for its ‘maava’, a milk product.

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Nestled within lush verdant hills of Himachal Pradesh, Kasauli is a quaint little hill cantonment, built 11kms off the Main Shimla Highway, and just a two-hour drive from Chandigarh, the nearest metropolitan city.

My acquaintance with Kasauli began when I was in the tenth standard. A classmate of mine was so taken up by this station that he would regularly keep talking about it. Since, I had spent a large chunk of my childhood abroad, due to my father’s postings, I was quite ignorant of the beauties of nature present in India itself. This friend of mine gave such vivid descriptions of the place that the name Kasauli just seeped into my sub-consciousness unknowingly.

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