Traffic is maddeningly slow and chaotic. We stop for half an hour to eat a late breakfast at Murthal; to fill petrol at Ambala; to tackle a corrupt cop who’s angling for a bribe, also at Ambala; and then at Pinjore, where a huge traffic jam has vehicles lining up for more than a kilometre. Add to that the fact that we take a wrong turn and go up to Chandigarh instead of turning off towards Kalka from Zirakpur—and it’s hardly surprising we end up taking over eight hours to get to Kasauli.

The road starts lifting into the foothills of the Himalayas at Pinjore, but even till after Parwanoo, the hills are not really what I think of as the Himalayas. These are scrubby foothills, grown over with orange-flowering lantana and not much else. No pines, no cedars, and no interesting birds. After Parwanoo (and a treacherous switchback going up a steep slope towards Kasauli), the scenery suddenly changes. The clouds, grey and forbidding, have been lowering over the landscape, and shortly after we enter our first belt of green pines, the first fat drops of rain start pelting down. It drizzles intermittently for the next couple of hours, but that doesn’t stop us from enjoying the view: misty mountains, pines (and cedars), white-cheeked bulbuls and a tree pie; a barking deer racing across the road and up the hillside; and langurs, all black-faced and with dangling question-mark tails, up in the trees.

Kasauli is a cantonment town, pretty but somewhat strictly run. A toll booth run by the cantonment board sits at the only road up to town. We buy a pass (Rs 65) and wait patiently for the barrier to be raised, only to discover that this is a high-tech barrier, managed by a remote control that’s suddenly gone haywire. Traffic begins piling up and the remote that’s gone kaput becomes the high point of Kasauli’s afternoon. Lots of pushing and shoving at the barrier, some desperate racing around, and the remote finally works after ten minutes of much excitement. Hallelujah!

We drive up to Ros Common, where we check in, have a very late lunch of sandwiches and coffee, and then set off on an introductory walk through town. Ros Common is ten minutes from the heart of town, and the stroll there takes us past langurs; horse chestnut trees in full bloom, and pines with the cones fresh and green. We go past the Grand Maurice Hotel, built in 1862 and still functional, but not particularly welcoming of anybody who isn’t a resident.

We’ve decided this isn’t a sightseeing trip; we’re just getting to know Kasauli. This doesn’t actually happen; the Christ Church is too lovely to resist, and we end up spending a while inside, admiring the stained glass. We follow this up with a leisurely stroll down the marketplace, the shops selling everything from smart T-shirts and skirts to hand-carved walking sticks, Tibetan masks, and locally brewed fruit wines. A quaint cobbled street (around from the time of the British? I wonder) curves downward, and we follow it diligently till we reach a dead end and have to turn around and walk right back. By the time we reach Ros Common, the sun’s beginning to set. A noisy group of middle-aged men who’d driven up from Chandigarh (or somewhere nearby; we didn’t bother to ask) have thankfully left Ros Common by now, so it’s blissfully quiet. A cup of tea, a look through the newspapers, and we’re ready for a quiet chat before it’s time for dinner and bed.

Monkey Point, suggests the receptionist at Ros Common, a gentle and mild-mannered lady. "Drive up," she advises us. "It’s about two and a half kilometres uphill to the Air Force barrier. Leave your camera and cell phones in the car at the barrier and then walk up to the temple. And in the evening you can go to the Upper Mall, to Sunset Point."

So we drive up to Monkey Point, run the gauntlet of suspicious military guards—one of them, in charge of frisking male visitors, gets Tarun to pull down his socks and open his wallet. And that is all preliminary to a taxing haul uphill to the temple. By the time we reach the temple, we’re pooped and breathless. The priest at the temple is wiry and in peak physical condition, by the looks of him. Not surprising, if he does the trek uphill everyday.
We wander around the terrace for a while, admiring the view, then head downhill. A woman in high heels is tottering along, followed by a husband with a toddler draped across his shoulders. Below them comes a gaggle of formerly noisy college students (they’d passed our hotel in the morning, and we’d shuddered at their rowdiness). I’d overheard the guard at the barrier say, "You lot, there. Quieten down or I’ll have all of you sent right back." It’s worked; they’re suitably subdued.

Further down, an Air Force officer is standing beside the railing and talking on his cellphone to (presumably) another officer. His voice is loud, every word ringing clear up the hill: a complete violation of the Air Force’s strict security here. Fortunately for the Official Secrets Act, the man’s speaking mostly in abbreviations and acronyms, so one can’t really figure out what he means.

For us, the trek to Monkey Point has been interesting (the view’s hard to beat), but before we head back to Ros Common, it’s time for one pleasurable chore. We take ourselves off to a nearby shop called Daily Needs and buy some fruit wines to take back home for family, friends and ourselves. Apricot, peach and plum, with an alcohol content of 11%. Smart bottles, enticing labels and fairly affordable prices, at only about Rs 90 per bottle. After all, Himachal is the fruit capital of India. They also have strawberry, kiwi, apple, orange and grape wine—and others. Along with lots of jams, marmalades, pickles, juices, cider and cider vinegar. We’re tempted, but then decide not to go overboard.

After lunch (on the terrace at Ros Common), we have a long and much-deserved siesta. That done, we revive ourselves with some tea, and then head off to explore the Upper Mall and Gilbert Hill. The start of the Upper Mall, past the Central Research Institute (CRI) and the local television tower, is steep, but soon evens out into a narrow lane lined with flowering horse chestnut and silver oak, wild roses and wild delphiniums: lovely. We trudge on, past the Kasauli Club (established 1880) and the Army Holiday Home, then go a little way up the Gilbert Nature Walk, before we turn back and stop briefly at Sunset Point to see the sun go down. The trek back, on calves that are now aching, is inordinately long, but we get back to Ros Common by 7.30, for a quick rest before we set off for dinner at the Constellation Café in the nearby Hotel Alasia. Dinner is a disappointment—the Constellation is scruffy and badly managed. Meal over, we walk back to Ros Common, ready to put our feet up. It’s been a long day.

Shimla’s 73 km from Kasauli, a three-hour drive at a pace that’s suited to the hill roads of Himachal. We descend from the pine and horse chestnut woods of Kasauli, then go through the foothills, past well-known towns. Dharampur, en route to Kasauli from the plains; Sanawar, known as the home of the prestigious St Lawrence School; and Solan, its main claim to fame the Solan Brewery and the town’s huge cultivations of mushrooms ("Buy spawn here" proclaims a sign. I’m a bit puzzled until I read the rest of it: "Button mushroom, white mushroom and dhingri mushroom spawn available here.")

What we really flip for are the flowering trees all along the hills between Kasauli and Shimla. There’s lots of pine here, some deodar cedar, stands of eucalyptus, orchards of peaches and other stone fruit—and loads of jacaranda and silver oak. The jacaranda, covered with a froth of bright mauve-purple flowers, contrasts beautifully with the rust-orange flowers of the silver oak. As if that wasn’t all, there are flowering mimosas, their powderpuff-like flowers pale pink and white. There are the cream-pink candles of wild horse chestnuts; the pink flowers of wild roses and oleanders; and the purple and yellow of wildflowers growing along the road. As if that wasn’t all, the cactus is currently in bloom: large yellow flowers shining bright among the fleshy grey-green of the thorns.

By the time we reach Shoghi, we can see Shimla, dauntingly built over, all ugly high-rise hotels, across the hills ahead.

The town itself has rather a lot of trees. Deodar cedars and oak grow thick and green all around. But there’s also the squalor of overpopulation and too many tourists. As we drive past slowly looking out for the Peterhoff (where we’re booked), we’re besieged by touts trying to sell us other hotels. They brandish hotel pamphlets, yelling to us and trying to stop the car. Very irritating.

We eventually land up at the Peterhoff, only to find that the hotel is playing host to a huge Hindu religious convention. The fact that hundreds of fanatical devotees sing loud hymns, clap and give speeches, doesn’t really endear them to us. The other major event at the hotel—a blood donation camp—is fortunately much quieter, but we find ourselves having to wend our way between lolling blood donors, who’re sprawling all over the banquet hall that lies between our room and the reception.

We have lunch and then decide to have a little siesta before we go off for a walk: anything to escape the caterwauling of the crowd outside our window. We haven’t realised how tired we are, though. We soon fall asleep despite the racket, and wake up only at around 4.30. The convention is still going strong, so we decide to go for a walk up to the Mall. It’s a longish stroll—around an hour and a half—but an unexpectedly pleasant introduction to Shimla. The clouds are lowering, grey and brooding, and it looks as if it’s going to begin raining any moment. The deodar cedars towering into the sky on the slope of the mountain make the winding road even darker. But we persevere, and end up seeing some lovely old colonial buildings.

First on the list, between Peterhoff and the Mall, is the lovely Oberoi Cecil hotel, originally a bungalow called Tendrils in which Rudyard Kipling stayed back in 1883. Beyond lies the pretty Wood Bank Rest House (built 1920) and its neighbouring Cleremont, built in 1927-8. Further on, on the Mall, is the imposing Gorton Castle (today the office of the Accountant General) and the Railway Board Building, both impressive edifices in two very different architectural styles. Beside the road, hawkers sell boxes of cherries and strawberries. Coolies with heavy loads on their backs trudge along doggedly uphill. Every now and then, a man pushing a pram along approaches a young family with a baby and asks if they’d like some transport uphill or down for the baby. 15 rupees for the loan of the pram.

By the time we reach the BSNL telecommunications building, the first drops have started falling, so we turn back. It doesn’t really rain hard enough to merit opening our umbrellas—in any case, the deodars block out most of the rain—and we’re dry when we get to Peterhoff. The convention still isn’t over, and tearful people are now testifying over a loud mike. Dinner, we decide, is in order. And then bed—if we can sleep despite the din.

We follow the same route as yesterday, up to Gorton Castle Square, and past the Railway Board Building. Further up is the BSNL Building, and then, beyond a row of shops—mainly cafés and souvenir shops—a wide promenade. There’s a rain shelter on the left, alongside a wide terrace that offers what would have been a spectacular view of the mountains and valleys around, if only it wasn’t so misty. On the right are a series of interesting old heritage buildings: the Municipal Corporation (built in 1908), and beyond that the Gaiety Theatre, with a lovely sloping roof laid over with slate tiles. The Gaiety’s being renovated right now, so any hopes of getting to see a good play fall flat on their faces.

Beyond the Gaiety is what used to be the Band Stand—a conical roofed building with slate tiles similar to that of the Gaiety Theatre. The Band Stand has now been taken over by Himachal Tourism, who’ve opened two restaurants here, the Ashiana (which means `Nest’) and Goofa.

This entire area forms a ridge running along the top of a hill, so there’s also actually a view on the right side, beyond Goofa. There’s a narrow strip of garden here for which they charge Rs 2 as an entry fee. It’s already pretty full of mooning honeymooners, many of them dressed in gaudy Himachali costumes and posing for wandering photographers who supply the clothing and the photos. We’re approached by one photographer too, who flourishes photos of cheesy-looking former patrons. "Photo in local dress?" he asks us, but we politely decline.

At the far right corner of the Ridge is the tall, cream-painted square tower of the Christ Church. Next to it is the quaint building of the State Library, but it’s the church we’re really interested in. We wander in, and spend a long while admiring the lovely stained glass panels in this amazing old building.

Once out, we take a peek at the library next door, when skirt a small patch of garden with a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in it. Beyond this, a road snakes up towards Lakkar Bazaar (the Wood Market), whose shops do seem to specialise in woodwork: lovely hand carved walking sticks, keychains, bangles and bracelets, spatulas, figurines: just about anything small and decorative that’s made of wood. There are lots of shops selling other souvenirs too, including shawls, Himachali caps and jackets, and similar stuff. On one side, a row of fruit sellers offers local produce for sale: apricots, peaches, and raw almonds.

We wander through Lakkar Bazaar, avoiding the many pony-wallahs who go past with tourists’ children happily giggling on the back of the pony. The ponies are uniformly smelly and leave steaming piles of dung all along the road. Tarun and I, as soon as we realise Lakkar Bazaar doesn’t have very much more to offer, elect to turn back and return to the Band Stand. We go downhill, past the Indoor Roller Skating Rink (a Shimla attraction, along with the Outdoor Ice Skating Rink. Old Hindi movies of the 1960’s, before Shimla became passé, often had a scene set on one of the rinks). Back at the Band Stand, we toy with having lunch at the Goofa, but the name sounds utterly goofy and we decide to go on a bit more.

We end up having sandwiches and smoothies at the local Barista, an India-wide chain of cafés. Through the glass front of the café, we can see the awesome stone façade of the Municipal Corporation building and the District Police Assistance Room next door. There are tourists everywhere, toting cameras, posing against heritage buildings, buying souvenirs. I’m reminded suddenly, inexorably, of Rome in the summer. Everybody’s a visitor.

Lunch over, the next sight on our itinerary is the stone church (a Catholic one) of St Michael’s. This stands below the District Courts, and though it looks imposing on the outside—and offers tantalizing glimpses of what is probably some fine stained glass—the church itself is locked and there’s nobody around to open it. "It’ll open after 5," says a man cleaning a car in the parking lot outside.

It’s not even 2.30 yet, and parading uphill and down all these hours since breakfast has taken its toll on our none-too-fit selves. We’ll call it quits for the time being. It’s back to the Peterhoff, where the guruji’s still around, his devotees a little more zealous. We give them some black looks, then take ourselves off to our room, me to make some notes on today’s wanderings, Tarun to watch some TV.

"The teapot usually has two cups of tea in it," Tarun explains to the waiter patiently. "If I’m to have two cups of tea, I’d like some more sugar." My husband likes his tea sweet. The waiter looks at him blankly. "I have brought you sugar," he replies. "See. Three cubes."

At this point, Tarun realises that trying to get this man to understand will be a task beyond Tarun’s faculties at present. Tarun thanks him and lets him go, then tells me that if this guy ever went to a superhero convention, he’d be Moronic Man or Captain Cretin.

After breakfast, we ask the receptionist for directions to the Viceregal Lodge. We’re told that today’s a local holiday in Shimla, so the Viceregal Lodge, the Himachal State Museum and just about every other sight will be closed. This is a major blow for us: it means we’re effectively left with one entire day wasted, and worst of all, we’re going to be leaving Shimla tomorrow morning. I’d really wanted to see the Viceregal Lodge and the Himachal Museum, so this is a bit of a tragedy for me.

For lack of anything better to do, we decide to drive down to Annadale and the Glen, both of which lie downhill from the Vidhan Sabha. It’s a lovely drive—all oak, rhododendron and deodar trees—and even though we don’t find the Glen (a popular picnic spot, according to our guide book), we do fall in love with Annadale. It’s Army-run, with a golf course, pretty old cottages, and the Army Heritage Museum.

The museum’s no great shakes, but it’s quiet and neat, very militarily well-maintained. The Cactus House next door is delightful, with a fine collection of cacti and succulents, some of them in flower. We sit for a while on one of the benches overlooking the golf course, and feast our eyes on the surroundings. The green lies in a shallow bowl, the cottages all along the rim surrounded by crisscrossing paved paths and colourful flowerbeds. It’s delicious!

After Annadale, we head back up towards Peterhoff, then (on a whim) decide to check out the Himachal Pradesh University, which is supposed to be home to an old mansion called Manorville where Mahatma Gandhi once stayed. We ask directions from a local fruit seller, and though we don’t find Manorville, we end up at the Himalayan Bird Park. A misnomer, really, since it’s actually a very modest aviary—but it has some spectacular monal pheasants, silver pheasants and kaleej pheasants: exquisite.

Opposite the Bird Park is the Indian Institute of Advance Study, which is housed in the Viceregal Lodge. Not very hopeful, we ask the guard if it’s open today. "Yes," he says. "But you better hurry up; they close for lunch at 1." The institute lies 400 m steeply uphill, and it’s already 12.40. Panting and puffing, we manage to make our way up and arrive just in time to buy entry tickets for the last batch of visitors to be allowed in before lunch. The Viceregal Lodge is very impressive, the sprawling gardens outside equally so. We spend a good hour or so just wandering around, drinking in the majesty of it all (along with bottles of lychee juice from the Horticultural Produce Marketing Corporation stall tucked discreetly away behind a high hedge). Eventually, at around 2, we head back to Peterhoff for lunch.

At 4, we set off and labour up the impossibly steep shortcut from Peterhoff to the Himachal Pradesh State Museum. This is where our luck finally runs out; the place is closed. We go back dejectedly to the hotel, where the mayor of Shimla is being interviewed on the front lawns, so we can’t take any photographs of the view from the hotel.

At about 7.30, finally sick of the hopeless food we’ve been getting at the Peterhoff, we take ourselves off to the Oberoi Cecil for a fancy meal. It comes for a fancy price too, but as we get into the car, replete and feeling very smug, we agree that it’s worth it.

The road to Thanedhar is about 80 km. The first 65 or so km, to the erstwhile ski resort town of Narkanda, is along National Highway 22, a fairly good, wide road (though currently being repaired in parts after recent landslides). The road goes through Kufri, also once an important ski resort; both Kufri and Narkanda have now been eclipsed by Auli, in neighbouring Uttaranchal. Kufri’s only about an hour or so from Shimla, and so is still very popular with tourists who come here for a daytrip. Not to ski, of course in this weather, but to gush over the stunning views and maybe go for a picnic.

All along the way, we see carloads of tourists stopping beside the road and taking photos. At one place, the local travel and tourism trade has done its bit to ensnare experience-hungry tourists. Someone’s selling snacks; a couple of people have set up telescopes beside the road and for a small amount, give you a spiel on the important sites you can see through the telescope in the valley below. One guy even has two depressed-looking yaks, duly saddled and fitted up, in tow.

The landscape is pretty; very pretty indeed, with forests of deodar marching right up the hillside. There are large bushes of wild roses, covered with fragile white blossoms, and bushes of what looks like gorse, with bright yellow flowers. Other wildflowers abound too—thistles, with their bright purple-magenta heads and prickly grey-green leaves; pink wild roses, wild strawberries, the white flowers profuse, the deep red berries hidden away beneath the leaves. There are other flowers too, brick red and magenta, mauve and bright yellow, white and pale blue. It’s stunning, and I end up begging Tarun to stop the car every now and then just so I can get out and photograph just one more wildflower. Soon enough, I’m vowing to myself that I’ll take pictures of every species I come across.

By the time we get to Matiana, the woods have dwindled; instead, we’ve begun to see orchards—mainly apple, but also cherry and plum and (I think) peach. The fruit, except for the cherries, is not yet anywhere close to mature, and this far away, sitting in a car on the highway, I can’t really distinguish one fruit for the other.

Just after Narkanda begins the 15 km stretch to Thanedhar. This is a state road, and proportionately narrow and secluded. The road surface, fortunately, is pretty good. But we end up not making very good time—mainly because we’re awestruck by the landscape. I’m oohing and aahing all the time, and Tarun, who doesn’t want to miss out on any of the beauty around, decides he must pull up now and then and gawp too. It’s lovely, really: mile upon mile of deep green mountainside, covered in a mixed forest of pine, deodar, spruce, and silver fir, with the occasional horse chestnut or rhododendron. It’s so exquisite that I’m tempted to take a photograph every time we come around a bend in the road.

We finally reach the Banjara Camps’ Orchard Retreat just before 2. We make our way down to the lovely little hotel, which is set amidst apple orchards. A leisurely lunch is followed by a brief nap, then tea on the lawn. After a relaxing stroll through the gardens, we move off to the library for a game of chess (Tarun wins, as usual; I’m no good at this) and some books. Later in the evening, we chat with the owner of the Orchard Retreat while sitting around a bonfire. Dinner is followed by a little bit of gazing out across the hills, watching the lights of Thanedhar and Kotgarh, a sprinkle of stars on black velvet. Pretty!

We begin our rendezvous with the woods around Thanedhar with a drive up to Hatu Peak, at 3,400 mt. Hatu Peak is home to a Hindu temple dedicated to the `Goddess of Hatu’: it’s a small, rather pretty shrine with a slate-tiled sloping roof. But what really mesmerizes us is Hatu Peak itself: wildflowers grow in a carpet of white, yellow and mauve all down the side of the mountain, down to where the trees grow. Awesome!

By the time we leave Hatu Peak, the clouds and mist are rolling in, obscuring everything.

We make our way down to the Narkanda-Thanedhar state highway, then continue towards Thanedhar. About 6 km further down the road, a branch road rises steeply to the right towards Tani Jubbal. We follow the road, and a few minutes later, we’re at the lake—or pond, whatever. It’s quite a disappointment (there’s nothing even remotely scenic about it), but we wander about a bit, photograph some wildflowers and admire the temple before getting into the car and driving off back to the Orchard Retreat.

During lunch, Prakash Thakur asks us what we intend to do after lunch. We’ve not really thought about it, we say—maybe a walk? At perhaps 3.30 or so. He nods. "Sounds good."

At 3.30, it’s drizzling a bit. Just scattered drops, but we guess our walk’s probably gone down the drain. The rain stops soon enough, though, and around 4.30, after we’ve had our tea, the manager at Orchard Retreat, Sharmaji (his surname’s Sharma; the ji tagged on to the end is an honorific), comes along, all togged up in a green suit. Directed by him, Tarun drives us about 3 kilometres uphill into the Saroga Forest. Here, we park the car beside the road and follow Sharmaji into the forest for an hour-long walk through the woods. It’s fun, not too tiring, and Sharmaji’s insights into local flora, fauna, customs and traditions, are very interesting indeed. He also tells us we’re lucky the weather cleared up and the rain stopped. Two consecutive days, just before we arrived, Prakash Thakur guided two groups of visitors on treks, and it poured. The groups, and Prakash, got drenched, and Prakash’s getting wet two days in a row has given him a high fever.

We get back to Orchard Retreat, and have just settled down to a cup of coffee when it starts raining again. And how it rains: there’s thunder, lightning, sheets of water pouring down—the works. And soon enough, the electricity goes kaput too. We’re left, for the rest of the evening and night, to the mercy of candles.

We end up taking a wrong turn on the way to the church and go down an impossibly steep incline—but end up just near the church. A path leads through orange tiger lilies and pink and white roses, all growing wild, up to the mission school and the church. The church, to our utter disappointment, is being renovated at the moment, and there’s almost nothing except the stone doorway that’s anywhere close to intact. The church is a mere shell, with workers clambering all over, putting up wooden beams, cementing together stone blocks, gazing curiously at us. I don’t know what the church will look like when it’s finished—whether even it will resemble the original (though, considering it’s been around for more than 150 years, it’s hardly like to look like it did in 1843; there are bound to have been numerous changes ever since).

We set forth for Narkanda, beyond which it’s a two hour drive or so to Kufri. Sharmaji’s already told us that the road to Chail diverges from the National Highway at Kufri, so we’re looking out for it, and duly turn onto it when we arrive at Kufri. What we don’t realise until later is that Kufri’s main tourist area lies along the road to Chail. Kufri, in the good old days, was a major ski resort but has now been overtaken by Auli—and what’s left is a seedy, ugly place that’s thronged by tourists for whom the ultimate thrill is to ride a pony, eat spicy chaat from roadside stalls, and shriek happily at each other.

The result is a kilometre or more of vehicles—cabs and tourist buses—parked bumper to bumper along one side of a steep, narrow road. The travelers themselves flock around the numerous souvenir stalls and pony-wallahs (along with smelly ponies in tow). It’s a crazy, noisy, dirty and unbelievably crowded stretch of road, and by the time we make our way through it, Tarun and I (even though I’m not driving) are tense and irritable.

The road, 28 km of it, up to Chail, somewhat makes up for the utter horridness of Kufri itself. There are deep, dense woods of oak, pine, deodar and rhododendron all through, and some of the rhododendron is even flowering, the blossoms a brilliant red against the varied greens of the forest. We see a barbet up in a tree; a partridge; and lots of jungle crows, magpie robins, and white-cheeked bulbuls.

We reach the Chail Palace at around 3 PM, and have lunch before we’re taken up to our deluxe log hut. The setting is perfect—deodar woods all around—but if this is the deluxe log hut, I shudder to think what an ordinary log hut would be like. The room smells of mice, the carpet is faded, the bedspread stained, and the bathroom looks as if it was made when the Maharaja of Patiala built the Chail Palace, and hasn’t been renovated since. It isn’t obviously dirty, but there’s a certain shabbiness about it that makes even the Peterhoff look luxurious.

Tarun asks Reception if there’s another room we can get. There isn’t, but the guy at the front desk is curious to know why we want to move. Tarun says the room is awful. "It can’t be," the man exclaims, obviously horrified. "It’s got wall to wall carpeting." We give up. Thank heavens, we’re in Chail only one night.

We try doing some sightseeing—Chail, after all, is home to the highest cricket ground in the world—but the road leading up to the ground is so steep, there’s no way our poor car is going to do that climb. Let it be, we decide. We’ll go back to the hotel—the palace part of it—and while away our time there. Which we do.

Tarun and I have had a rather restless night in our deluxe log hut at Chail. The Chail Palace itself looks not too bad—some parts of it are positively beautiful, and a visitor at the Orchard Retreat in Thanedhar had mentioned that the Maharani Suite is particularly fine. We seem to have been exceptionally unlucky in our accommodation. The hill on which the log huts stand is haunted by dangerous-looking Rhesus macaques, and Tarun and I move out only once we’ve armed ourselves with a couple of fist-sized stones. And the room, on closer acquaintance, does not improve. In fact, it just gets worse. Halfway through the evening, we realise the significance of the room’s somewhat weird décor. There are huge mirrors all over, even two on the ceiling. There’s a heart-shaped mirror in the bathroom. And there are prints of nudes, including a somewhat Rubensque woman with a bad case of cellulite. Not what you’d usually find in hotel rooms in India. And then we happen to have a look at the key tab: Honeymoon Den. Things sort of make an amusing sense after that.

But I guess you’d want some romance on your honeymoon, wouldn’t you? This log hut may be secluded, but the general air of scruffiness and dirt is appalling. There’s a half-smoked beedi (a local hand-rolled cigarette) lying in a drain in the bathroom floor. The cistern above the loo is rusted and dirty. At night we hear the pitter-patter of little feet somewhere behind the paneling of the room.

So we’re rather glad to check out of Chail. The road we have to take goes past Kandaghat, Solan, Dharampur, Kalka and Parwanoo to Pinjore. The first 10 km are through beautiful woods: mainly pine and oak, mixed with some deodar and rhododendron. Beyond that, the woods start thinning out, the cedars disappearing, and eventually the pines giving way to more plains species. Almost all the way through the hills are also orchards: we see ripe plums and apricots; raw walnuts, pears, apples and pomegranates. The pomegranates also grow wild in places in the hills, their bright red-orange flowers visible from far away.

We stop at Dharampur to have lunch at a famous roadside eatery called Giani da Dhaba. Giani is large, and the food is delicious. We order their specialty, a lemon chicken that has a lovely tang to it and isn’t terribly spicy. Half an hour later, full of good food and some chilled lychee juice, we’re on our way again.

We drive down a highway edged with flowering trees: mauve jacaranda, orange Royal Poinciana, magenta bougainvillea. They’re pretty, but we find ourselves missing the wildflowers of Thanedhar. We reach Pinjore at around 3 PM. Pinjore is home to a famous Mughal garden, a sight I’ve wanted to see for a while. We check in at the Budgerigar Motel, have a coffee (very weak and milky), and take ourselves off to the gardens next door.

The gardens are a mess. Oh, they’ve very neat, possibly pretty to many people: but they probably bear very little semblance to the original. The water channels, almost certainly originally lined in red sandstone—or some stone, at any rate—are now lined with ugly blue-grey ceramic tiles that make them look like a shoddy bathroom. The pavilions, originally made of lightly carved sandstone (you can still see the carving) have been painted over completely in a yellowish cream. One of the pavilions, centred along a water channel, had been converted into a horrible little café with huge garden umbrellas, tables and chairs on the terrace outside.

The only redeeming feature are the extensive orchards on either side of the main garden. Here grow mangoes and chikoos (neeseberry, also known as sapota), the trees laden with fruit, jealously guarded by men who patrol with long sticks in hand to keep off marauders, both human and avian.

We eat an earliesh dinner, then make our way to the gardens next door, to see them at night, when they’re illuminated. The lighting is all right—not as great as it could’ve been. We take a few pictures, then head back to the motel. It’s back to Delhi tomorrow. The party’s over.