Pack your bags and take off

Sarahan, 200 km from Shimla, is the perfect getaway

Summer is upon us, and as the mercury rises and hot winds lash the plains, all I can do is yearn for the hills. Indeed, the chill of a mountain dawn, long walks in the day and starry nights are a balm to the urban soul — mine, at any rate. So when I reach Sarahan, a small town in Himachal Pradesh with a place in history and myth quite disproportionate to its size, my urban blues evaporate with the morning dew. About 200 km from Shimla, Sarahan is the summer capital of the erstwhile Bushahr kingdom and the gateway to Kinnaur. A couple of days here and I realise how sometimes even gateways can be places so interesting that one feels like stopping for a while instead of crossing over.

Many visit Sarahan for its ancient Bhimkali temple. It’s believed that when the angry Shiva held his dead wife, Sati, in his arms, he danced the dance of destruction, the Tandava. As he danced, parts of her body fell to earth and temples came up at those hallowed spots. Her ear fell in Sarahan, hence its importance. Today, it claims to be the last temple in the Sutlej valley to be served by Brahmin priests. The temple is next to the hotel I’m staying in, the state tourism corporation’s Shrikhand. Perched on the edge of a cliff, its gardens are typical of the hills, flowers that have long escaped their beds and tufty grass that has a mind of its own. One side overlooks the blue yonder, the other, the temple.

The peaceful sounds of temple bells draw me in. It’s dark and cool inside as I explore the temple, looking through its tiny windows and feeling the warmth of the smooth wooden floor. It is a unique structure, with a heavy concrete plinth supporting a tall stupa-like structure made of intricately carved timber. “This architecture is well suited to our climate,” explains the priest. “The wood walls and floors add warmth, the tiny windows keep the building ventilated and insulated, and the high stone plinth ensures accessibility even when the area is covered in deep snow!” Being on the old Indo-Tibetan trade route, Sarahan has seen a lot of Buddhist influence over the centuries. In the inner sanctum, I see a collection of Hindu as well as Buddhist bronzes, which bear testimony to this.

Evenings in Sarahan are always pleasant, and the locals tend to gather in the crowded marketplace to watch the world go by. I decide to do the same. The smell of frying noodles entices me to a little roadside eatery facing the temple. As I sit on a terrace, entranced by the sight of the ancient looking (or probably just not very clean) noodle press with which an old lady is making fresh noodles, I get into a conversation with Pratap Chand, a shopkeeper. He’s building a couple of rooms above his shop which overlooks the temple. “I plan to rent them out to tourists to earn some extra income,” says he. Why is it, I ask him, that all the new construction in Sarahan, is modern even though the traditional architecture (so beautifully epitomised by the Bhimkali temple) is so well adapted to their climate? It is, he says, because timber is so expensive and difficult to source today. “In my father and grandfather’s time, people used to go to the forest and cut their own timber. But now, government restrictions have made this impossible,” says he. “I remember the feel of weathered wood underfoot, but have no option but to build cold and hard cement floors!”

The next morning, I find myself up bright and early to the sounds of kirtan from the temple. Dawn is breaking and I feel a rare enthusiasm to step out and enjoy the early morning chill. Sarahan is a wonderful spot for birding, especially pheasants, I’m told. So after a cup of hot sweet tea at a roadside stall, I decide to walk to the pheasant breeding centre, known for having been the first to successfully breed captive Western Tragopans. Puffy clouds in the sky are improbably tinted by the rising sun and wisps of smoke arise lazily from homes. Wild flowers, the occasional butterfly and glorious specimens of traditional architecture (including the erstwhile palace of Bushahr king and the state’s chief minister Virbhadra Singh) keep enticing me to sidetrack. I jump the wall to trespass in an apple orchard instead of walking on the main road. Eventually, when I find the breeding centre shut, I’m not disappointed, for the walk has been worth it. Clearly the hills are working their magic — had the same thing happened in the city, I doubt if I’d have been as sanguine!

Later in the day, as I watch Chand’s house being built, I see workers reinforce beams and pillars. He tells of how the Bhimkali temple withstood the powerful 1905 earthquake that levelled every other building. “The use of timber saved the building, but all we can do today is reinforce the concrete in our modern homes,” he says. Old timers here say that earthquakes are merely aftershocks of Shiva’s dance of destruction, that it is humanity's fate to endure these quakes and atone the sin of Sati’s death. Do they really believe that, I wonder, or are these stories they tell by the fireside? As the evening winds down, I realise that folklore blends more effortlessly with reality in the hills than it does in the city. The sounds of kirtan rise again and I wonder if Shiva would have felt a quantum of solace knowing that his dead wife would continue live on in the hearts of the mountain people, centuries after she’d perished.

On the wild side

Sanjna Kapoor
Theatre personality

  This is our wilderness time. So Africa it is. Last year we went to the Norman Carr camps in the Luangwa National Park in Zambia. I loved it and would want to go back again.

We like to spend a long period of time in one place and people really find that surprising. That’s because many people usually do three days in one place and another three days somewhere else and so on. But if you stay in one place, you get to understand the habits of the animals and you get to observe them closely.

A lot of places in Africa are quite touristy, but Norman Carr is truly carrying forward Norman Carr’s legacy. (Carr was a British conservationist who worked in Central and Southern Africa and was influential in setting up national parks in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe in the 1950s and 1960s). He was the man who turned it into a conservation area and his family is still a part of it. You can sense his legacy here and his deep love, respect and regard for the area. In fact, you can feel it in everybody who is part of the camp and in the attention to detail.

You need a minimum of six days to stay at a camp to truly experience it. The first time Valmik (Thapar, Kapoor’s husband) and I went to Kenya, we spent 10 days in one camp. There was a huge pride of lions. It was fascinating to observe how the cubs were being taught to hunt. Now we are going to another place in Africa for two weeks that is said to be really unique. Apparently in this area, the lions has perfected the technique of hunting down big animals like the elephant and the giraffe. This is also a huge country for the baobab trees, which are absurdly beautiful. And then there are the wonderful birds… Africa is full of surprises and I love going back to it, again and again.

Caipirinhas at the Copacabana

K Ganesh & Meena Ganesh
Serial entrepreneurs and investors

We just got back from 10 days in Rio. Our son was off to a mountaineering camp so this was the only window available for a break. I Googled for places that have the best weather at this time and the top two choices were the Caribbeans and Rio de Janeiro — we chose Rio since we had never been to South America. On vacation, we usually like to put up our feet and chill — we like to wake up late, have a nice brunch, go for a walk... We hate package tours because you have to follow the 6-7-8 schedule where you wake up at 6, have breakfast at 7 and get on a bus at 8! In Rio, we stayed right on the Copacabana beach, which was beautiful, and had caipirinhas — lots of them! (Brazil's famous cocktail, made with cachaça, sugar and lime). We also went on our first helicopter ride, and a day-long cruise expedition on the sea. Though we are not very particular about visiting each and every tourist spot, we managed to visit the most important ones, like the statue of Christ the Redeemer. We like to go to new places every year and usually avoid cold places — last year, we went to Turkey. I think our most memorable holiday would be the Mediterranean cruise we took on our 25th wedding anniversary. It was an amazing experience, when we would cruise at night and dock at a new place every day.

Scenic wonders of Switzerland

Huzaifa Khorakiwala
CEO, Wockhardt Foundation

My favourite summer destination has to be Switzerland, for its immense natural beauty. It has lakes, rivers, greenery, snow-capped mountain peaks — it is the perfect blend of different wonders of nature. Moreover, in Switzerland, natural beauty exists in perfect harmony with economic development — their roads and trains are very well laid out, and the country has all the facilities a traveller may require. I try visiting a new city every time I go there. For instance, Geneva, Zurich and Lugano, (which is considered the Monte Carlo of Switzerland) bordering Italy. I've been there on five or six occasions, on business as well as with family, and plan to go again in a couple of months for a conference. I try not to go there in winter because it gets a little too cold, but the rest of the year is pleasant, especially summer when the calm and serene environment of the country is just beautiful. I don’t have a particular favourite there when it comes to a place or even food, but I do enjoy their fondue.

Relaxed, laid-back holidays

Gaurav Dalmia
CEO Landmark Holdings

I don't have a favourite summer destination but I travel to different countries every year. A typical holiday is 10-14 days and is a relaxed, lazy one, where I wake up late, absorb the culture, enjoy the sights and the food. Last year, we had gone to California and taken a road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco which was absolutely wonderful. The year before that we had travelled to France and Turkey. We've just returned from a great trip to Greece. We stayed at Athens, Santorini and Mykonos. The ferry ride from Santorini to Mykonos was beautiful. We're all vegetarians but we always manage to find great food, and this time was no different. We found this lovely little restaurant called Avocado in Athens, and it had an amazing spread of salads, pizzas and paninis. We're not big city people, I don't like holidaying in cities like London or Hong Kong, since I travel there for work anyway. We prefer more practical, relaxed and laid-back holidays where we can enjoy nature and sight-seeing.