Sunday, 26 October 2014, Amritsar and Shimla
Pati and BeeBee left Amritsar at 9 am on Sunday with their Amritsar driver (no guide required), headed for Shimla in the Himalayas. Their itinery summarized the drive as "300 Kms (06 Hrs Drive)." In fact, the drive took 10 hours, but more on that later ...
As they left Amritsar, BeeBee realized that she had become somewhat adjusted to Indian traffic. After all, they always had good drivers, and all the rest of the traffic seemed to know what they were doing, even the cows. The traffic thinned slightly as they traveled and they drove through numerous small towns and villages. Around 11:30, the driver asked them if they would like to take tea and coffee. Pati and BeeBee were thirsty, so they said yes.
After a short stop, they were on the road again. The driver made a cellphone call in Punjabi laced with a few English words. BeeBee said "I think he's lost." The driver seemed to be searching for something and finally said "Lunch now?" It had been about an hour since the tea and coffee. The place where they stopped was much more primitive than the previous stop. It began to dawn on Pati that "tea" had actually meant "lunch." The stop had three dining areas, one outside under a cover, a covered one, and a building labeled "AC Dining Room." After a failed attempt to be seated in one of the non-AC areas, Pati and BeeBee were hustled into the "AC Dining Room" which contained about a dozen tables, seating for about 50, and no AC. Forty-eight of the chairs were empty.
An irritated little waiter handed BeeBee and Pati menus with a list of options they could not comprehend. They saw the word paneer (sort of a no-curd cottage cheese) in two items and - since they had seen brains as an ingredient in some other items - ordered two paneer dishes and garlic naan (a kind of bread). The waiter went away and after some delay said there was no garlic naan to be had. BeeBee and Pati reordered their naan sans garlic. The food arrived soon enough, with metal plates and spoons. The paneer was a green soupy mixture with a few small cubes of paneer: imagine a bowl of very liquid, very green spinach. As BeeBee began to spoon out the glop onto their plates, they both collapsed in laughter. Fortunately, there were no other diners (or the little man) to see or hear them. Also fortunately, the paneer and the naan were tasty. They finished and the little man reappeared, so that they could ask for their bill. For the driver also, he asked? (This had never happened before; the driver is expected to take care of himself.) Yes, for the driver also, Pati said, and paid the bill of 300 rupees (about $5.50 USD) for the three of them. Then Pati handed the little man a tip, and suddenly the little man smiled for the first time.
Incidentally, this restaurant has a large sign requesting that diners "like it" on Facebook!
As soon as they left the restaurant, the driver made a U-turn and retraced several miles that BeeBee recognized, further convincing her that the driver was indeed lost. At one small town, the driver made a brief stop to go into an establishment, explaining that his cellphone battery was dead. And around 3 pm, he received a cellphone call, which later turned out to be the Shimla guide calling to see where he was. Apparently, the correct answer was "near Chandigarh," which is a 4 hour drive from Shimla. The guide had asked "Are you in Shimla?" The itinerary had said it was a 6 hour drive, so expecting arrival at 3 pm was reasonable from the guide's viewpoint. Incidentally, the guide speaks Hindu (the official language of India) and good English, while the driver speaks Punjabi and very little English. The guide and driver communicate with great difficulty, as the guide told us later.
Soon after Chandigarh (or wherever they actually were), the road began to enter the Himalayas. The road was steep and windy, in bad repair, one to one-and-a-half cars wide, and adjacent to a steep dropoff on at least one side. The road climbed each mountain in a series of switchbacks, and upon reaching the top, curved around to the other side of the mountain and descended in another series of switchbacks. Getting from one mountain to the next was accomplished by driving across a narrow bridge between them, near the valley but still high. Of course, the road was two-way and there were plenty of huge trucks and buses. Their driver never stayed behind another vehicle for long, first announcing his intentions to pass by honking and then passing - curves and oncoming traffic did not phase him. BeeBee quickly lost her complacency about Indian driving. But their driver did not seem to try anything more extreme than all the other drivers, and being cautious would have doubled their driving time.
As the day wore on, BeeBee began to worry that they would not reach Shimla before dark (before 6 pm this time of year) and they would be driving this road in almost impossible conditions. She was both right and wrong: they reached Shimla proper just before 6 and then the really hard driving began. Shimla is built on 7 hills, and their hotel was several miles beyond Shimla. The road was just as bad, and now even more traffic and people walking entered the mix. And it was pitch dark. Traffic would stop for minutes at a time; in one case, a tunnel through a hill was allowing traffic through one direction at a time (people walking were using the other half). Every switchback or road merge required extra time to allow cars to maneuver the almost-impossibly-sharp turns. Finally, the turn uphill to their hotel appeared. They waited while the guard examined the underside of their car with a mirror, then the steep climb to the hotel itself.
Pati and BeeBee left Amritsar at 9 am on Sunday with their Amritsar driver (no guide required), headed for Shimla in the Himalayas. Their itinery summarized the drive as "300 Kms (06 Hrs Drive)." In fact, the drive took 10 hours, but more on that later ...
As they left Amritsar, BeeBee realized that she had become somewhat adjusted to Indian traffic. After all, they always had good drivers, and all the rest of the traffic seemed to know what they were doing, even the cows. The traffic thinned slightly as they traveled and they drove through numerous small towns and villages. Around 11:30, the driver asked them if they would like to take tea and coffee. Pati and BeeBee were thirsty, so they said yes.
After a short stop, they were on the road again. The driver made a cellphone call in Punjabi laced with a few English words. BeeBee said "I think he's lost." The driver seemed to be searching for something and finally said "Lunch now?" It had been about an hour since the tea and coffee. The place where they stopped was much more primitive than the previous stop. It began to dawn on Pati that "tea" had actually meant "lunch." The stop had three dining areas, one outside under a cover, a covered one, and a building labeled "AC Dining Room." After a failed attempt to be seated in one of the non-AC areas, Pati and BeeBee were hustled into the "AC Dining Room" which contained about a dozen tables, seating for about 50, and no AC. Forty-eight of the chairs were empty.
An irritated little waiter handed BeeBee and Pati menus with a list of options they could not comprehend. They saw the word paneer (sort of a no-curd cottage cheese) in two items and - since they had seen brains as an ingredient in some other items - ordered two paneer dishes and garlic naan (a kind of bread). The waiter went away and after some delay said there was no garlic naan to be had. BeeBee and Pati reordered their naan sans garlic. The food arrived soon enough, with metal plates and spoons. The paneer was a green soupy mixture with a few small cubes of paneer: imagine a bowl of very liquid, very green spinach. As BeeBee began to spoon out the glop onto their plates, they both collapsed in laughter. Fortunately, there were no other diners (or the little man) to see or hear them. Also fortunately, the paneer and the naan were tasty. They finished and the little man reappeared, so that they could ask for their bill. For the driver also, he asked? (This had never happened before; the driver is expected to take care of himself.) Yes, for the driver also, Pati said, and paid the bill of 300 rupees (about $5.50 USD) for the three of them. Then Pati handed the little man a tip, and suddenly the little man smiled for the first time.
Incidentally, this restaurant has a large sign requesting that diners "like it" on Facebook!
As soon as they left the restaurant, the driver made a U-turn and retraced several miles that BeeBee recognized, further convincing her that the driver was indeed lost. At one small town, the driver made a brief stop to go into an establishment, explaining that his cellphone battery was dead. And around 3 pm, he received a cellphone call, which later turned out to be the Shimla guide calling to see where he was. Apparently, the correct answer was "near Chandigarh," which is a 4 hour drive from Shimla. The guide had asked "Are you in Shimla?" The itinerary had said it was a 6 hour drive, so expecting arrival at 3 pm was reasonable from the guide's viewpoint. Incidentally, the guide speaks Hindu (the official language of India) and good English, while the driver speaks Punjabi and very little English. The guide and driver communicate with great difficulty, as the guide told us later.
Soon after Chandigarh (or wherever they actually were), the road began to enter the Himalayas. The road was steep and windy, in bad repair, one to one-and-a-half cars wide, and adjacent to a steep dropoff on at least one side. The road climbed each mountain in a series of switchbacks, and upon reaching the top, curved around to the other side of the mountain and descended in another series of switchbacks. Getting from one mountain to the next was accomplished by driving across a narrow bridge between them, near the valley but still high. Of course, the road was two-way and there were plenty of huge trucks and buses. Their driver never stayed behind another vehicle for long, first announcing his intentions to pass by honking and then passing - curves and oncoming traffic did not phase him. BeeBee quickly lost her complacency about Indian driving. But their driver did not seem to try anything more extreme than all the other drivers, and being cautious would have doubled their driving time.
As the day wore on, BeeBee began to worry that they would not reach Shimla before dark (before 6 pm this time of year) and they would be driving this road in almost impossible conditions. She was both right and wrong: they reached Shimla proper just before 6 and then the really hard driving began. Shimla is built on 7 hills, and their hotel was several miles beyond Shimla. The road was just as bad, and now even more traffic and people walking entered the mix. And it was pitch dark. Traffic would stop for minutes at a time; in one case, a tunnel through a hill was allowing traffic through one direction at a time (people walking were using the other half). Every switchback or road merge required extra time to allow cars to maneuver the almost-impossibly-sharp turns. Finally, the turn uphill to their hotel appeared. They waited while the guard examined the underside of their car with a mirror, then the steep climb to the hotel itself.
As they unloaded their luggage and Pati tipped the driver for the day, Pati suggested a 9 am start the next day. The driver summoned all the English he had: "10 o'clock. I am very tired."
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| Slime |
Yum yum... tasty
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