While we were heading down, I picked out a few stops along the way. One great advantage of being in a car is that you have a lot of freedom to stop and see things when you want. While we were looking for Kangra Fort, it suddenly dawned on me that Bharat can’t read, at least not in English. And not well in Hindi if at all. He’s always stopping for directions, even on the occasion that there are signs that I can (English) or can’t (Hindi) read. Sometimes I show him place names in the book, and he just remembers the place on the page I’m pointing to when he asks for directions.
Anyway, the fort was no big deal to find, and it was wonderful. I’d expected something that was falling down and pretty ramshackle since it’s near nothing in the world touristic, but instead it’s an almost Walt Disney fantasy castle with high, rambling walls and access ways that
go way, way, way up. The fort is on a simply unbelievable spot, at the confluence of two rivers and up on a cliff point that seems as high and steep as Grand Canyon. I was also surprised to find a few people there. Of course, there were some people working on the place (you see that everywhere), but there were also a few Indian tourists. One nice woman offered me a bit of her breakfast. Since we had a long way to go, though, I feigned stomach trouble and sweated my way on up the steep road to the interior of the castle.As I entered the main part of the interior… the keep, I guess…I was surprised to come across big light reflectors, tents, booms with microphones and motion picture cameras. A music video was in production! This country is film and video mad…but here at Kangra Fort? An Indian guy standing near me said hello with an unmistakably American tone, and it turns out he’s from NYC and here to work on the singer’s make-up. The singer (don’t remember who) is doing a sad love song, the guy told me, so it’s not an MTV type of thing. I detected a slight bit of dismissive ness in his tone.
I went on to the top of the fort and the fantastic view down two glacial river valleys. I was out of breath and sweating a good deal, but what a fine moment to be so far up here, alone in all the natural grandeur and history (fort easily dates to the 10th century and is probably much older than that). There was an interesting square pool (tank) in the center of the summit with a jaguar head as the spigot. AH! A Mayan connection! Uncanny how New World-y it looked.
It was getting hot (and late) fast, so I headed fairly quickly back down the fort. On the way, I passed my make-up buddy tending to a sweaty, corpulent, cranky guy in a chair under a small canopy; neither acknowledged my greeting as I passed.
Just coming to the exit of the keep, I was stopped dead in my tracks by an amazing sight in the corner of my eye – a huge, rock-cut temple complex right there in the corner of the courtyard. Workers were stabilizing walls opposite the carved face of the temple, but it looked to me that, when the fort was constructed in the 10th century, the builders had just walled up and around this façade and, perhaps, smoothed off the other side of the temple. With Hinduism and Buddhism vying with each other in this area for centuries, it wasn’t at all uncommon for one to “adapt” the temples of one for its own use. I can’t wait to compare my images from Mansoor with these. I know from memory that some of the carved imagery is the same…I wonder how extensive the similarity is. This façade could give us an even better idea of what Mansoor had been like before the earthquake. And I wonder if the tank above had been related to the temple here. There was a huge tank in front of the temples at Mansoor. I’ll have to pass these details on to Jane.
The hour delay caused by my little discovery sent me scurrying on down the mountain. Though I wanted to stop at yet one more temple, Bharat (politely) suggested we get our asses on down the road or we might be driving at night. Experience tells me to listen to experience, so I acceded, and we headed on toward Shimla.
It was a long and pretty tough drive, continually winding up one valley wall and down the other. You could see for miles and miles across the mountains and up and down these canyons. The walls were so steep that I got used to watching the vegetation change with the altitude – rich forest with ferns, evergreens, and deciduous trees up high, piney woods below that, and eucalyptus groves at the lowest levels we went to. Then the reverse order as we climbed the other wall of the valley. Again and again.
We stopped for lunch at a grubby little stand, and Bharat advised me to eat dal; they have to fix
that fresh every day, he confided. Much later, Bharat suggested we stop for tea at an open little place as he said he was now sure we’d make Shimla by dark. That was quite a pleasant stop.When we got to Shimla, I began to see a pattern emerge: my great hopes of a quiet, pristine environment being dashed by loud, congested roads and a huge crowd. After looking for a room in a couple of places and rubbing off a persistent tout, I got a wonderful room in a hotel just off the Mall in Shimla. Shimla is spread out across a ridge, and you can’t drive up a lot of the roads, so I hired someone to carry my luggage up to the hotel and (tried to) follow the porter. I think he got there 10 minutes before I did. What IS the altitude here? When I went down three flights of stairs to see the room, I was winded for five minutes after I walked back up to the desk before I could say I’d take it.
I just dined on soup and what I think of as Indian margaritas -- fresh lime soda with salt.
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