Summer Jewels

Summers in the country are mostly about the shortage of water and electricity and the abundance of mosquitoes. But there is one thing about the season in Delhi that makes it worth all the trouble. The Labernum trees, also called the Golden Chain flowers. Just before the summer season the tree sheds all its leaves and has just bare branches and big dark brown drumstick like seed pods. These pods clang against each other in the wind making an eerie woody sound. Inspiration behind wind chimes?? If you see it at night, you would think it’s haunted.

As summer arrives new leaves sprout almost overnight and eventually the tree gets covered in bright yellow flower bunches. It’s almost as if the sun lives in there. What keeps me from keeping these flowers in my house is that all parts of this plant are poisonous.

It reminds me somewhat of the joys in life; they come only once in a while, don’t stay on for very long, but sure delight and brighten lives as long as they last.



Really sorry for the bad picture! I'll post better ones in the next flowering season.

Chakrata

It’s been a long time since I wrote or went for a trip. The only one we went to after Spiti was Chakrata in April 2008. Beautiful place, training ground for the Indian army and RAW.Its under publicized and neglected. But that is only on the tourism front. The army might have deliberately tried to keep it inconspicuous because of its training bases there, particularly evident because foreign nationals are not allowed in. Even Indians can’t go without being noted. There isn’t much very different from most obscure mountain locations in India- beautiful beyond question. But there is a gem here (waiting to become popular, which fortunately hasn’t happened so far!)- The “Tiger falls”. There are two ways of getting there. One is by driving around Chakrata and the other is by trekking through the mountain forests. You will find the details, distance etc. on maps and books. But what you might not find is someone who actually walked the way. Fortunately or unfortunately we decided to walk to the falls assuming that it was 5 kms away. Six hours and 20 kms of walking finally bought us back to the hotel. Mountain lesson # n- It is very easy to get lost in mountain forests even if you have directions. All clearings look alike and 5 kms trekking on a mountain is worse than walking 20 kms on a plain road! But all this trouble was worth it for just a glimpse of the falls. It’s majestic and hidden in a cove. Kanasar is another gem close by and has the biggest pine forests in Asia.

The route to Chakrata is part of the fun. The roads are nice and a long stretch passes through the Rajaji national park. One of the very few hotels there “Snow View” is a beautiful old house that belonged to some Britishers. But it is now in a state of neglect. The surroundings are strewn with plastic and the rooms are unkempt. There isn’t even a dustbin around. Repeated requests to the hotel staff yielded no results and the food is bad; totally unlike the amazingly simple and tasty food we are used to eating in the mountains. The surroundings are dirty too and this is the best hotel available here. You can’t help feeling disgusted at the callousness.

Anyway, the one I am really looking forward to is our trip to Leh later this year. Let’s see how things work out!

Here are a few pics...

Rajaji National Park (enroute Chakrata)











Apple Orchard


Kanasar


Tiger Falls