As someone who lives in the foothills of the Himalayas, and has traveled much in their higher reaches, I sport a barely veiled disdain for lesser highlands. Particularly those bumps in the road masquerading as “hill stations”. Every now and then though, one of them turns around with a resounding ‘Take that!’ moment.
Pre-travel research on a never visited Chhattisgarh had coughed up numerous spots that garnered my interest, largely sprinkled across its forested flatlands. And one much-touted Mainpat, the state’s only hill destination that a great number of sites kept likening to Shimla. Seriously?
Have they been to Shimla lately? – my first scornful thought. That it is perched at merely 3200 feet above MSL very nearly had me striking it off the potentials checklist. Mighty glad I didn’t! Looking nothing like Shimla, the serene plateau exuded a delightful personality very much its own. See for yourself.
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu, travel enthusiast and the author of Adrift: A junket junkie in Europe is the youngest of four siblings born into an aristocratic family of Punjab. Dogged in her resistance to conform, and with parental pressure easing sufficiently over the years, she had plenty of freedom of choice. And she chose travel.
She was born in Shimla, and spent her formative years at their home, Windsor Terrace, in Kasumpti while schooling at Convent of Jesus & Mary, Chelsea. The irrepressible wanderlust in her found her changing vocations midstream and she joined Singapore International Airlines to give wing to her passion. She has travelled extensively in Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, South Africa and SE Asia; simultaneously exploring the charms within India.
When she is not travelling, she is writing about it. Over the past decade or so, she has created an impressive writing repertoire for herself: as a columnist with Hindustan Times, as a book reviewer for The Tribune and as a contributor to travel magazines in India and overseas. Her work-in-progress, the documenting of colonial heritage along the Old Hindustan-Tibet Road, is an outcome of her long-standing romance with the Himalayas.
