Fly with me

I laid a T-shirt on the pillow and sat in bed trying not to wonder too much about the cleanliness of this hotel in Dharamsala (there are far better hotels here), when my attention turned to the sounds filtering through the thin window. The crickets, constant in their loud murmurs with a short pause for breath every so often, reminded me of sleeping in tents during those childhood safaris in Africa, but then there was barking in the distance, vacillating between aggressive and mellow, a disturbance and yet a reminder that this was India. To complete the orchestra there was some sort of a chirp, as high pitched as a bird, but not as melodious, and for some reason, it occurred in sequences of four each time. Soon enough, the barking became distant, leaving behind the steadiness of the crickets and chirpers-screechers, so level-headed they bored me to sleep, despite the chill beginning to fill the darkness.

In the morning, I stood on the hotel terrace for a few minutes gazing at the vistas of hills, one shaping the other until at some point they breathed into the mist and were absorbed by the atmosphere. The silence seemed a stark contrast to last night’s not-so-pleasant lullabies. And the view, well perhaps there weren’t many hotels with such striking views stretching into the sky, but it was certainly not enough to justify staying in such a dire hotel, where the smell in the room and the murky maroon dark carpet made me wonder how much the carpet must have absorbed over the years and the amount of dust it must be hoarding.

The next night in Amritsar felt like a treat after all that and a five hour bumpy car journey from Dharamsala. But Svaasa, or Ranjit’s Svaasa, is the kind of hotel — boutique, quaint, a blend of British and Indian — which would be as much of a treat if I had come from a standard five star hotel as it was coming from an unclean two star (the operative word being “unclean”). It was night when we reached, there were mantras chanting in the background, bookcases showcasing all kinds of artefacts, pictures and images filled the walls, and the colours warm and inviting. The corridor led into a courtyard, a haveli of three floors. It was romantic, pretty, and could place me in any year. In some way it reminded me of my favourite hotel in Ahmedabad, the Mangaldas ni Haveli, though that’s more Indian, more Gujarati, while Svaasa has that colonial feel minus the coldness.

Trying to do away with the exhaustion, we took off to the Golden Temple, more astounding than all those years ago when I’d come. I must have been 17 then and it was daytime, but setting eyes on this glistening golden emblem at night is entirely different.

Having seen the procession and then the temple from the inside after the crowds had died down, what struck me was the many volunteers cleaning the floors, others polishing with full effort the railings of the queuing lines to make them shine and others handing out fistfuls of an Indian sweet called shiro to all the visitors — and how very clean this place was.

— Follow Meera Ashish on www.talefourcities.com and @meeraashish and @talefourcities