A visit to Palampur

The Journey -musing#4

It was a Sunday when we planned to visit Palampur (not the village Palampur mentioned in NCERT class 9th). Palampur, a town in Himachal Pradesh.

When we went there, I was probably 10 or 11 years old. The plan was devised to coincide with my and my sister's summer vacations.

(Now, I'm not going to go into the specifics of our plans (especially the shopping), because if I do, you won't know about my visit even if I write four blogs after this one😉)

The Journey

We boarded a train. (ideal for long-distance travel) We had our bags packed, as well as a special case for food items. (Koki (a Sindhi paratha), bhindi, puri, and some pickles)(Namkeen and snacks, of course!)

Okay, let's get to the fun part of the journey.

 TYPICAL PUNJABI AUNTIES!!

They boarded the train and entered the compartment from Ujjain. In Ujjain, it was Simhastha time.

These aunties sat down and began cracking Punjabi jokes, which elicited a roar of laughter. I was only able to get a few of these jokes (I know a bit of Punjabi)

Then these aunties started mingling with us and became our source of entertainment. They claimed to be from Jammu and Kashmir and had come to meet the Simhastha guru. We had a good time with them as they continued to tell us their amusing stories. (I have no recollection of any of them now☹)

One of them was an astrologer. My family did not believe in astrology or superstitions. She asked me to show her my hand so she could tell me about my future/career. I reluctantly agreed and handed her my hand to examine. (can you guess what she said?) …………………………………………..…

My fingertips, she claimed, had a round bulging bump. This indicated that I possessed exceptional talent. She told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be in life. I'd be talented in every area. Despite the fact that I didn't believe her, I must admit that I was secretly pleased. (hehe!)

The next day, (afternoon) we said our goodbyes to the aunties and exited the train at Jalandhar railway station. We then took a car to Palampur. It took us 5 hours of perilous round turns to get to Paror. (We also took short breaks to get away from the nausea.)

After dinner, we drove to Palampur, which was about 15-20 minutes away from Paror. We reserved a room at the 'Yashika' hotel.

That's it for this post!

I'll keep writing about our days in Palampur and Paror and will publish another blog about it.

Make sure you subscribe so you can be notified when I publish the next blog. Continue reading to find out about my visit to Palampur in the following blogs (don't miss them, the visit becomes interesting when we meet.....not revealing!)

Thank you for reading this post.