Another train journey, this time it the overnight Rajdhani, a superfast train, that takes me from New Delhi to Abu Road. My berth again is situated middle carriage at the emergency window. Departure is not until 8pm with an arrival time of 6am. Ready for alighting at 5.30am, six comes and goes, it is still dark out the train window but the dark is just starting to be erased from the east. Half an hour late is not too bad and the chill of the morning has descended as I sit on the platform waiting for the frenzied business of other passengers to finish before organising a taxi to take me up the mountain. It is quiet, comparably, the station has not fully woken. Businesses have shutters down suggesting there are not too many trains due this early.
The price of a taxi has not varied since my last three years ago, ' fixed price', I am told, as I try and negotiate a cheaper price. The journey is twenty-seven kilometres, twenty two climbing from desert floor to a height of 1220m with the highest peak a further five hundred metres. The road hugs and traverses the hill side with stone barricades along the edge painted in black and white stripes. At times this pattern is intense, freshly painted and then totally faded in other areas. The landscape is arid. Clumps of bamboo, leaves having withdrawn their green to preserve moisture, rustle in the morning breeze. Varieties of cactus in ever elusive shapes hang from rocks unable to support themselves vertically. The food and shelter tree for so many birds and animals, the fig, overhangs the road and forms a patchwork of dots across the hillsides. Languor monkeys are feasting and the young chase each other across the road.
The morning light glows orange across the plain, visibility is still possible, later the dust rises with the heat. Peacocks are resplendent, many wander beside the road foraging for food their iridescent plumage hanging behind unaware of their visual beauty. Treepie join the peacocks on the ground, tan brown and black bands, quite striking. Others fly higher and are camouflaged by the leaf cover, smaller birds, flurrying from one branch to another.
It is a pleasant drive with little traffic or excessive and continual horn use. To enter the top there is a per person road tax of rs10, willingly paid when you understand just how extensive the continual maintenance of this hill station road is.
The price of a taxi has not varied since my last three years ago, ' fixed price', I am told, as I try and negotiate a cheaper price. The journey is twenty-seven kilometres, twenty two climbing from desert floor to a height of 1220m with the highest peak a further five hundred metres. The road hugs and traverses the hill side with stone barricades along the edge painted in black and white stripes. At times this pattern is intense, freshly painted and then totally faded in other areas. The landscape is arid. Clumps of bamboo, leaves having withdrawn their green to preserve moisture, rustle in the morning breeze. Varieties of cactus in ever elusive shapes hang from rocks unable to support themselves vertically. The food and shelter tree for so many birds and animals, the fig, overhangs the road and forms a patchwork of dots across the hillsides. Languor monkeys are feasting and the young chase each other across the road.
The morning light glows orange across the plain, visibility is still possible, later the dust rises with the heat. Peacocks are resplendent, many wander beside the road foraging for food their iridescent plumage hanging behind unaware of their visual beauty. Treepie join the peacocks on the ground, tan brown and black bands, quite striking. Others fly higher and are camouflaged by the leaf cover, smaller birds, flurrying from one branch to another.
It is a pleasant drive with little traffic or excessive and continual horn use. To enter the top there is a per person road tax of rs10, willingly paid when you understand just how extensive the continual maintenance of this hill station road is.
No comments:
Post a Comment