A Family Holiday

After a break of 12 days, I am back to the same old life. Its my first day in office since 26 May 2010 and all I have done is researching on my next probable destination 🙂

I had gone for a family vacation to Kinnaur district in Himachal Pradesh. It has been almost 5 years since I last went to Kashmir with my parents, just after finishing first year of law school. My parents have, since then, visited Vizag and Nainital-Kausani leaving me in the hostel to battle assignments and end-sem examinations. Last year, they visited Nepal just one month after my joining, leaving me at the mercy of a cook and cleaner 😦

I have had my share of vacations also – with college friends to Shantiniketan, Bakkhali and Murshidabad over the last 5 years. Majority of vacationing in law school used to happen during internships; and I discovered the cities of Delhi [my experiences here, here, here and here] and Mumbai [my experiences here, here, here and here] during them. Internships at law schools are always a great fun learning experience – more in ways of life than in law ;-P

But this time, somehow my dad’s and my leave could coincide to enable us to go for a family vacation. Auditing in my dad’s bank was over and the High Court had shut down for the summer break. My office was hence, lenient in granting me a leave and I grabbed the opportunity.

The destination was decided keeping in mind my tight schedule. Leh-Ladakh was out of question since it requires a longer duration and all other usual hill stations have been more or less covered by us. The travel agency was offering a 12 day package tour to Kinnaur, which fit perfectly into my schedule and we immediately booked it. After a lot of research, I was convinced that it would be a worthy vacation and assured my parents of the same, who were initially hesitant to go to such a lesser-known place . And yes, I was right.  

Where else would I have encountered so many experiences together? Walking through the last Indian village on this side of the Indo-Tibetan border, romancing two rivers together, admiring the local Himachal architecture, spotting a bright hued rainbow in the face of the sparkling white Kinnaur-Kailash range, plucking still-raw apples, plums, shakkarpura and raw almonds from the road-side trees, listening to the temple bell and morning aarti from the bed, joining the local kids in their morning prayer in school, making treacherous treks down rocky paths just to reach the riverside and being generally footloose in the greenery.

I shall bring to you detailed posts on my Shimla-Sarahan-Sangla-Chhitkul-Recong Peo-Kalpa-Rampur trip complete with photos shortly.

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