This piece is different from usual travel guides. I wrote this narrative while exploring Mashobra, Shimla. In the write-up, I speak freely about my writing journey. You are taken to the nooks and corners of an itinerant writer’s life who manages her work on the go.
Hope you enjoy the reality.
Oh, I have mentioned all the things I did in Mashobra throughout the piece, and you can find a list of them at the end too. Or go to the places to visit in Mashobra Himachal Pradesh now.
The attic of a four-story building of a 2146-meter high Himachali village must’ve been a special place to watch the super flower blood moon of May 2021. Frankly, I didn’t choose the destination to witness the full moon from there. Serendipity brought me to that attic of Mashobra Shimla before the full moon of May.
Fagu wasn’t an underwhelming experience due to its location. I didn’t enjoy my stay in Fagu because of the commercial attitude of the many home stays I interacted with in Fagu Himachal Pradesh.
Like in many small villages of Himachal, a traveler has to stick to home stays in a tiny place like Fagu. And I love staying in Indian homestays (and abroad too). For most of my travel life, I have been more than happy to know a host family and understand their way of life. Sometimes staying in a homestay could imply you have to talk and smile when you want to write quietly in a little corner. But everything comes at a price, and well, families function in their peculiar way. Isn’t travel all about embracing the unknown?
So far so good. But in this 2450-meter high apple village Fagu, my experience in home stays was far from good.
Let me take you through my Fagu journey as it happened.
I first created a draft for the restaurants near MG Road Bangalore when I was staying at the boutique hotel Casa Cottage behind Richmond Town. Sitting under the avocado trees, I would read books on Bangalore. Sometimes midday, I would pack my Kindle, pen, and notebook and head out. A few days, I stopped by Koshy’s and Indian Coffee House, and other days, I walked on. Towards the evening, my partner would join me for dinner, and we would explore different restaurants around MG Road (It’s close to Richmond Town). And many of those adventures of my belly found their way into this article.
I lived in Bangalore for quite a while and ate at many restaurants, kiosks, food stalls, and cycle vendors. But I never wrote about those eateries. I was scared of indulging in my food obsession. In Richmond Town, I was eating out at a new place daily because we were soon leaving Bangalore(for the nth time). Our Karnataka adventures were coming to an end. And so, I decided to record my food experiences in this MG road restaurants’ guide.
Here they are all. Enjoy.
Maybe I should be ashamed about not knowing the deity of the Kanag Devi temple.
My host in the apple village of Fagu (in Shimla district) had told us the temple is located in heaven. But when she said the walk to Kanag temple is half an hour from the motorable Sarion village, I had my doubts. Most heavens don’t lie within half an hour of human settlements. Every gorgeous and untouched place is at least a few hours strenuous hike away here in Himachal. But then another tourist family from Delhi praised the Kanag temple as heaven which they didn’t want to leave. If only they had found some trees at the top under whose shade they could sprawl, they would have made their home there. The woman of the family said.
How could they not find trees in Himachal? I wondered but kept quiet.
I’m charged right now. As charged as I can be. I’m seated on dry pine needles and grass. A group of mosquitoes buzz in front of me. But I don’t care. For I’m listening to the sweetest sounds of chirping birds and the rhythmic music of freshwater falling on stones. We have driven to a jungle spot to work and write. There has been no power since morning in our remote stay in the mountains near Mashobra village of Shimla. Our village is probably called Gagal and it is near Mohanpur, that’s all I know about our whereabouts. Our host told us the electricians are fixing the cables, and we would only get power by five, maybe a bit before.
It was only 2 pm. My Mac was at 18% and my husband’s Mac was discharged. He has a big release today so he needed electricity immediately. You know what he has done to ensure he never gets out of power? He has purchased a car charger that loads up electronics from the car battery. We are perfectly remote and nomadic in every sense.
Here I run with little children in their parents’ green fields. I almost join the lithe girls in their hop-scotch game. I explore every obscure path that can be (or cannot be) stepped on. Every tiny dhaba seems like a food stop. I never shake off the red-black curious beetles that embezzle my white-green Kashmiri kurta. Whistling thrush is my new loud neighbor (I won’t say friend for she hardly seems to care). I click and research the birds I see from the balcony of my one-bedroom guesthouse. (Here are some parrots, if you are craving to see.)
We are in the village of Mehli Shimla. (Later when we would tell the locals where all we had stayed in Himachal, they didn’t understand Mehli but recognized Shakrala, a village of rural Shimla under which Mehli falls, I guess). Mehli is our first stop on this indefinite Himachal Pradesh trip.
I’ve finally ended up in the Himalayan mountains of Himachal Pradesh, and I would live here for the next few months. This mountain excursion was always the plan for the summer and now as my fingers freeze, I wonder why I chose Himachal. Because I love the mountains or because I’m familiar with the Himalayas from my last four-month trip to Dharamshala in 2019?
In the Shimla area of the mountains where I’m at, summer is not well-known. Locals talk about hailstorms and snowfall even during the months of May to July when the plains of India scorch. During the summers, rains in the lower part of India are scarce but right now heavy rain falls outside my one-bedroom-and-hall house. I have kept the netted house door open by sticking a thick foot mat between the door and its frame. The temperature is no more than 11 degrees outside but when all the doors and windows are closed I stifle, a claustrophobia I picked up, perhaps, by growing up in a very open garden-facing independent house of my parents.
I wrote in detail on homestays in India in this recent piece on accommodations in India. I won’t repeat all I said there about Indian homestays, but I would share my experience of traveling in India and staying in different places.
I’ve been living in India for more than thirty years (I’m an Indian), but I’ve also been traveling in India for about 18 years. My journey started with living in paying guest houses across Rajasthan when I was fifteen. Then I spent four years in a girls hostel in Delhi, followed by a short stay in a shared Mumbai apartment. Finally, I shifted to living full-time in Bangalore, Pune, and Delhi homes.
Those were my engineering and corporate years. In between, I traveled within India and experimented with various kinds of stays (both with friends and alone). Then I quit my job, and now I travel full-time. After putting up at hotels, resorts, hostels, paying guests, serviced apartments, I often choose Indian home stays over other guesthouses.
Finding good guest houses in India could be as chance-based as cracking a lottery. Amongst the many variables that might work for against you finding a comfortable Indian lodging are location, pricing, facilities, cleanliness, linen and towels, water taps, mosquitoes, cockroaches, (noisy) fans, parking, host and the service staff, their culture, relationship between the guests, and the geography.
In this guide to finding good accommodations in India, I also take you through the history of travel and lodging in India. Because without knowing the evolution of travel in India we can’t understand the current Indian hospitality industry.
Pro Tip: Also read my guide to finding Indian homestays. The article has in-depth information on Indian homestay culture.
We all have been stuck inside homes for about six months now. Though usually, I am planning a birthday trip around this time of the year, as September approached I got anxious that I might want to go somewhere. But would I be able to step out of Bengaluru or even my house?
Then I remembered the article I had written on traveling in the Pandemic. For those who have read the guide know that I only suggested traveling by car to an isolated homestay or a guesthouse near the woods. Thus you can change your view, hike around, be in nature, and even work with the lush forest swaying in front of you.
Remembering my idea, I decided to travel in Karnataka and started searching for isolated hotels in the state. But as I pored over hundreds of hotels and guesthouses over various websites, I decided to dedicate an entire guide to isolated hotels in Madikeri, Coorg as most of the properties I liked were from this area.
Please note: Though I wrote this guide in September 2020, these are still some of my most preferred home stays and hotels in Coorg. Updated 2023. Updated again 2024. The problem is that most places have increased their prices exponentially. Everyone around Bangalore tells me this is the supply-demand model. I say, people are making as much money as they can. They don’t necessarily have to. Please do consider your budget while browsing through the guesthouse.
What does this travel guide to Dharamshala contain?
This is not your typical Dharamshala travel guide.
During my six weeks in Dharamshala, I hardly ever searched for “things to do in Dharmshala” or “best places to visit in Dharmashala.”
What was I doing? I was busy taking my Dharamshala trip slow.
This might sound clichéd, but I was learning the art of doing nothing.
I started my journey in Dharamshala by attending a Vipassana course in Dharamkot, one of the many green villages of the Dharamshala district. After a much-needed ten-day silence of body and mind, I packed my bags and headed out of the deodar forests of the Dharamkot Vipassana center. My plan was to stay for a week in upper Dharamkot.
But something made me leave Dharamkot in two days. Was it the smoky air of my Dharamkot hostel or the hippies lining the cafes in Dharamkot market, I am not sure. I went to live on the other side of Dharamkot to Upper BhagsuNaag, another lush village in Dharmshala.
I had gone to Bhagsu for a week, and I didn’t know I would end up spending more than a month there.