Rest House Chronicles – III
Apr 11, 2018Sometime in 1996-97 I was consigned to the dog house for some misdemeanour and, quite appropriately, posted to the Animal Husbandry Department. I decided to visit the department’s institutions in Dodra-Kwar, an area dependent on subsistence agriculture and sheep rearing. Dodra-Kwar is a remote tehsil, tucked away in the north-east corner of Shimla district, bordering Uttarakhand. History records that it was given to the Rampur Bushair state as dowry by a principality in present day Uttarakhand. Ever since then, the joke goes, Himachal has been trying to return it but Uttarakhand is having none of it ! It too, like Bara Bhangal, was landlocked till very recently, but is now connected – a road was constructed in 2009 over the 12000 feet high Chanshil Pass to connect it to Chirgaon/Larot. In 1997, however, I along with a Veterinary Doctor and a couple of pharmacists, trekked from Larot, over the Pass (probably the most beautiful one in the state), through the dense forest on the other side known as Kala Van, and by evening arrived at the first village, Kwar.Dodra-Kwar lies in the valley of the Rupen river (a tributary of the Yamuna) and is so named after its two villages, Dodra and Kwar (there is also a third village further up towards the Rupen Pass named Jakha, taken over by the Radha Soamis ! ) Kwar lies in the shadow of Chanshil and appears to have acquired the grim ambience of the bordering Kala Van: it has none of the cheerfulness and geniality of the typical mountain settlement, and is a forbidding place. The FRH is some distance from the village and was quite decrepit at the time. Lacking any choice, however, we settled in for the night, beginning with the customary drink on its lawns while the chowkidar (a local) cooked dinner inside.After some time I noticed that the two pharmacists had also planted themselves in the kitchen and were watching every movement of the cook like a hawk! I suggested to the doctor that maybe he could ask them to come and join us for a drink too. He made no effort to c... (Hill Post)
