Kangra Valley Railway, Baijnath & Bir

Kangra Valley Railway.  

The narrowgauge railway from Pathankhot to Joginder Nagar is the least known of India's five "toy trains" but is nonetheless spectacular both for its scenery and its amazing feat of (British) engineering, with 933 bridges on its 162 km. length. It is also very slow (av. 18 kph) and usually very late. And a lot of fun. Not to take a chance, we arrive by taxi at Kangra station just in time (makes a change) for the scheduled 11 am train uphill as far as Baijnath. We baulk at the prospect of the full 9 hr. journey. There is only one other intending passenger, and the ticket office is closed. Is the train running, we ask Passenger. Yes, he says, it will be here "in some time". This is reassuring. "Is there a toilet," asks Sara? "No, no toilet," he says. Now this is odd. Since Indians are renowned for telling people what they want to hear, he has clearly told Sara just what she did not want to hear. It is also untrue. Further up the platform there is a clean and functioning loo clearly indicated by a cartoon depiction of a female figure in some discomfort. Over the next half hour some 20 or 30 people gather, the ticket office opens, we pay our fare of Rs. 8 (10p) each, and the train duly arrives at midday, exactly one hour late.
 

We opt for the last coach and settle ourselves into window seats, then spot an unobtrusive sign. This is the "ladies only" compartment. So we move further along the train, which is in no hurry to leave, until we find more window seats. This is a great way to travel - airy and cool (all the doors and windows open), leisurely pace, magnificent scenery (though the snow-capped 16,000 ft. range to the north is obscured by cloud), a moving (in both senses) panorama of rural India. River valleys and gorges alternate with terraced rice paddies, there are hay ricks like giant cup cakes and teams of oxen ploughing. It looks like a rural idyll, though of course it is not. At Palampur a dark-skinned farmer with bare feet, a staff and a huge tall turban gets on and eyes us benignly. We wait for the down train to pass in a loop and nip out to buy slices of eggy-bread for lunch.

More street food - very spicy - in Baijnath, from where we strike a deal with a taxi driver to take us to the temple, then on the Bir and back "home" to McLeod Ganj (MG). Baijnath Shiva temple (another black lingam) is said to originate from about 800, but the present structure probably dates from the 1500s. CORRECTION: it turns out it really is much older, but exactly how old I'm not sure. 1200s, possibly. These Hindu sculptors got stuck in a time-warm. It is in fact a complex of ornate stone buildings within a high perimeter wall. Every inch of the walls and sikhara (tower) is covered in exotic carvings, symbolic, human and divine. I pose with  a nandi (bull gatekeeper), a direct link to the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Indian heritage is gloriously accessible and tactile.

From Baijnath to Bir, a half hour's drive east, i.e. further away from MG (I lack a detailed road map). Bir doesn't even get a mention in the Rough Guide (thumbs up to Footprint), but is a significant Buddhist centre with four monasteries. We only visit one - not even the pricipal one, I think - and seem free to wander wherever we wish. The scale of the monastery complex is a complete surprise, with some 300 monks currently living here housed in small study bedrooms round a grand three-storey courtyard. All seem to be earnestly studying, either pacing along the collonades books in hand or reclining in their studies. 

The temple interior is spacious and sumptuous, with about a dozen monks  chanting as we enter. They are accompanied by the rhythmic booming of a gong and intermittent wailing music played on deep horns and shrill reed instruments sounding like a loud oboe or traditional Breton bombard.

Bir, incidentally, is "the world's No. 1 paragliding centre", and we indeed see several paragliders in the skies. (They launch from Billing, in the mountains, and (hope to) land at Bir. From Bir we start the long trek back. Our driver believes himself king of the road and never misses a chance to swerve, cut in and carve up any other vehicle and our strident "peeps" of the horn would have gladdened Mr Toad's heart. Despite his best endeavours, it is a tortuous two-hour journey. We are so glad to reach the hair-raising hairpins and switchbacks of the climb up to MG, if only because it means we are almost home.

To the Mac Llo Restaurant again for food, but our Nepalese waiter friend Hari Thapa is on holiday today. We drink Godfather beer, brewed in Jammu, and sit under a signed photo of Pierce Brosnan (aka James Bond 007) sitting in the very same seat.