Where the journey entices more than the destination

Kangra’s Toy Train

This piece finds place in the Hindu Sunday Magazine here.

The unedited version is placed below.

Thanks are due to the team at the Hindu Sunday Magazine. 

You can take the train if you want to. But do you have the time? This is the question each of those I had mentioned my intention to take the toy-train had asked.

I was at Bir and was keen to take the train to Pathankot. Bir invites with its monasteries and cafes. It also presents a sight which few other places do – that of fellow humans fly like birds. It is the paragliding capital of our country.

I was keen to experience what Angus McDonald, the person behind ‘India’s Disappearing Railways: A photographic journey’, had referred to as ‘The most beautiful railway line in the world’. To ensure zero confusion and confirm the details, a day prior to the journey, I cycled to Ahju. Ahju lies on the narrow guage line that runs from Joginder Nagar to Pathankot and is the station nearest to Bir. I would have to take the train from Paprola – a bigger station.

The train had stopped at three stations on its way from Joginder Nagar before it reached Paprola. I had reached in time to walk around the station and also peek at the engines taking rest. Prior to those fifteen minutes I would not have used ‘ethereal’ for a rail station and ‘cute’ for a rail engine. Here they made sense; at most locations they would be oxymorons. When I reached the ticket-counter the uncle at the other side had gone to the platform to check if the first-class coach was attached that day! The fare to Pathankot is 35/- for second-class and 270/- for the first-class. Not for nothing did the travel writer Stephen McClarence state, ‘The Kangra Valley Railway is a collector’s item and a miser’s dream’. After getting the ticket when I asked him for the seat number the uncle smiled and said, ‘there is nothing of that sort’. The train left at its stipulated time, 10.50.

First to strike me was the sound the train created.  It had the rhythm of folk music. The train moved through villages, many a time cutting through crop fields or brushing a compound. At one of these I saw a small girl play cricket with her grand-mother who sat on a chair as she took up the bowler’s role. The train presents an unpretentious and unshaven view. It is akin to an elephant in its movement; brimming with grace and in sync with the surroundings.

Sanjeev Awasthi in his article, Romancing the Kangra Rail, describes the route: ‘The most picturesque parts of the valley are exposed to the view, the stretch of 18 miles from Mangwal to Kangra, for example, lies through country unsurpassed for its majestic grandeur with the majestic Ban Ganga gorge and the deep Kangra chasm as two piece de resistance’.

Co-travellers rose in numbers once I reached Kangra, 12.50. All of them locals. For someone not in a hurry the stops appeared to be short. At each stop the uncle at rear, in coat, would whistle, the uncle in front would then blow the horn, seven bogies separating them, and the train would begin. I heard hawkers selling ground-nuts and tea at couple of stations. At a station where it stopped for relatively longer I craned my neck to see that it was for another grand-mother; this one was getting on to the next coach. At another station where there train stopped for its brethren from the opposite direction to cross over I walked out to get pakodas. It is a single track. I asked a co-passenger sitting nearby whether the train was on time. He responded with, ‘This is a picnic train’.

The UNESCO website outlines its chequered time-line. ‘The construction of Kangra Valley Railway began in 1925 and it was opened on 1st December 1928 for freight traffic for the Uhl hydroelectric project due to which this Railway was constructed. In April 1929, it also, became a passenger Railway. It suffered a disruption during World War II (1941-42) when a portion of its track was dismantled for war material supply but it was restored twelve years later in April 1954. A short portion (about 25 kilometers) of Kangra Valley Railway also had to be realigned in 1973 due to the construction of the Pong Dam resulting in a disruption for three years’.

The train skirted around the Pong Dam for roughly half an hour. It was a sight unlike others – mountains and water stretching till infinity in the same frame. Sight of the birds reminded me of Douglas Dewar’s classic essay, The Naturalist in a Railway Train where he eloquently talks of bird-watching during rail journeys. I caught glimpses of the snow capped peaks till about 16.00. At 16.45 we reached Nurpur Road; it signalled our reaching the plains. Sizes of the villages and shops had got bigger.

Annabel Fenwick Elliott has described it as ‘One of India’s best kept secrets’. The route, however, has been in the news in recent times. During November 2018 a group of tourists from Britain booked a train with steam engine. While December 2018 had newspapers report of a project to facelift the track, ‘Glass coaches will soon be introduced and trains will have the Wi-Fi facility’ it stated. I shuddered on reading of the Wi-Fi facility.

Sunset just before Pathankot was breath-taking or should I say breath-giving. Before we reached the destination, 18.10, I had made plans to take up a reverse trip. To roll up towards the snow clad Dauladhars.

Coming back to the people at Bir I wondered what they would do in the few hours they would save by taking the road and why time was so over-rated? McClarence’s piece on the route perhaps provides an apt answer, ‘Admittedly, the journey (160 kms), winding past the Himalayan foothills, takes just short of 10 hours. But what’s the hurry? This is a perfect example of slow travel at its – well – slowest’.