An escape to nature

by Nabjot Kaur (India)

A leap into the unknown India

" it's getting hot here " - said me. "Let's go to solan where your dad is posted so that we don't have to care about the stay " -replied my cousin. Solan is a beautiful city with huge hills filled with lush green beauty of nature in the northern region of India which stays cool throughout the year. It was our summer vacation and without giving it a second thought we packed our bags , gave a call to dad and boarded a bus to queen of hills "Solan ". In no time the breeze started getting cooler and the plain areas transformed to hills coated with snow and greenery , oh!!! So aesthetic. We couldn't hold our cameras to ourselves then . On reaching my dad's temporary stay we were kinda disappointed as it had nothing other than two rooms with some cots and no water or food. My dad came back from work and made us clean the place and make it liveable , not a very pleasant biggining of our vacations of ofcourse .we just wanted to go back home instantly. Goodmorning people ! Yes it's another day now and we planned to visit Shimla , again a beautiful hill station. No one goes back from Shimla without visiting "Jhaku temple ". It's a temple with huge statue of Hindu God " Hanuman ji ". Well no , it's not really easy to reach jhaku temple because on the way you going to meet our so called ancestors " monkeys " . Okay sorry ! No offence . We were climbing the stairs and on the way we met some monkies and they took my cousin's goggles and snactched away her snacks too . But thank god she didn't get hurt because there's always one or two ambulances passing by every 10-15 mins and the culprits are these monkeys . There's also timbertrail ropeway but haha ! We were broke af. So we went there manually Funny eh ? ! Had some cherries and sipped some cups of coffee and eating dumplings sitting under beautiful trees and a bench making it look so romantic without romance and a romantic partner . No i haven't lost my senses just describing my feelings. On the way home we were really tired and couldn't enjoy much because it's more walking than enjoying and also we realized that we have to cook and do the dishes after reaching home , ah! So tough. But damn !! It started raining and it was a thunderstorm . We weren't used to frequent and heavy rains but for the time we stayed here we saw the unpredictable nature of weather so closely . After getting done with dinner and everything we went to sleep . It was 4-5:00 a.m and we started hearing loud roars of clouds and the raindrops were hitting really hard on the sloping roofs of our house and also the noise of bullets being fired just made us more scared because we thought it's terrorists as that area was near an army cantonment and was kinda prone to such attacks . We were making plans of how we going to escape if the terrorists broke in . We tried our best to keep calm . It was a knock on the door and we were really hesitant to open the door . Dad shouted " are you guys still sleeping ? Open the door i said " - We sighed and relieved of all the stress and opened the door with a smile and acted like everything's fine and told him that we were sleeping . My younger brother asked dad that from where that sound of firing coming . Dad said it's the soldiers training in that ground behind these buildings and no one's allowed to go there. We looked at each other and controlled our laugh . It was dusk and we sat outside on chairs clicking pictures of the landscapes outside . The clouds which we could touch , the sun behind those mountains , the houses below us as ours was on top of a hill. We went on a little inside adventure . To hills , to those jungles with a sleek road and just ran back home after the slightest moment we heard and saw from behind those bushes . Tired and sleepy we all laughed on the firing incident and made fun of ourselves and slept after having dinner and complementary ice cream brick . Last few minutes of this beautiful place and we really didn't wanted to leave . And finally we reached home .