Chamba Travel Guide

Chamba is located in Himachal Pradesh, A famous tourst places in India. High up in the Tehri Hills at 6,500ft, chamba is a steep 59km climb from Rishikesh, 55km from Mussoorie and 283 km north of Delhi.

One moment we were on a hilltop the next on a cloud. A wispy caravan lifted up alost from nowhere and all to suddenly and then we were adrift in a world all our own, astride a cold cloud. The transport from the real to the magical was quite a ssudden and startling as Harry Potter crashing into that brick wall on Platform 9 to enter the world of Hogwarts, the cloud swept up the hill and past the hilltop and transformed everything. Suddenly the sky had vanished and the hills all around were gone. The little town and its people and its twisting lanes and distant lights had all disappeared. And all there was a translucent cotton wool jungle drowning in its own silence. Someone switched on the sodium vapour lamps on the winding drive up to the resort, they looked like blurred blossoms popping in a dream. Then Sadhuram emerged from the mists bearing a tray of cosiedd tea and said this is what chamba is like most evenings and nights the dominion of clods.

Chamba town is not very big so walking around the town is the best option. There are temples all around town and up on the hill-locks. The Chowgan is the most important part of the town with lush green grass.

There is a small market in the middle of the town, which has over 200 shops built around parks of different size and a newly built complex by the Museum. The market opens 6 days a week (Mon-Sat) at 9am and closes at 8pm.

We were inside the mammoth glasshouse they have eracted on a promontory overlooking the merging valleys cut by the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda. Suddenly enveloped by nothing but floating cloud and sodium lights twinkling in thick dew it was like beigh on deck chairs in a skyship. It is like no place you might expect within seven hours of Delhi.

At time you are alost thankful they haven’t lack of exposure has kept in chamba what most hill stations have lost or are fast losing the air of remoteness, of being somewhere else, somewhere special. Chamba is a getaway in a very real sense. When you get to chamba you have got away from most of the things that you want to get away from in a metropolis crowds, traffic, pollutions, decibels, treadmill pece and routine.

About the thing about getting away to a place like chamba is that there are no existing prescriptions on places to see or things to do. Do nothing and you’ll have done what you came here to do. And for eager beavers in the poor habit of making a holiday more of a rushabout than the city there are walks endless prospects of meandering in thick cedar an dpine forests and little hill trails to traipse.

Chamba isn’t much of a town, more a junction en route to higher and better known destinations in the Tehri Hills Gangotri, Yamunotri, the ancient and vanishing town of Tehri itself. But then you don’t go to Chamba to pitch up in the middle of town. You look for higher, quieter nooks in the surrounding hills.

Kanatal

Some of the best walks roll out of Kanatal, whose pine and deodar forest can take you into quite another world, where nothing but nature lives.

About 15km down the twiriling road from Chamba to Mussoorie is this cameo of a spot abutting a little lake from which the place gets its name. But Kanatal has suffered natural reverses and the lake doesn’t hold enough water to quality for that little these days. Even so Kanatal is enchanting for its dark and deep woods and the proliferation of moss and lichen.

Step off the road and you are in the middle of forests so thick, sunlight barely gets through. In the summers and monsoons, you will find any number of brooks and streams springing an dprancing. You will find a richness of birds and butterflies and an abundance of silence. Should you wish to stay overnight in kanatal.

Chamba provides a sharp contrast to Dalhousie the colonial resort of rich Lahorians and the British because of its uninterrupted ancient heritage and customs. However over the years the influx of plains people has changed both the topography and ethnographic profile of this ancient Rajput capital. Its famed temples, stripped of their intricate wood-carved edifices first by the British and then by the Archaeological Survey of India are mere shadows of their former selves. The growing town have also extracted its pound of flesh, crowding the temples into a maze of bylanes.

Chamba’s chaugan or central park is a good orientation point. Standing in its center, facing the town the Lakshmi Narayan Temple complex and Akhand Chandi Place are to the left, while Chamunda Temple falls to the right. Behind to the left are Hariraya Temple (next to the audaciously pink Gandhi Gate built to commemorate Lord and Lady Curzon’s 1900 visit) and the Ravi River. The marketplace surrounding the chaugan is full of interesting items such as stone and metal statues, miniature paintings and famed Chamba chappals.

The beauty of Chamba’s ancient shrines, its iconography and seeming agelessnessis enough to make you feel like a pygmy. Standing tall the gods stare at you sqyarely with a dancing Buddha-like smile playing on their lips. Most of the temples bearerotic panels on the outer walls. Of the lot the Lakshmi Narayan Temple complex is the largest and according to some the oldest. Most of the temples are dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu.

Around Chamba

Sahoo 20 km

In 1995 the road along the River Saal ended at Sahoo. Today it has spread its tentacles beyond this quaint village. On the way to sahoo stop over at a rock mural depicting the fine pandus (or pandavas) with a giant Hanuman. The 11h century temple of Chandrashekhara is at sahoo. The temple is revered for its 10-ft lingam and 5ft high Nandi Bull with a figure of Bal Gopal clinging to its tail.

Railway: Closest Railway station is Pathankot in Punjab, which is 120 Kilometers from Chamba town. There are frequent buses to Chamba town from Pathankot. Private taxis too operate in the region. Taxis to various destinations can be hired from outside Pathankot railway station. Bargaining is a must. Being on the way to Jammu Tawi, there are regular trains to Pathankot from various cities in India.

Airports: Closest airports are Pathankot and Kangra, Pathankot airport recently started operating the civil flights. Air Deccan operates daily flights between Pathankot and Delhi