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Timber Trail its connected to its twin
resort, Timber Trail Heights, by a bright coloured cable car. The
resort offers spectacular views of sheer drops and steep rises of the
mountains. An ideal place for a quiet getaway or a trekking holiday.
Some five kilometers out of Kalka, on the way to Shimla, you get your
first glimpse of Timber Trail. From that angle it appears almost
like a greek village-a cluster of buildings piled layer upon layer
and painted a dazzling white. Below Timber Trail, the hiull drops a
good 2000 feet to the valley of the river Kaushalya, flopwing to its
tryst with the Ghaggar, in the plains. One the further bank fo the
Kaushalya the hills take off again, rising steeply to meet the sky.
If you look hard (or better still, use binoculars), one of these
hills is capped by the counterpart of Timber Trail, most aptly named
Timber Trail Heights. And spanning the twin resorts in one gaint
sweep, goes a brightly painted, cheerful looking, high profile cable
car. The wholw venture was boldly planned by Ramesh Garg, himself a
Himachali. And the story behind it is as fascinating as the place
itself.
The
hill, now capped by Timber Trail Heights, bears an old Gorkha fort
named Garhi Bansar. A relic of the times when the Gorkhas had
extended their rule right up to the Sutlej (early 19th
century), the fort has long since fallen to ruin. But the village
from which it derives its name still stands on the hillside below the
fort. So do many other villages, appearing from the highway as
little clusters of houses set amid a carpet of terraced fields.
Banasar and the villages around grow bumper crops of peddy, corn,
potatoes and vegetables, for the soil is rich and fertile.
But till few
years back the local people were virtually landlocked. They had no
convenient outlet for their produce. ‘Kiltas’ (conical
baskets) strapped to their backs and heaped high with vegetables,
they trudged down to the river Kaushalya, across and up again to the
Kalka-Shimla road. By the time they reached the market at Kalka,
they were dead beat and the vegetables long past their prime. Not
daring to hope, again and again the villagers wished some good
Samaritan would sling a hope bridge from hill to hill and take the
drudgery out of their lives.
Meaniwhile Garg
was deeply involved in his family’s timber business. In 1977 he
took a trip to the Continent, visiting Switzerland as the much
vaunted tourist attraction of the world. But Garg came back with the
stardust washed from his eyes. Switzerland, to his way to thinking,
had nothing spectacular to offer the tourist, save that whatever she
had was done up as a very attractive package. The trip fired Garg’s
imagination. Here was his own home state, the beautiful Himachal,
richly endowed but rarely explored for want of proper facilities. He
made up his mind to open up Himachal to the tourist. Incidentally,
he also resolved to help the local people who slogged hard in their
fields but got little for their pains.
A four year
search brought Garg to a densely wooded hillock overlooking the
Kalka-Shimla road. It didn’t take long to gauge the potential
fo the place, but wresting it from the clutches of officialdom was
quite another matter. Even the local people resented this intrusion
on their privacy. But Garg fought his way through and finally, in
April ’88, the Timber Trail complex, a 3-crore holiday resort,
was inaugurated.
With the Timber
Trail came into being its counterpart, Timber Trail Heights, perched
dizzily atop Banasar hill across the valley, while the cable car
sailed smoothly between the two. Among the first to benefit from
this revolutionary mode of transport were the villagers on Banasar
hill and beyond. Hereafter, on payment of a small sum of money and
with far less effort involved, their produce could reach the market
spanking fresh. Today the round trip costs the tourist Rs. 25/- but
a farmer can avail of the facility at half rates. Seating 16 persons
at one go, the cable car covers a distance of 1.8 kilometres in eight
minutes. The journey is fascinating in itself, particularly when the
weather is clear and the mountain rain-washed and blue. And the view
from Timber Trail Heights in simply spectacular. Go and see it for
yourself. Don’t panic! The car has four backup systems to
ensure safety and is regularly subjected to an intensive cat scan for
detection of possible faults.
As a holiday
resort the Timber Trail has much to recommend it. A trim manicured
exterior where the beauty comes as much from excellence of
architectural design as from a profusion of happy, healthy looking
plants- a variety of ferns, monsterra, succulents, climbers on the
wall. Cascades of red bougain-villaea flank the drive and trucked
away at a lower level, a terraced garden awaits you like an island of
repose. The interior is plush with well appointed rooms, a dining
hall gleaming with polish wood, a coffee shop that overlook the
valley and two conference halls elegantly fitted and particularly
suited to residential courses.
But Timber Trail
is more than a holiday resort. It offers a vast potential for the
promotion of nature tourism, what with a mountain terrain as yet
unspoilt and hillsides simply waiting to be explored. The area has a
pforusion of trees and wild flowers in season, when broad leafed
creepers festoon the trees. Ther’s a rich and varied bird life
too. Paradise flycatchers with silver streamers for tails, golden
orioles, rufous backed shrikes, blue magpies white eyes and many
others that remain no more than a hauntingly beautiful call from the
depths of the foliage. For a start, the river Kaushalya flows
through a steep gorge but slowly the banks ease out, making way for
the curve and sweep of terraced fields while on the bed of the river,
quartz-rich pebbles lie gleaming silver in the sun.
All in all, this
is ideal trekking country. Garg himself has a number of trekking
routes all mapped out and high adventure is on the cards. Starting
from Timber Trail Heights and on to Naina Tikker, Sarahan and Bagthan
with its beautiful orchard and pine covered slopes, the matchless
Renuka Lake, Nahan and Saketi. There are cyclin routes too, starting
from Saketi and Kala Amb and meandering through stretches of wooded
terrain, on to Chandigarh. Garg promises young people the time of
their lives, with packed meals at subsidized rates and tent
accommodation in forests and villages en route. But if you are made
of sterner stuff, trek the way of the farmer, from the Kalka-Shimla
road to Banasar hill and back and thereby gain a talking point for
the rest of your life. Any takers?
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