It was a sunny morning at Dalhousie. Our little niece, Urvi, was away at school and it was just us kids (at heart at least) at home. We had about 3 hours of idle time so we decided to check out the nearby Panchpula waterfalls. The falls were 4 km from our home and we decided to walk the way.
Because of monsoon, we were happy to see, Panchpula had ample water. We climbed up as high as we could and found a group of men coolly bathing in the pool beneath the waterfall. Very coolly, we too stepped in. And oh the shock! The water was icy cold. After a few seconds, our feet went numb, and we couldn't feel much.
After spending about half-an-hour playing around in the water and posing for silly photographs, we decided it was time for a CHAI EXPERIENCE. Some cafe's down the hills, close to the road, had put up tables in the water so that you could sit with your feet dipped in the water and sip on your tea. However, the cafe closest to where we were, Shiva Cafe, hadn't done so. The owner was perhaps being sensible because of the crazily cold water temperature, but we requested him to allow us a little insanity. And to our delight he obliged and placed a table and three chairs in the water pool.
We ordered three masala chais and a plate of sandwiches, all this while braving the ice-cold water lapping on our feet. After a while, a group of college students came and started eyeing our table. They sat on the edge of the water and patiently waited for us to vacate the now-coveted table. They were obviously hoping that we would hurry up and finish our tea. We, on the other hand, were enjoying our tea so much that we took our time with every sip. And then ordered another round.
We decided, however, not to make the youngsters wait any longer and vacated the table in the pool,and ended up having our second rounds on the rocks where the youngsters had patiently waited out their time.
But what made us order the second round. You guessed it! The first cup tea was too damn good. The second cup, however, was just okay. Here is a review considering both the servings:
Color: Milky
Strength: Mild
Flavour: not too strong, a mixture of cinnamon, cardamom, and fennel
Taste: Bordering on too sweet and too milky. You can ask them to tone sugar down a bit and add more tea leaves while making the tea.
If you liked this post and found it helpful, I would request you to follow these things when traveling -
- Manage your waste well and don’t litter
- Use dustbins. Tell us if you went to a place and found it hard to locate a dustbin.
- Avoid bottle waters in hills. Usually you get clean water in hills and water bottles create lot of mess in our ecosystem.
- Say big no to plastic and avoid those unhealthy snacks packed in plastic bags. Rather buy fruits.
- Don't play loud blaring music in forests of jungle camps. You are a guest in that ecosystem and disturbing the locals (humans and animals) is not polite
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