Ascending God's Rooftop, Pt 2: The Journey to Himachal Pradesh, India’s Himalayas
Ascending God's Rooftop is a multi-part series about my recent travels to India, particularly Himachal Pradesh. This time I talk about Kasauli and observations about village life.
Villagers watch us from inside their corner shops as our car inches through traffic.
What do they think of us?
These out-of-towners. These foreigners with cameras pointed, looking into their lives like a spectacle to be observed.
Glimmers of this village life and its charms glide passed. Small traders are perched in slender shops stacked with crates of fresh, local vegetables and plastic bits of tat courtesy their Chinese neighbour just barely north of here.
We are moments away from Kasauli, a mountain town skirting 6000 ft above sea level.
The air is cooler here. The fresh breeze tingles with mist and the scent of trees.
Kasauli was a cantonment and hill station occupied by the British Raj seeking reprieve in these Himachali mountains to escape the summer heat.
Here in India, the British built churches, as if religion was in short supply.
I know a little bit about hillside villages growing up at home.
Our family visits to Tobago inevitably surrendered to a ‘drive around the island’. Tobago’s central Main Ridge is laced with thin roads that connect the island through the interior.
Here too, village lives unfold. Ladies amble down steep hillsides in their Sunday best, where a bus takes them to a Baptist church. Kids play street cricket with sticks and tennis balls. Dogs lay motionless in the road seemingly impervious to the threat of imminent death from oncoming cars.
You will find little shacks under the quiet shade of a mango tree on the corners of these narrow roads, like the ones I see here in Kasauli where the shops sport vivid bags of spiced snacks, potatoes and Coca-Cola posters.
Daleside Manor & The Outskirts of Kasauli
Kasauli is a time capsule and, while life has moved on since British occupation, Kasauli retains the charm of a time gone by, and that’s partly why I’m here.
We stayed in Daleside Manor, a property beautifully restored in a colonial style with breathtaking views across the green Shimla Hills.
There’s a hunting lodge feel about Daleside Manor, and the restaurant churns out beastly portions of gutsy fare intended to fuel hard work, which we hope to walk off.
There’s a generosity at Daleside Manor that speaks to its boutique proposition (only 12 rooms and four suites).
The team are unsure of us Dubai-based city mice, but they light up when you ask to talk about Kasauli and the wider area. There’s a pride in their eyes and a list of things pour from their mouths.
So, armed with a fistful of plans, we down glasses of local Jamun gin made in the nearby Kasauli Brewery and we settle in for the night. We have a long day tomorrow. After all, we lost a day just getting here.
Kasauli Heritage Market
Phrases like “Heritage Market” create expectations. Some may reasonably infer this place to preserve tradition with sincerity, even if by the tips of its fingers.
Kasauli Heritage Market fails to fulfill this quaint brief.
It is a relic of not a shell from the old British occupation where locals sold supplies to British soldiers from cabana-like structures.
Nowadays, Kasauli Heritage Market is tourist fodder replete with haberdashers and eateries pumping out quick bites for those in search of momos, samosa pavs and TikTok content. Narinder’s Sweets doles out the last two in spades.
I want to be positive about this and, to be fair, we did meet charming people, like the family that owns Mom’s Kitchen where we ate excellent vegetarian kebabs, fried until crisp, nutty and golden. We both agree that Narinder’s samosa pav is better than expected due to a sweet-sour chutney that I still taste when I think about it.
I am just a food writer standing before a food market asking it for something good to write about.
Regrettably, Kasauli Heritage Market pumps out what tourists want and authenticity is expendable.
They sell what sells.
The best way out is through to the other side where actual village life unfurls.
Here, spice traders wax lyrical about everything from lentils to yak leather with enthusiasm, nevermind they must be weary of tourists like us.
Yes, yak leather.
We do pass moments of real everyday.
A Baptist church is so precariously built into the mountainside, only God could save it from the landslides.
A child’s playground overlooks breathtaking views that, today, are wrapped in ribbons of mist. An old magistrates’ court and prosecutors’ office at the end of an overgrown track that brought a wry smile to these two visiting lawyers: imagine, if this were our lives? Both of us left our respective home countries, where this too could have been our reality.
Cafe Kasauli and Siddu
All this walking stirs the appetite and knowing locals counseled us to find Cafe Kasauli 73 and its owner, a formidable lady who looks like she’s seen everything but God. The same woman makes a sweet Siddu discussed in complimentary tones.
Siddu is a traditional Himachali steamed, bread dumpling. The kind of thing you’d give coal miners to set them up for day’s callus-inducing labour.
It’s heavy, gut-lysing stuff that looks like a Cornish pasty and an armadillo once frotted.
Naturally, we order two. With coffee. We struggled to finish one.
The sticky sweet Siddu felt like Dickensian stodge in the best possible way; the walnut Siddu arrives with a nose-blast of green chilli chutney. The appeal is simple: on the coldest of days, soporific Siddus bring warming satisfaction.
The day grows long and we head back to the Daleside Manor walking through Kasauli, passed the buildings and the mountain paths that brought us here.
A man fans corn roasting over a coal-fired grill while my friend applies 15 years of corporate law negotiations into reducing the price of a bottle of Jamun gin.
We would not come back the next day as time would not allow it. We lost half of the trip due to the extraordinary events of the previous day.
Later that evening, I would brave the tightrope-slender roads and venture towards Restaurant NAAR.
Kasauli, would I return?
I went in with bare expectations. I knew it would be remote and rural. I hoped for moments of natural beauty and a quiet gaze on the horizon where the Himalayan peaks slip in and out of view.
I did not expect Kasauli to be so green, so lush, so hallmarked with colonial vestiges or so obviously consumerist with it’s Maggi posters and maraudes of TikTok creators (especially as TikTok is banned in India).
The pace is pleasingly slower. Like admiring a mosaic from a distance, the big picture tells a broader story than the details. When staring at a TV too close, it is hard to make sense of what you see, and you might hurt your eyes in the process.
I would return to Himachal Pradesh unquestionably.
I would bring my wife and son because Dubai slices a delightful but saccharine life. Getting out and seeing the world—this world—feels more grounding.
Kasauli works as a base, but I long to check out Shimla and to venture even further north. I want to see Kufri wrapped in snow, explore the mountain pass of Rohtang La and the temples of Chehni Kothi.
I want more, more than what is here.
Liam is a restaurant critic, food and travel writer based in the Middle East. He owns EatGoSee and contributes to others. You can follow him here on Substack, Instagram, Threads or Facebook.
Yet another enticing read Liam