In Oct’24 Krishna Ji and I decided to join the month-long mud house building workshop in March’25 in Himachal. For me the intention was to build a small mud house at Dhanvi after completing it but now it seems it would be more than that. More details about other plans later.
In this blog I would just like to document our eventful one week journey to the venue. We started our journey 26th Feb’25 from Bengaluru by Rajdhani Express and New Delhi on 28th Morning. After that we took another train to Chandigrah and there Samvedh (another trainee) joined us. After having a very authentic lunch, we took the cab to Naggar, Himachal Pradesh around 1:30 PM and that’s when fun started.
Before we took the cab, we came to know that snowfall had happened a day before but did not know about the landslides, which also happened at a few places. After a few hours of our drive we could see the changes in the weather and our driver came to know about the road closure ahead, so we took a long detour. On the detour we saw a few small landslides but crossing the Pandoh Dam, we saw a big landslide which covered half of the road. And then we got to know about a Bus accident ahead. Our driver got a bit worried and we also thought about not continuing that night. At that time we were at Banala and took the hotel there. There was no electricity, no hot water. We just had our candle night dinner and slept.
Next day on March 1st, we took the bus to Kullu and from there bus to Naggar. As we progressed from Kullu, we were welcomed by more than 2 KM of traffic jams. The driver told us to just take out the luggage and walk to the other side. After walking for about 1.5 KM, we got a cab to reach Naggar, where we met the organisers. Again there was no electricity but we could get hot water to bathe after 3 days.
After meeting the organisers we came to know that there is no access to our training venue, so we’ll be taking intermediate halts for a few days. For the 1st and 2nd March we stayed at The Lazy and Slow. where more participants joined us. The place is amazing with great views. We had a campfire on both the nights and I led the ice-breaker sessions using the Mix and Mingles cards given by Kavitha. That really helped us jel together. We went to get the firewood and did some treks as well. On one of the treks we went to a shop where the owner welcomed us in her house to have tea. The traditional home was amazing with the great views to the mountains. During our stay we had Litti-Chokha and Chole Rice with that amazing view, which made our stay more pleasant.
On 3rd and 4th March we then moved to Nathan Village where we stayed at Nirvana, one of the places with the best view. It was snowing when I came here and it was the first time for me to go out then it was snowing. Here we also had a few theory sessions of our workshop. On the second day Krishna Ji and I went for a trek and reached an old temple where we also leopard pug marks. While coming back we saw some very old sthome just made of wood and stones. Some houses were hundreds of years old.
On the 5th morning we started our journey to the final workshop venue and we did it on an open Bolero, standing at the back. It was the best ride one can imagine. As the complete road was yet to be repaired, we had to walk and do a bit of a trek to reach the final destination.
Weather is now opening up with a full Sun. The electricity is yet to come though but we are now ready for the learning and hands-on work on natural construction. I’ll be posting a weekly blog to share our progress. So stay tuned …
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