Swimming In The Khauli River

The neighbours had left soon after helping us to carry the furniture till our home. Now the next task was to arrange that in a proper way. There was a bathroom attached to the living room where we thought to keep the washing machine. And the fridge was kept in the corner of the living room which was adjacent to the kitchen. One wardrobe and the double bed were arranged in the living room as our plan was to convert it for a guests room. The other wardrobe was moved to the private room. In every room, we kept 2 bamboo chairs. The house had become more beautiful with the newly bought furniture. That looked as if we had entered some different house. After keeping the fridge untouched for one day as advised by the shopkeeper, Madhu and Noor kept all the necessary food in that. There would be many Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolates for Noor from the guests, which she would keep in the fridge. Milk, vegetable and fruits soon filled the fridge. The happiest moment would be in seeing Madhu using the washing machine and giving rest to her hands. She was relieved from that arduous work. Finally, the house was looking complete in every way.

Our evenings would be fun when we would walk uphill for collecting woods. There would be many dried pine tree branches fallen down. Its dried needle-shaped leaves would burn very fast so we would collect them as well. There was a technique to build a fire which Madhu had taught me. At the bottom, there would be quickly inflammable things like paper and dried leaves. Over that thin dried wooden sticks and on top of that the thickest ones. As fire defies gravity and moves up, the quickly inflammable things would fire up the thickest wood which would usually be hard to catch fire. But once that catches fire you would be out of worry as that would keep burning for a long time. Every evening after having our masala chai Noor would insist us to go up in the mountains for a walk. We would wear warm jackets as the evenings would get extremely cold. Noor always would run ahead and wave at us looking back. She was having the best childhood any child could ever have. Madhu had made a brilliant choice in raising her daughter in the middle of the jungle.

Salli had a beautiful Khauli river flowing down from the Dhauladhar ranges. There was one hydropower plant at its bank named Lanco. From Salli village, the road going to that project was around 400 meters uphill. The road till the project was made for their trucks. Little far from the project, you could see a bridge over the river which would be connecting to the other side of the mountain. Just under that bridge, there was a naturally created big pool in the river surrounded by many big size white rocks. One could sit on those rocks and just enjoy looking at the river flowing in its beauty. The water would be shoulder-deep so that would be safe to enter even for those who didn't know swimming. One afternoon we went to the river for swimming. Noor was having the best time as she was extremely fond of playing in the water. Madhu was getting scared to enter the water initially. But later she jumped in only to get frozen in that cold water. Noor was dancing on those big rocks. Soon after being in the water for so much time, we came out to relax on those big size warm rocks. The sudden temperature change from cold water to warm rocks was soothing for the body.

We Had Discovered One More Beautiful Place In Salli.