The new camp at Bhaurar was on a small clearing in the midst of tall pine trees, a place which I learnt later was the play ground of black Himalayan bears. We were fortunate for they were busy plucking berries elsewhere. Local population was sparse. Nearest village which consisted of two houses only was on a spur overlooking the camp. A girl from the village made friends with my wife. Upon meeting the first thing she asked was, 'Is he your first husband?' It was Shocking indeed. It appeared that for the locals 'live in' marriages were common those days.

A view from Bhaurur - sketched by the author

There was no means of entertainment or news. My transistor decided to turn mute, perhaps the lofty mountains all around made the reception impossible! There were no newspapers either. The layers of newspapers used for packing the crockery came handy and we read them till all the legible phrases had been memorized by heart. The only news that reached us after ten days was that at Kamrau the huge cliff overhanging above my tent fell on the spot where we were sleeping. It happened in the dead of the night, on the day we left. Such incidents compel one to believe in God. 

A lone Bus with an occasional passenger used to pass through my camp once in three days. The Bus driver, a Nepali called Bahadur became my chum; he was my reporter for 'scoops' from the civilized world. It was he who told me that the King had died. Later I learnt that the President, Dr Zakir Hussain was no more. 

Bahadur willingly agreed to my request of bringing newspapers on his return journey from Paonta Saheb. The first consignment of newspapers he brought was in Gurmukhi and Urdu. Both were of no use for me. Next time I wrote a list of newspapers and gave him a choice to bring all or whichever he could. He brought a few issues of The Tribune.

One has to experience that kind of isolation to enjoy the thrill of reading old issues of newspapers. In school we were taught about the 'Book of the hour' and the 'Book of the day'. Our teacher explained newspaper is the book of the hour. You read it and trash it. Whereas, the great literary pieces, preserved till eternity are the 'books of the day'. But the experience proved that under circumstances of isolation a newspaper could be good as any book of the day.

Imagination runs wild in isolation especially when you crave for contact with the world outside. At times even the sounds of wind or water make one feel as if vehicles are approaching or even a helicopter is landing. Drums, howls, whistles, fires and flags have been used for communicating across the valleys in mountain terrains since times immemorial. Often such drums were heard from the hilltops of the far flung valleys. They used to sound as if the Pygmies were drumming messages to the Phantom.

Boon from modern technology, the SMS is nothing but advanced version of what Lee Falk conceived years ago, one of the most efficient ways of communication-the SMS via drums! 

Lee Falk the creator of the Phantom must be saluted for his vision. 

All those remote places in Sirmaur are now within a three hours drive from Chandigarh. The macadam roads have given tourism a big boost. Of course the tourists there today can not enjoy the exclusive privacy, natural solitude and near total isolation. For that one needs to run away from the 'developed' places. With a spectrum of communication technology available, the much cherished newspaper in the area, where I longed for news, must have once again become 'the book of the hour'!