21st December, 2019
There are many more beautiful places to visit in Shimla than the Mall Road and Railway Station, few places still remain unexplored. So, 3 of us decided to take up one such less explored place and it is called…..Shimla Water Catchment Wildlife Sanctuary. It is 1.5km ahead of Dhalli towards Kufri and it welcomes all with it’s beautiful gate.
After taking our steps inside we had to get ourselves registered in the office to get permissions to enter the Sanctuary.
Though the road facility is available in the Sanctuary…..but the cars are not allowed inside. One can either hire a bicycle or cover the distance on foot. But the distance was quite long(16km) so we decided to hire a bicycle.
The fare is quite reasonable with a student ID. It’s about 350 rupees per bicycle and provided time to return is 3 hours.
After riding for 1km our eyes caught a beautiful and small hut above us.
We went up and started clicking photos to capture some memories of the day.
The hut was well designed and well maintained from the inside and the view from it was heart stealing.
We decided to leave and were back on track, riding our bicycles. There was another such hut after covering a short distance.
On the way…..there were many bulletin boards that provided us information about the flora and fauna that surrounded us.
The journey is quite lengthy and exhausting so the department has provided benches at short distances to catch some breath.
After covering one sided journey of 8km we finally reached to the water catchment tank.
It was huge, wide and was approximately 100 meter in length. But it remained empty for major part of the year. It was made by Britishers for water storage.
In this Sanctuary there was only one house of some native people.
With the house there was a huge gate of the Wildlife Sanctuary but it’s doors were locked so we guessed that we were not allowed to enter it.
Due to unavailability of any kind of shop…..we bought everything from the market inside our backpacks, consumed it and collected what we had spread to keep the surroundings clean. After spending much time in enjoying nature and cracking jokes we decided to return.
Journey back seemed less while enjoying the natural environment and listening to calm music.
There were different sign boards on the way which helped us to follow the rules of the woods.
After reaching back…..we were attracted by a bulletin board that listed all the species of plants and animals in the Sanctuary.
It was quite useful……..
This was the end of our day after gaining some good experience of the wild.
Thank you for reading.
RahulChilainTravel 