Ghum..

Small and rather old, barely discernable in the misty mountain roads is the beautiful little heritage station of 'Ghum'. Built during the British Raj , its a station that looks frozen in time. All around India seems to have moved on..



What could not be colonized or tamed was the heat of the Indian planes, and what cannot be conquered can only be escaped.. It was Darjeeling to whom the British turned in search of cool summer escapes from the searing heat. The Darjeeling Himalayan railway , an engineering feat of the times was constructed in 1879. Ghum was constructed around the same time (1881)





The humble bearing of this decrepit aged building , does not boast loudly of its achievement, that of being the highest station in the vast network of the Indian Railways. At an altitude of 2,225.7 m its certainly no small feat



As we sip on our tea standing on the roadside , we watch a lazy steam engine chug past the narrow mountainside, tantalizingly close to shacks of houses along the tracks..

Meena Venkataraman