Ride to Dhausi Hills

How do you plan for a ride? Like on which ‘off’ day you will ride and on which weekend you will not? I think one can give a glance at the calendar, match it with the leaves declared in their office and make a tentative plan for the rides to do for next 3-4 months. In my opinion this is the best way we can stick to those plans and convert them into rides. Otherwise most of the discussions and plans of rides made over beer are never executed. Personally, this way of planning works as I can plan my rides, decide when to go home, and when to chill and watch MotoGP in my room. Likewise, I had already marked a ‘One Day Ride’ for 22^nd October in my calendar but had not finalized on the place.

As the day came closer, I and Aditya decided to ride to Dhausi Hills near Narnaul, about 130km from Gurgaon. Looked up on Google to read about the history of the place. The first thing which caught my attention was the picture of the huge crater at this place. It was also interesting to know that this place is built over an extinct volcano. In ancient times, Rishi Chyawan was the person who decided to make a paste with the help of 46 ayurvedic herbs at this place. This was called chyawanprash which is still used today, although in its very artificial form. He also prepared ‘Kayakalp’ at this place and the pond water on the hill top is still considered to be sacred and healthy beneficial. Rishi Chyawan had used all his medicine magic to get younger which in turn would allow him to marry Sukanya, the daughter of the king, that’s a different story. Also read about his ashram at this place.

The route was to go via NH8 and take left from Daruhera, continue to Rewari and  and reach Narnaul.

So we started at around 7am on our KTM Dukes from Gurgaon and first stop for breakfast was at the McDonalds at Rewari.

 Dhausi Hill is about 8km from Narnaul and its also known as Dhusran Pahadi within locals, so if you are asking for directions you can keep this in mind. . The roads towards this place are decent and the ride is good and thus we reached Dhausi Hills at around 10am. And don’t expect any big shops or eating joints here as this place is still a village. Carry your own food and water.

As usual the bikes were the one getting all the attention while we watched. We parked our bikes under the tree and this is the first look of the hill which is approximately 900ft high.

We had to climb this and go to the other side. We hoped to see the crater somewhere from the top. We went to the tea shop near by and kept our helmets and jackets there as we couldn’t climb to the top carrying it.

We had just started climbing when we saw this old lady who stopped us as she wanted us to make a call on her mobile phone to her son who was on his way. Aditya helped her.

We continued climbing and assumed that the old lady and her people must be going to this temple which was visible as we climbed.

Reached this temple place and took a walk around it. Nothing special but the big statue of Hanuman was nice. Some pics below:

The trek towards to the top is a mix of steep and slow and gradual climb. But you have to remember that you take enough breaks and keep drinking water. It was also getting a little hot and we had only one bottle of water. This was good enough to make us feel tired very quickly.

It took as almost 75 mins to climb to the top. Its always a good feeling at the top as its no less than an achievement. You realize your mental and physical capabilities and you know that you have overcome all the hurdles to reach here. Good job!

Things we do to get a view from the top!

Now from here we hoped to see the crater which we did not. Now we had to go downhill. This was easy and quick taking advantage of the gravity.

After reaching downhill we took a walk around and saw the ashram of Rishi Chawan (from outside).

This is the water body which the inscribing talks about.

Some more pics around the area: 

Now we both were hell bent on seeing the huge crater which we had seen on Google. Asked some locals here but no body knew about it. Tried explaining them in their own terms what a crater is. Bada Gaddha. Zameen niche. Bahut badi niche ki taraf zameen. Nothing worked as they knew nothing about it. There were some kids who wondered where we came from and asked all sorts of questions to us. They kept walking with us and showed us this cave.

Finally we decided to move back to climbing to the top. We took it slow and easy conserving our energy, and clicking pictures.

When we reached back to the tea shop, we took some rest for a while as it was already very hot. There we met some locals who told us the story of Rishi Chawan, how he got married to that king’s daughter. They told us that this place is very rich with all medicinal plants and herbs. Told us about one particular herb which can stop bleeding immediately in case of wounds or injuries. Tourists do come often to this place but as its not a very ‘touristy’ place government did not take initiatives to develop this as a  heritage.

Well for us the trekking part was very much enjoyable and adventurous. There were more places to see like a fort at Narnaul but we decided to skip considering the time.

After a while we started riding back and halted at Narnaul for lunch. After covering some 60-70 km after lunch Mr. Adi wanted to have tea at a dhabha and decided to take a quick nap there itself. I had to wake him up from his power nap so we could continue riding back. After that there was no stopping and smooth ride back home by 5pm.

Oh, and another important thing, after we came back, Adi read about the place on Google again and this time it revealed that the whole place (the downhill place) itself was the crater! This means we were walking right on the crater and we were looking for it. Of course with time there were lot of trees and stuff appearing over it but since it was very different from the crater’s image in our mind, we failed to recognize it. But better late than never :P

Honestly if you ask me, I still don’t care who Rishi Chyawan was and what did he do in his ashram and all that. But I can’t deny I love going to new places and to explore. In this ride the trekking part was tough but exciting and it gives you a very good reality check, that life is not all smooth and sometimes you gotta make extra efforts to move to the top.

(You can read more about the related history of this place here and its actually very interesting : http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Dhosi_Hill)

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