Finding FLAVOURLAND

PRANNAY PATHAK went café-hopping in paragliding hotspot Bir, and found the billing justified

- PRANNAY PATHAK

I REALLY WISH THIS ACCOUNT COULD BE NARRATED IN REVERSE EVEN THOUGH I wouldn’t change the order in which it actually happened. I did give cheating you a bit some thought. I could just tell you that I first went to Dharamkot and not Bir for my longdue café crawl in the hills. But as I sat looking jadedly at my beverage and then at the woman who had collapsed on her partner’s shoulder and was gazing away at the faraway hill, eyes wide awake, as if in a Fleetwood Mac song, I decided to tell you as it happened.

But first a little about the drink that was on my table. The perky honey-lemon-ginger tea is at most places and times, decent at worst and unbelievably uplifting at best. At Morgan’s Place—seemingly Dharamkot’s best-known café—I couldn’t believe I had sipped half a glass of hot lemonade on an unusually sunny day. Making our way through all the smoke in search of some crisp mountain air and some half-decent coffee, we hiked through the one-lane village wearily, downsizing our choices with each shut door we encountered. Finally, at a café named Moonlight, where digital nomads smoked endlessly and two enormous German Shepherds strutted from one table to the other, we had Turkish coffee and falafel.

THE BIR BUZZ