Diversions of a Busy Lawyer continues....

At Bandrol, we visited the famous orchard of Mr. Lee. The trees were laden with apples and persimmon. We spent a good deal of time here going about the orchard and purchased some fruit and ordered more to be sent to our friends. Reaching Manali, we went up to the hot spring of Bashisht. After a bath in the spring, we returned to Manali and stayed there for two days. Then we turned back to Nagar which is the capital of the valley and where the sub-divisional magistrate holds his court. The manager of the orchard there was related to me, so he secured good fast ponies for us all for a ride from, Katrain to Nagar. There we stayed in the orchard guest house and had our fill of apples of different varieties. The journey back to Dharamsala was uneventful.

In 1931 I spent the spring recess on an interesting trip to Barot along with Mr. J. R. Agnihotri, till recently the Registrar of the Punjab University, Mr. Tek Chand, now a Judge of the Punjab High Court, Mr. Sikri, now Advocate General, Punjab, and Lala Jagan Nath Aggarwal. After visiting the Hydro-Electric plant at Joginder Nagar we went to Barot by the ropeway railway. We had expected to return to Joginder Nagar by the evening but we reached Barot late and no return trip was possible at that late hour. We telephoned to the Engineer in charge asking him if he could provide us lodging for the night. He took us to his own house and provided us with blankets and food.

I gained new experience while conducting the brick-kiln business. I intended to build a house at Pathankot and to re-model the Bhadwar house. I also intended to build a hospital in memory of my father in our village Tika Nagrota. I decided to start a brickkiln of my own at Pathankot. The kiln not only supplied my needs, we had enough bricks to sell to others.

to be continued.....