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From Bakshish Singh

There are many sweet & sour memories of my first visit to Chakrata hills as a forestry student in 1956; and many times thereafter (as Soil Conservation Officer at the Soil Cons. Institute, Dehradun during early 1960s; and as Director Landuse Survey & Watershed Management, Dehradun during 1980s).

My first camping with the forest trainees was as usual at Deoban in June 1956. Sardar Jaswant Singh and Chaudhary Ram Prakash, our instructors, were camping in one of the suites of Deoban Forest Rest House whereas Commissioner Kanpur (U.P.) and his family were occupying the other suite.

On one of those mornings all the trainees and the instructors were walking uphill to Beas Shikhar (hill top), when two kids of the Commissioner and his Orderly went past us, walking hurriedly. After some time when we also reached the hill top, we found that the Orderly was lying dead there. We the trainees had been instructed by our instructors to be careful not to rush walking uphill. The poor Orderly lost his life by becoming breathless due to faster continuous climbing up (probably in competition with us) and getting a heart attack on stopping at the hill top.

It was a very sad experience for us to carry the dead body from the hilltop down to the valley and cremate him by collecting dry wood from the surrounding forest.

--- Bakhshish Singh

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