One Sunday night in Mumbai, Rishad Saam Mehta decided he wanted to see winter with snowflakes, frostbites and slippery roads. So 48 hours later, he and a friend drove off. Here's what happened

"But, but...the basin is missing" I sputtered in shock. However Ramesh Rangana wasn't too perturbed at finding a vital component of the bathroom missing.

Rangana, the deputy manager of Hotel Snow View in Chakrata, smiled.

"I know sir, but", he said again pausing for suspense as if his brain was being directed by Alfred Hitchcock, "I have for you" u2014 another long pause u2014 "two styles of toilets" and he pulled back the curtains to reveal two loos u2014 one western style and the other squat-on-your-haunches Indian style. Side by side!

Needless to say we weren't terribly excited about this basin-commode barter and politely rejected the room and moved into another one.

Snow white

On a whim, two of us, old college mates, had pointed the nose of the new Toyota Corolla Altis north in an impulsive decision to hunt down some winter. We hit National Highway Number 8 precisely at 4.46 am on a Wednesday morning in Mumbai. It is because of the very enthusiastic engine and the brakes that have an unrelenting bite like that of a Rottweiler that we could munch miles at an astounding rate and make Ajmer, 1150 km away, in one driving day. Of course this came with a price and a grimace as we had to pull into fuel stations every 400-odd kilometers.

The next day we were in Delhi in time for afternoon tea.

Now, on our third night halt, we'd found the cold in Chakrata, a little hill station in Uttarakhand but chances of snow were bleak.

Sitting around the roaring bonfire, shivering in the 8 degree cold, the deputy manager sunk our hopes even lower by informing us that snowfall usually happens only in February.

"But I can offer you some soup, instead," he said brightly.

We accepted Random Ramesh's offer but the soup wasn't doing it for me and out came the Talisker 10-year-old Single Malt.

A few months back at the Talisker distillery on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, the old master distiller had handed me this bottle and told me "Laddie, sip a wee dram when ye are cold and dreary and she will warm the cockles of ye heart."

That cold evening in Chakrata, it definitely did that and also loosened Mr Rangana's tongue. As long as the simple tomato soup was flowing he was like Raju Guide telling us to see this and go there. But as soon as the water of life started to glide down his gullet he turned into a gossipy goose.