I guess there are no explorers left to
voyage on the corroded face of this industrialised world. May be because every
piece of land, no matter how far flung it could be, has been flagged; or going
by the trend that’s more relatable, the potential explorers have got themselves
a job where they meet deadlines and that’s pretty living-on-the-edge too.
Well, as one just can’t afford to set sail
looking for new places to build catastrophic corporate houses and cyber cities,
it leaves us with very limited and already flocked tourist spots (or
group-honeymoon hideouts) to spend the weekend. The closest I could get to
exploring is googling a lesser known place within a night ride distance from
Delhi and then getting a unanimous approval on it from my fellow explorers who
do their bit by browsing other options. You see, the problem with this approval
thing is that everyone present in the room will vote for the place they
searched for. It’s not because they find the place cool, but that they have
spent precious time of their FUBAR lives on such strenuous google searches and
it can’t be let gone in disdain.
But this time we were lucky enough to get a
nod in just two weeks. It takes like forever otherwise and the desperate
explorers feel its betters to drop the plan if it doesn’t end with their
suggestion that’s agreed upon. Dropping the plan follows with a long ominous
nuclear winter that struck after the Fat Man was dropped. You know how it is
with the friends of friends who hold themselves in high regard (oh! that covers
the global population).
The white smoke at the Vatican was for the
God’s valley in the Kinnaur Kailash Range of Himalayas, the Sangla Valley. It’s
not a place that invites many with a hell bent motive to render their dick a
vestigial organ as there’s no mall road which I believe is where men seduce
their aww halves. Mall road to hill stations of Uttrakhand and Himachal Pradesh
is like what Rahul Gandhi is for Twitter.
The Friday night was here and after being
at the receiving end of a week-long bdsm play, with fatigued minds and cramped
limbs we plunged into the seats of our Innova. Toyota Innova is a caravan for
the poor man of Delhi providing generous space and letting you indulge in all
sorts of monkey business. Be it a school picnic or just an ordinary trip to the
dark of the moon, not reverberating Bollywood’s chartbuster hai-huku-hai-huku
(Gayatri Mantra for such occasions) on the back seat of your spaceship or the
Shaktimaan truck, can bring misery that’s somewhat of the degree equivalent to
cataclysm caused by Bhai’s driver. So we made a kirtan out of it.
The roads went from wide as balls to
slender as the cheerleaders’ legs, but not as welcoming. These are some of the
deadliest roads across the globe, just like all other facts presented about
India. With a straight face I can claim that the view was really worth ogling,
after all how often do you feel extricated from the swachh aur komal twacha of
them baes? The thundering rains just added to the mystics of everything around
that was already been placed so well.
A sunrise at Narkanda is worth waking up
late night at somewhere around 6 a.m. It feels lucky to witness something
that’s so pristine and the experience may last till you are buried or even
burnt (hope I haven’t hurt the already hurt sentiments of many). As the weather
was “bad”, the clouds came floating on the sideways. You see, the luck doesn’t
stop pouring in (proportionate with all the holy spirits) at places like these.
Wish we had such bad weathers in our cities.
It took us 12 hours to reach the Sangla
Valley, that’s exactly the time we put in for our professional growth every
day, minus the time we whiff the armpits in Delhi Metro. If only I were born in
some other age, the appraisal criteria would have been a lot different then.
Here in Sangla Valley, the panorama was pure and fresh. It felt like the river
which was flowing next to us entered my head through the ears, gush washed my
brain and hence, I surrendered. It was only me and no one else had ever
existed.
We stayed at the Kinner camp with almost
everyone as straight as you, or atleast they appeared so. They messed up the
name for all the wrong reasons. The camp was thoughtfully placed with on one
side the river wrangling with the rocks and on the other side, the snow-capped
mountain stood tall silently watching it. War and peace, the canvas had
elements of extreme contradictions but it was that juxtaposition which had a
divine effect. It’s like we have so much chaos simmering around but when we
picture it from the god’s vision, everything looks so perfect and attached.
Kinnaur is a good trekking option if you are not Bear Grylls or his Camera
Person. We did for nearly 4 hours and every minute was filled with deep regrets
for the festivities we had the previous night. You know how wasted youth is.
The next halt was at Chitkul, the last
inhabited village near the Indo-China border. We went there and realized that
out of so many lies we came across as a child, there was one truth about it.
It’s the painting that everyone customarily portrayed (not the creative ones) in
the competitions. Chitkul, in every stroke, was that picture coming to life
with sun gaping from behind the ranges, while the feathered friends chirped and
the river made a smooth entry into the valley. We also have some people living
there, but they look extremely normal, not like those who suffered from acute
polio in our illustrations.
It was our last night in the mountains and
if there were one thing we could resist was our crippled lives. But what have
we been able to do there when we can’t even walk up the mountain without dying?
The journey ended and after coming back home I realized that it wasn’t about
the much needed break that we anticipated. There’s never a break. It’s a
continuous flow of the divine river that charges, soothes, nourishes, moulds,
sacrifices but never takes a break.
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