Travel Blog - Journey, Stories and Experiences

When you travel, especially alone, you sometimes meet other people who are in the same space as you. What's exciting for me is to think for a second about how we met at the same place. If you think about it, if they are foreigners like me, they might have decided to come to that country, applied for a visa, and booked tickets while I was also doing the same, sitting in my home. They must have thought about going to the same place that day when I decided to go too. Sometimes, they would have other plans, but they got changed, and they arrived at the same location at the same time where I was, or vice versa. It's something I witnessed long back, an account I wrote in the Butterfly Effect blog.  These people stayed with me even after those meetings. I have often found myself telling these stories to my friends, and they have often appreciated it. Some stories, I have never told anyone. Such encounters rarely end up in exchanging numbers, but I still remember all of them, and I wi...

In the last part , as I mentioned, we hurriedly went to the market to buy wool as the clouds were getting darker, and when I looked over the mountain peaks, they looked straight from an alien movie. Harshil Valley had changed many colours since I had arrived. My main motive for visiting the market was to buy original sheep wool from a local house, and my mother had promised she would knit the sweater for me. When we reached there, all the shopkeepers were running to shut their shops to get to their homes before the rain. I was there in November, and it was not a "touristy" time. People just pass through Harshil in the summer months as it falls on the way to Gangotri Dham. The gates had closed in October, and in addition, it was the start of harsh winters that Harshil faces. Half of the locals had already migrated to Uttarkashi and Pauri for the winters, while a few left who were waiting to prune the Apple trees.  The first shop I went into, the woman was in a hurry. It is wor...

It's 5 am in the morning. My mother opens up the gate and two regular dogs arrive waiting for this time to eat their food. One has golden fur, and one has black fur. We have nurtured them since they were only a few months old. I started giving food to the golden boy, and after a few months, he brought his friend. That's how their connection with my home started. Soon, they started spending a big part of their day inside my home, sunbathing in winter, and making sure all the home flies are eliminated from this territory. Soon they regained their health, and their fur got dense. This transformation must not have gotten hidden in their community, and I am sure some of their friends would have asked them, "Where are you getting all the food from?" and they must have replied, "We eat the same food. It is just our body type!" I say so because no other dog visited us with them from their territory. However, this got changed when the black boy became a young father....

 When I arrived at Ishan's house, he already had a booking for 2 days from someone called "CP" starting from the next day. When I asked him to get me a heater, he gave me a hot air fan, which is not that great in temperatures dipping below negative. I saw him using a much bigger heater in his room, and I was confused as to why he did not provide me with that. Later that night, after dinner, we were sitting on the porch looking down at the Harsil valley and Mukhwa village, on which lights were shimmering in perfect sync. "Somebody is putting up a tent there, look!" said Ishan, pointing towards a gap between two mountains. I looked at the place he pointed and could only see a single light there, like a bulb. "How do you know that?" I asked him. "There's nothing there. Somebody has put up the tent, that's why a light is there. I wonder how they will spend the night. It would be so exciting." I saw his eyes shining while he spoke and cont...

In November, I decided to visit Harsil Valley. A picturesque valley with snow-peaked mountains and the last settled village on the way to the Gangotri Dham. It had long been my wish to visit Harsil, and at a time when the water is blue and the wind is cold. Fortunately, November weather matches my conditions perfectly. I booked a homestay with Ishan, whose first line read, "Atop a small 1.5 km hike is our home with beautiful Apple orchards." When I enquired with him before booking, he was quick to tell me that the homestay is not in the valley, but we have to hike a bit to get there. "Although the view from my home is great," he said after mentioning the hike. Hiking wasn't a problem, and I could easily sacrifice my legs for the views in Harsil Valley.  My trip to the Harsil valley started with multiple U-turns, thanks to Ishan, who was confused and did not know the signs on the way. "I am at the signboard that says, Welcome to Bagori village", I said,...

An adult, grey, and beautiful pigeon sits on a balcony visible from my room. The balcony is one floor higher than mine, whose shorter side faces my balcony. I sit and work close to my balcony, inside my room, where my desk and chair are greeted with solid sunshine each morning. While I pay rent to stay in my room, pigeons live rent-free here. I see them all day, from my chair, flying in all directions, drinking water from the swimming pool, and diving from the terrace straight towards the ground. Now that so many days have passed, I inadvertently ignore them as they have become a part of my daily life. For more than a year, the balcony on the upper floor, which I mentioned above, has not been lonely. I say lonely because I have never seen any human on that balcony. Just some ropes and a pipe stay there, lonely and forgotten by their masters. The balcony doesn't speak to me, else I would have given her company every day. We are too close to hear each other, even if we talk in a norm...

The division of our society is explicitly visible in the products people living within it make. A train comes with coaches divided into upper-class air-conditioned private coaches to lower-class messy and sweaty ones where people rely on air from the door and windows. This means if the train is not moving, its "AC" is not working. Buses follow a similar pattern where there are air-conditioned, high-tech Volvo buses which are often looked upon by people sitting in a lower-grade bus with hopes and desires, and often followed by abuses such as "rich brats". These lower-class buses are termed "ordinary" in the government booking portal, glorifying the fact that you cannot expect something lavish here, or to just portray that the other bus is "extraordinary". Maybe "ordinary" is an alias used for a bus but signifying the current societal status of the people sitting in it. I become "ordinary" when I sit in an "ordinary" b...