Come, Find Your God
Shimla ni wasna
Kasauli ni wasna
Barsu
jaana zaroor
The
thought of owning a house in the mountains is a dream common to most people who
travel in, and are in love with, the mountains. Everyone has their own reasons
to choose the village where they’d like to build their little cottage, and 5
minutes into Barsu, I found mine. The cleanliness of the village, the different
kinds of built up huts, the smiles on everyone’s faces, the beauty around the
village…I can’t quite reduce what I felt when I was there into a few meager
words, but hear the song ‘maine ne meri’
by Mohit Chauhan, and perhaps you’ll get an inkling of my state of mind there.
The trek
itself, is full of romance, atleast according to me—nothing short of the style
of a Yash Raj movie. The views that you would imagine when you think of the
mountains, places in movies or books, they are all there on this trek.
The
minute you start from Barsu, the beauty of the trail starts to roll into your
very being, and by the point you reach the first camp sight your heart is
actually heavy with the beauty you have witnessed along the path you have just
finished walking. You are simply awed and overwhelmed by the immenseness of it, and by the sheer
insignificance of your little self in this most beauteous world created by God.
You first reach a place with a small stream flowing and you think it’s the perfect
reading spot. Ten minutes ahead you find yourself walking on a bed of dried
maple leaves for a while; a further ten minutes on, and you will be standing in
a sun-kissed grove of trees with the sunlight coming filtering in, right on
your face, and you just want to lie down, right there and drink/soak it all in.
If that is not enough to pack your bags and prepare for this trek, you will
come upon fallen walnuts strewn in your path as you wind your way through the
trail. A happy looking dog comes from nowhere and starts to accompany you and
walks with you till the very end of the trek, without ever disturbing you.
As the
night falls and starry starry night
is playing in your head, and you set up camp for the night, one of the
traditions of the treks—the bonfire—warms your bone-weary body that has been loaded
with your bags and your brave feet which have brought you this far to witness
the power of this starry starry night. Conversations at this time usually start
with teasing one another about the journey so far, followed by the fairly
obvious discussions on the pathetic state of Indian politics and the apathy of
the government. Our indignation at this sorry state of affairs then brings out
the Gandhi in all of us, lamenting how no one is doing anything for the
villages we have just crossed, how these people have so many problems. Some of
us have practical solutions to actually help the villagers and we really want
to do something to make things better for them, but sometimes, when I sit at
the bonfire with all these fiery suggestions flying back and forth, I think how
can I, without even spending time with the people, decide what is best for
them, when in the cities where we live we don’t even bother with the
litter/nuisance around. The irony is we go to the mountains to escape from our
daily lives full of complications, but find the same sort of complications,
only in a different context, here in the mountains as well. Being passionate
about these social issues, give us a high when we debate about them, but I
wonder, how many of us will actually take the plunge to work for these people? The
conversation keeps flowing along with food and drinks, and I let my mind
wander.
On this
trek, we had Mr Gajender with us (our guide, who was maybe around 60 plus)
whose talks will always make me want to be more humble in my life and the
conversations with him in the 3 days that I spent with him, will always will be
something that I will treasure for a lifetime. (It always makes me think how
easily you end up having conversations with these people who are possibly our
parents’ or grandparents’ ages, and discuss everything under the sun with them,
when back home, we struggle to exchange even two words with our own
parents/grandparents) Do this trek, if for nothing else, than to meet this
humble soul. Another person you will meet is Mr. Bachan who, with his passion
for trekking will really make you want to have a passion for something in life, and how to work
towards it honestly. I have immense respect for him. I can write a chapter on both
Mr Gajender and Bachan and the things
they taught me in the times we were together.
Waking up
to the sunrise in the mountains is one of the reasons I do trekking for; before
sleeping I feel like a child who is excited about the next morning when I will
receive gifts for Diwali. To watch the
sun rays ascend slowly on the snow covered mountains in front of you makes you
feel grateful to God that he has given you eyes to witness something so
breathtaking. It takes time for the sunlight to spread all over, but those
30-40 minutes are mesmerizing. The next morning romantic trails are gone and you
find only meadows and meadows till where you can see. Just greenery around you with
snow covered mountains around, and with the clouds so close that you feel you
can just walk 500 metres and touch them. Trust me you wont feel tired one bit
as the beauty of meadows would have taken over you. You keep talking along the
way with your fellow-travellers and it is amazing how things going on in your
head (there is something always going on in our screwed-up brains) become
insignificant while witnessing the beauty around you. You end up having/ sharing
the most intensely private things about your life with these people, and you learn
to value people/ relationships more. When you want to take a break, eat your
packed lunch (food served to you in the mountains always seems tastier and you
definitely enjoy it more than your lunches/dinners in the restaurants in the
city).
Don’t
ever worry about the difficulty levels, about how you are going to walk and
manage and all of that. The only thing you need to take with you is the mind-set
that yes, you want to be standing at a
height of 10,000-14000 ft and feeling awesome about having reached there, and yes
you will get there with a lot of hard work and pain because walking in the
mountains is not easy, the altitude irritates you, your own physical level puts
you to shame, you laugh at yourself that why did I put myself through this. But
once you have completed the trek, and you look behind at the big mountains that
you have crossed you feel you are not a quitter and that gives you the
confidence, the value of which you will realize once you are dealing with your
daily life. Trekking is more about yourself than just the views which are very
different from just travelling because you are testing yourself, struggling
against the pain, weather, you’re out of your comfort zone, but it also teaches
you to have strong will power, to be strong, calm against the unpredictable nature,
motivating your fellow travelers. It is a high and trust me you actually
cherish the hangover.
I’ve
often heard it said that prayer and meditation in a temple/mosque/church is
when you feel the closest to God, but I find, that for me, God is in the
mountains. I go to the mountains to stand witness to, and be a part of, God’s
might. I stand witness to God’s grace in the beauty of the mountains, when I
push my body, my mind and my soul to endure the pain I do during the trek, and
in that process, I find myself. I do not know if there is a heaven beyond the
veil of this world we live in, but I do know, that I find it in myself, when I
am one with the mountains on a trek. So come on this trek, and come find your
God.
Chadar Trek
Kedarkantha Trek
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