Many people have asked us where we got this harebrained idea of chucking our jobs and travelling the country.
This is our story.
A few years ago we travelled to Uttarakhand with a group of friends, to catch a glimpse of the second tallest peak in the country, the majestic Nanda Devi. It was towards the end of the monsoon and as beautiful, lush and green as Uttarakhand promised to be; it was simply not the best time of year (from a visibility perspective) to schlep a few thousand kilometres across the country for some mountain watching. But never one to let such trivialities stand in the way of a good vacation with friends, off we went with our dynamite driver Rinku Singh, (whose one liners and daredevil manoeuvres behind the wheel kept us highly entertained and occasionally petrified) to explore the hills of Kumaon.
After spending a few magical nights in Jilling at a beautiful little cottage overlooking the valley, a forgettable stop at Chaukori, and some stunning drives through deep ravines and two-hut villages, we found ourselves in Kausani, which is considered to be amongst the best places to view the Nanda Devi. Our days there largely consisted of getting up at dawn in the hopes of catching the elusive goddess (the mornings were relatively clear but the days mostly overcast), followed by endless cups of chai and a book, and idle walks around the countryside. The nights usually meant lazily making our way through a bottle of Old Monk whilst pondering why anyone in their right mind would come all the way to the Himalayas in the monsoon, not go to the famed Valley of Flowers and instead chase the shadow of some peak around the countryside.
On one such night we were sitting on the balcony of our charming wooden cottage and the mood was particularly mellow. It had rained in the evening, the kind of rain that results in a delightfully cool breeze, leaving the world looking freshly scrubbed and smelling earthy and sweet. The sky was a deep inky blue and you couldn’t look out into the yonder for more than a couple of minutes without seeing a shooting star burn itself out over the horizon.
Satiated by drink and good food, the conversation turned to travel and we started a whimsical discussion on what it would be like to journey across the country by train. Not as a vacation, but as a journey. We spoke of the places we would visit; charted out routes we would take and argued over what would be the best season to begin. Somewhere down the line we ran out of rum and intelligent conversation, and staggered into our respective beds with happy thoughts and visions of paradise.
Over the next few years, we revisited that conversation many times, fantasising about how crazy and awesome it would be if we really were to undertake such a journey. We marvelled at just how much we would learn and experience and grow from such an undertaking. Those conversations usually ended with a wistful sigh and a ‘someday’ as we put these silly thoughts aside and prepared for the real world and life as we were told it was meant to be.
Five years later, after some twists and turns we found ourselves married and settled into a quaint old apartment in a Parsi colony in South Bombay.
A few months after we returned from our honeymoon in Morocco, on another rainy day, not unlike the one in Kausani, we came across the story of a Canadian couple, who had sold all their worldly possessions and started out on a journey across the world from South America to Africa and onwards to Asia. It was a story that spoke to us and appealed to the wanderlust in both of us in a fairly intense way. It was at that moment that we both knew, individually and collectively, that this is something we were going to do. Not later but sooner, not someday but now, not the world just yet, but India.
Coming back to that night in Kausani and to the conversation that sparked it all; the next morning we were woken up as usual by the caretaker at first light. There was palpable excitement as we stood on our balcony, wondering what all the fuss was about, when as if on cue the clouds slowly drifted apart, and as the sun bathed the sky in its soft morning glow, there before us stood the Nanda Devi in all her pristine glory – proud, imposing and magical. It was everything we could have imagined. That one moment made the chase and all those early mornings worthwhile. It was the only time on that two week trip that we saw the peak, and we believe that we truly did find what we had been searching for – not just a glimpse of the goddess, but a spark of adventure that the future would hold for us.
