It happened again, a view of mighty mountains in front of me and a road leading into it, I was lit like fire. The Himalayas! It was a new feeling rushing through my body, I can still feel it as I'm writing this. I was climbing very slowly with my 100cc engine having just enough power to pull me through, as I was feeling the need for some extra power under my throttle. Can you imagine climbing the Himalayan mountains at 30 kmph? The mountains kept me calm, the view of clouds resting on the mountains, the slight drizzle and those winding roads through the lush forests kept me going. After all that riding, I was now starting to feel the real cold. I reached Darjeeling town around 3:00 pm and found a youth hostel to stay and it started raining.
I was inside The Darjeeling zoo when I suddenly bumped into Jeevan Thomas. We had done our graduation together in Bangalore. He was there with his family and worked for a travel firm in Kolkata. He looked the same as before. No change in shape or size. Later, I sat on a ropeway taking a tour of the Mountains that turned into tea plantations when I met with another family from Kerala. Man, people from Kerala at least live their lives rather than just only making money. I ate Chowmein at a restaurant nearby and crashed with a peg of rum.
I stayed at Gangtok the next day and kept savouring the Northeastern food at simple food joints. The Momos with chilly sauce, the soup and the chowmein. Wow, delicious. I wanted to ride to Natula pass but was forced to share a cab since the bike papers weren't in my name.
The trip to Natula was bone freezing. We started at 8 in the morning and the vehicle climbed through the narrow lanes, passing mountains one by one. It was my first sight of the great snow-capped Himalayas. With the cold and the temperatures around zero, It took us a day to cover Natula pass, to see China on the other side, a Shiva temple and a lake on the way. As I rode back I met a biker from Maharashtra, on his solo trip. He said each year he chose one destination to ride to and explored it for at least a month. Now he had plans to ride to the villages around Gangtok.
Tawang was my next destination and I started riding towards it.
Every time I come down a mountain, a part of me stays behind.
It may seem that I had saved up a lakh for this tour. But I had started riding with just 6000 rupees and when that was about to finish, Arshad sent me 5000. Meanwhile, friends, relatives and cousins, kept sending whatever they could spare. From the homestay bookings, I kept just a 500 for myself and sent the rest home. My family kept wanting all the money I made, even though they knew I was riding with nothing on me. But I needed my peace. So I let it be. While I’m writing this right now I'm on my way to Tawang and I hardly have 3500 in my account. Money kept coming and going while something I believed in kept me moving on. Maybe God.
I've done crazy things in life and when spirituality hit me I was already on the dark side. For being cheated of my passion and my life, I had started chasing pleasure, money and satisfaction. I was in a live-in relationship at the age of nineteen. Everything hit me at once when I started meditation. I had to fight through my dark thoughts and an inward journey began parallel to my outward one. It was not easy but I'm sure it was not too late either.
Today, it’s been 51 days on the road and the journey has been a priceless experience. When I started, I wished I had enough money to complete the ride but now I'm happy I started empty-handed. Teaches a lot about the true colours of people in your life. Having millionaires in the family, relatives working in different countries, friends in high paid tech jobs and a huge community, looked like there wasn't one so-called millionaire rich enough to fund the ride. After the initial push, my balance kept fluctuating between 2000 and 5000 and I had to think twice before I spent each rupee. That society which we care for and worry about, wasting our whole life, trying to live up to their standards, I realised that day that it's better to live your life on your own terms and not try to depend on anyone for your happiness.
With Tawang on my maps, that evening I camped in a grassland. Simply green, wide and beautiful. A boy came up and spoke to me asking me about my story. His name was Dewash, later he brought a few friends and we sat down chitchatting. I asked them about their lives, most of them were students. Samarpan was working in a school, managing accounts, Sonam had dropped out of school, he wanted to be a rapper, also a stoner.
My stash was over, so we bought some from the village nearby and they chilled with me until 11:00 PM. The next morning Dewash and Samarpan came to see me before they left for school and work. When I was about to pack up and leave, Sonam came up and insisted that I stay there one more day. He wanted to show me around the place. I said okay. I left my luggage at his house, we ate food and started walking through the tea estates near Chalsa in Siliguri. He lived in a small house with his dad, mom and sisters’ family. I could see that nobody had a routine job and didn't want to get into their personal matters. The place had a lot of wild elephants so there were numerous watchtowers. We sat on top of one talking about life. We came back to have lunch and rested and waited while the rest of the gang got back. In the evening we went on a walk, about 8 boys on their usual routine stroll and me, simply tagging along. I tried my best to convince Sonam to complete his education.
That night I was invited for dinner as well. After dinner, he took me to this amazing setup to sleep. It was a huge pipe under the railway track, facing a Lake on one side and a paddy field on the other. In between, they had made a flat surface to sleep with bamboo and it could accommodate up to 10 people with enough blankets and pillows stacked up. We bought some rice beer and stayed there for the night. The next morning it started raining so bad that we ended up getting totally drenched by the time we reached Sonam's house. Since he wasn't studying and smoked weed, the impression his family had on him and his friends were not so great. The boys though were humane enough to invite a nobody like me to stay with them and treat me like one among them.
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Dewash Danwar. A picture from Siliguri.
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