lost and found in himachal

• Day28 | 06-01-2025

First of many entries of 2025, here we go.
Started off 2025 with a blast, drumrolls, as the clock was striking 00:00 on 31st December, I was sitting at a small in-house restro café in ecstatic state, credits goes to hash, weed, and old monk, devouring chicken dishes as fast as possible to get back to our beaut wooden interior cozy hot box room just to shout ‘4’ as we count down from ten backwards.

My first trip to the mountains. To Himachal.

Dalhousie and Khajjiar

The morning of 1st January
My eyelids separated to find myself with four layers of clothing followed by two layers of blanket sandwiched between Chaitanya and Bitthal, and my throat craving for water. I got up with great chilly pain to get some water.
As I was planning to shift to the single bed on the other room, I had a glimpse outside window, it was dawn, sky turning blue for the first time this year.
I had no other choice but to get outside and enjoy the sceneries, with great preparation I stepped outside, cute warm kirana shops where opening. I asked one of the old lady there, with bit apprehension is there any short trek nearby, she timidly stated that there are no proper good trek nearby, but there a shiv temple nearby if I take a right turn from there, pointing towards a crossing.

Shiv mandir in Himalayas, on the first day. I had to.

I set my foot towards that direction, just to find myself walking miles in an empty road surrounded by deodar trees and Himalayas. My ears were covered with benie, but I could feel everything, my eyes were having a feast and sometimes my eardrums could hear sound of beach, white noise of waves crashing. I wondered, maybe it’s just the covering of ear and some acoustical magic in mountain.

Tucked nicely on one corner of the road, I found a tiny stair way, tangential with the road, it was steep, I had to go higher, so I aimlessly kept on climbing the. As I was walking through the stairs, I learnt something, when you are alone in mountains around tall deodar tress and you hear the constant high bass hum sound as if you are few metres away from beach, it’s the sound of leaves rustling, as strong wind blow around them. Eventually after few hundred steps I found a home, a man walking towards me, and few dogs barking on a stranger i.e. me. I deciphered that it is his home. After a brief conversation with the man while coming back to the road, he reassured that shiv temple is half a mile away and that he could give me a lift if I wanted.

It was an old supremely cute and steady Maruti 800, as if this car was made to drift through these rugged roads.
After few minutes of drive, he dropped me off to the temple. I was rather disappointed, but was ecstatic with the thought of finding shiv ji alone here in mountains, something was calling me and I answered.

There were few shops around and I was thirsty. The first shop did not accept upi payment, the second one did, but. All pockets of my garments were devoid of any cell phone. I got petrified, terrified and ded. My first theory, I should say ‘stupid me’. Last, I remember my phone was in my jacket side pocket where you warm your hand, not the best place to keep something valuable while you are climbing steep stairs with loud constant noise of wind, and if my cell phone escaped me during that ascent then technically it should be few hundred metres below me, broken by some rock, never to see me again. Me being me, I had a calming conversation with the shopkeeper who was an angel in disguise, he contacted the man who had given me the lift and provided me free bottle of water. Let’s pause here – A shop in mountains, in not the most business-friendly neighbourhood, did not hesitate to give me free bottle of water. I doubt if I will ever find the same gesture in my home city. And the maruti800 owner, being a gentleman himself, picked up my call, searched for my phone, to be found in his car itself. He waited for me five hundred metres down the road. Those few hundred metres were way longer than an adult man would expect. There he is, with my phone.

Om Namah Shivay.

I am alive with all my limbs in perfect condition, along with my phone, bits iphone, the a6000 camera and the divine bottle of water. I sat down to reflect what just happened. Comfortably spent fifteen minutes, with serene silent, nothing just the wind, the trees, the stone pavement and the vastness behind me.
Visited a cute household on the way back to warm my hands. I wish I could have clicked few photos. But I was awestruck just with the trust with which they allowed me to enter their small kitchen and use the wooden traditional chulha to make my hand warmer.

Every human, I encountered that morning, was so generous, welcoming and kind. Either I was charming and lucky or people in mountains are more human.