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India

  • My Experiential Travel Guide to Hyderabad, The City of Nawabs (2) November 10, 2018
  • My Love and Hate Relationship With the Colorful India – A Story and Memory Postcards (7) September 1, 2018
  • Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary – A Day in the Winged Paradise (4) June 20, 2018
  • A One–Day Road Trip From Bangalore to Panchapalli Dam and Bettamugilalam Village – Driving Through Wilderness and Rejoicing in Nature (6) May 22, 2018
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  • Spiti, a dream, a desolated dry desert, or just another distant district. Even though I returned from the valley a week ago and now I am with my loved ones back at home, I still have that tinge of loneliness & isolation I felt in the giant valley. . . Spiti has become a vivid memory. Miles & miles of rugged rocky mountains. A thin river curling at the foot of the tall hills. Snowy peaks. The combination of brown & blue that the valley is. The missing green. Tiny villages, population as less as 2000 people, hinging onto the high slopes of dry peaks. Connected with each other with only 1 daily HRTC bus. Cluster of mud houses all living in the same villages for generations. Families working in the pea & barley farms that were assigned to them centuries ago. Solar & electric power connections running the whole house. Greenhouses providing the family with their daily need of vegetables. Cattle, sheep, donkeys tied in a small shed behind the house. Children as old as 7-8 years studying far from their mothers. Village women rising up early to climb mountains to reach their fields to work. Men guiding curious people up the treacherous Himalayas to show them snippets of Ibex & the sought-after Snow Leopard. Girls as young as 10-11 waking up to make rotis & then either joining their mothers to the field or managing some other work. Preparations for snow. For the time when temperatures would go down as low as -40 degrees & no one gets out.A boy from UP can also be found in each house. These boys live & work with the family, far away from their own homes, to make money & send some home. Evenings full of conversations,tea,& biscuits with nearby villagers. A drowsy TV running in the background. Walls full of artists ceramic crockery. The whole scene repeated in houses in all villages. Even if you change villages you feel living the same day. Unless the landscape changes & takes you even higher sometime. . . As a travel blogger & writer, I travel more for the experience & conversations with locals rather than to chill & drink with friends. But this time while traveling alone in the valley, I wondered if I could handle the cold desert alone? . I am not sure.
  • Spiti wasn't so green & blue in general. Most of the landscape was barren. Vast. Dry. Empty. Intimidating, at points. After all, Spiti is at 4000m. Villages are scattered throughout, but some villages are more isolated than rest. . This photo is of the fields above a high village called Chicham. I stayed for two night in a homestay there. I hadn't read or heard or researched anything about Spiti before, like always. So I didn't know what to expect. Phone networks don't work in Spiti, except BSNL. In that village, even BSNL didn't work. I was on my own with the family. . Insta space isn't enough to explain how Spitian villages are & how I felt but that's the challenge & privilege of being a writer.You have to find the words. . I felt isolated in the giant valley. People of Spiti speak Spitian. Not many were interested in my life from the plains. At least not in Chicham. Villagers have plenty of work in their pea farms & homes. They would wake up, go off to the field, come back, eat, & get ready for another trip to some far off place to fix water or take out grass or herd cattle or collect forest plants. When in the evening everyone in the family finished their work, they huddled together around the fire in their mud home that was mostly in the middle of nowhere. Everyone spoke in Spitian, though they understand & speak Hindi well. . So while I would spend the evening listening to conversations that I didn't understand, in the morning I left to walk & hitchhike & see another village. Or I went to the family's farm along with them to see what they do daily. This photo is from one such hike with the homestay lady who happily showed me her pea farm & told me many things. She would talk to me in hindi when alone, but if she had company, they would speak in Spitian. . But it was not just the conversation-less evenings or feeling of being different or using pit toilets or eating thick bread for breakfast that estranged me in the barren valley. Spitians work like there is no tomorrow.Neither do they see movies nor do they read or do fun activities. . So as much I wanted to understand their life, I couldn't see myself as a part of it. . What's your Spiti experience?
  • Himachal has been such a journey for me. This is the second time I have been here and every vista mesmerizes me. Even when I see these sheep and goats sitting and chilling on the top of a hill with noone for miles around except the shepherd who has come up from Mandi. Or when he asks us if we are interested in some mushrooms. Or when I see people from different age groups smoking away in the valley with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Or when an Old man sees me with two bags and soaking in rain and when I ask him the direction of a village, he points me to a few houses on the opposite side of the valley and expects that I will climb down and up on a path that I can't see in rain when it's my first time in Parvati. Or when I see a stall which says LSD but means love Shanti Dosa. Or when I hear blasting music in a peaceful village on the slope of a hill. Or when I hear stories of people encountering wild bear in the jungle and protecting themselves by shouting or fire. Or when a babaji tells me that he would take me to his cave up somewhere in the Himalayas. Or when I meet Chileans and Spanish and French and we wander in the valley talking in Spanish like we all are foreigners. Or when I can't connect to the internet for days and when I do I don't know what to do with the connectivity. .. . I am amazed by all of it. All of it. Like my mind is blown away. On top of it all the foreign travelers keep telling me how everything is possible in #India. I look at them with my big bewildered brown eyes. I think. Then I look around. Even when I am not smoking I feel high. I reply. Yes, everything is possible in India. Everything is possible in India. Especially here in the #himalayas, the mind boggling Himalayas. . . What do you think? . #onmycanvas #instahimachal #bhunbhuni #parvativalley #himachalgram #lifeinthehimalayas #incredibleindia #natgeoyourshot #lonelyplanetindia #cntgiveitashot #nomadsofindia #oneplus5t #himachali_insta_shoutout #parvati #ig_hindustan #_woi #_soi #_coi
  • This mountain girl reminded me of another little girl I had met on a remote island of Peru. This one, who is called Shreya, had the same freshness towards everything around her, plush apple-like cheeks marked with roughness of the mountains and remote life, playful and shy, but above all, the big apricot like eyes that spoke like no one has ever spoken to me before. . . It's true that we exaggerate our experience on social media, but amongst the show-off, I try to tell the truth, more often than not. Only today I was thinking that have I written enough while traveling for months. Have I done justice to my experiences & did I share the things people need to hear? Then I realised that I have been writing honestly on Insta. And I would continue to do so. . So about this girl. I can't tag the place where I met her for it isn't on Google maps, but she is from Mandi. Like many other farmers & shepherds families, she migrates to the upper Himachal or a place called Bhunbhuni every year during the months of summer. The forest department has allowed all the shepherds to use the pastures & hills for cattle grazing. So these families walk to Parvati valley along with their cattle & stay here for around 4 months. When I reached the top of Bhunbhuni, we walked passed by her hut. Everyone was saying hi to her & she smiled & shied away. These were two sisters. The one standing behind is also called Shreya, the elder Shreya told us. When I approached closer, she started moving away. Then I smiled. She smiled. Then I giggled. She giggled. I went closer. She went a little back. I tickled her slowly with my fingers. And she walked back towards a tiny buffalo calf that you don't see in this photo. Both the Shreyas huddled next to their buffalo friend & kept laughing. And after that whenever they saw me, they would try to run away. Haha. Innocent souls. . Shreya is a fireball of energy. The older mountain girls are also fireballs. They marry by 18 & have children soon. Then they live a homely life & do farming & raise children & cattle all their life. Such contrasts. . When I compare a city girl's life to a mountain girl's, I don't know which one should complain. . Do you?
  • Showing you one of the sunsets here in #kalga for this is how the mood is like, orange, golden, cloudy, a bit dark and a little lighted. . Experiencing so much while traveling by myself in Parvati valley. Letting go of things, learning, accepting people back, leaving them, protecting myself, exposing myself to unknown things, keeping work under control, and then letting it go sometimes. Everything is happening. . For the past few days I was hiking in the valley with a group of friends who met to walk to a place called Bhunbhuni, which is just open, green meadows for as far as you can see. Almost 10 shepherd families were living there with their cattle & they migrate their from the lower himachal every year. Wow. What an experience! I will share the pictures & stories in details soon. Also will write about it on my blog. I cooked inside a shepherd's wooden and cow dung cottage, we collected wood, slept in tents surrounded by snow-capped peaks which looked like a hand's touch away, watched cattles being milked, hung out with the family and their young boys who run around doing everything in a flick of moment.. . And then we walked to another place called Kheerganga which is popular amongst Indian tourists. Hindus believe that Parvati had let a stream of milk flow, which fell where Kheerganga stands today, for Karthikeyan. The stream of milk is now a pool of hot water. We had been walking for two days so the hot water bath in the pool felt so nice. Like the water absorbed the pain. Then we walked back to Kalga. . Kalga & Kheerganga are still known places, but not many people go.to Bhunbhuni.So if you are in the area, ask a local & go.The hike is moderate, you carry your own tents or request the local to help you with the shepherd who will cook for you & let you stay. Also you can only go there in summers, for in winter the place is under thick snow. You wouldn't regret the walk. . So this is how my few days have looked like. Almost no connectivity. Walking I don't know how many kms on treasure hunt like paths. Understanding myself. Adjusting. So much more that I will talk about in different posts. . . This one is to walking into the unknown and taking your time.
  • Presenting #kalgavillage which is going to be my home for a few more days as I have found so much peace here that I couldn't find in the entire #parvathivalley. My rant on loud speakers is clear in the yesterday's post, so I won't detail into that. But #Kalga has none of that going on. My new next room neighbour told me that for a couple of weeks there were people with loudspeakers who have now left. So far, so good. The village is mostly large apple orchards, corn, cauliflower, garlic, and potato fields, and a few homes and guesthouses. They say Kalga is not even a village but was an orchard area where villagers used to bring their cattle to graze. Then people opened homestays and hotels and cafes which are in plenty now scattered over the space. Snow-capped peaks surround Kalga. The large forest just behind the village is perfect to walk under the deodar and pines, sometimes to go somewhere and sometime to just be. Many trails going higher up in the Himalayas also begin from here. What more can I ask for? . . I am glad that I tried this guesthouse which has a fully functional cafe with delicious homemade food, a sweet wooden room with a balcony, a great view of the valley, and plenty of peace. This is something I was looking for but was gonna give up when in the last guesthouse the food took 5 hours to be prepared, Indian men and boys running the place played loud music, and no matter how much you tried you couldn't feel at home. But here I feel that I am in my sort of place. . . If you are #traveling, you have to give yourself the time to find a place of your liking. You might take a day or a week, but don't fret about not finding a room as per your choice. Keep trying. ❤️ . . When you visit #parvati, remember to come to Kalga. But when you do, please leave your speakers behind. Promise me? . . And you, what kind of place do you like to stay in when you travel? . #travelinhimachalpradesh

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