"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." ~Lao Tzu
Somehow I always had a fascination of being stranded on an inhabited island and then fighting to stay alive.....fighting to survive. Well, I know it sounds a lil creepy and it should sound exactly that coz the fear of the unknown is the most dangerous of all the fears. Each moment shall be a fight for survival, and I crave for it.
Obviously this wouldn’t be possible as there is no place on earth that isn’t inhabited. I always dream of a place that is unsoiled, unexplored and untouched but for that I’ll have to wait till Mars starts to produce Oxygen, humans invent a cheap means of space travel and that CHEAP is enough cheap for ME. The closest equal to fulfillment of such a fascination is by going to offbeat locales that are hard to reach, have minimum population and have no mobile connectivity at all.
Uttarakhand offers just the thing. It has lots and lots of such places that are still untouched by the ‘ordinary tourists’. Well, calling such places a tourist location will be totally disrespectful. Rather, I should call them ‘unexplored locales’. I believe whenever one leaves for sightseeing or goes for a tour he or she inquires or takes a review about the place from people who’ve already been there. What if you go and explore a place which nobody (nobody you know, ofcourse) has ever visited. You don’t know what to expect and what not to. This is what I still wait to experience. I’ve seen mountain goats and I must say I’ve seen them at places where no normal human (at least not one with a waistline of more than 35”) can reach. Let alone humans no other animal can dare attempt such a feat. Last week, I was at a village Kuleti (40 kms from Nanital) for trekking. The trek comprised of covering 4 mountains so as to reach a temple at the hill top. Thankfully, the climb wasn’t steep as it ran along the mid-circumference of the mountains. Although it surely provided some tough crossings mid-way (thanks to loose soil, narrow path and dew or rather mountain dew). At many stopovers I noticed goat’s excreta (eeeeewwww….yuck…..ya ya go ahead make a face, I tried hard to make it sound normal but then the word ‘excreta’ will always be GROSS ) where I don’t think a four legged animal can reach unless I’m wrong and it wasn’t goat’s and instead it was some hungry bird that had big feast the other day and pooped its ass out. So, the point is if a goat being a four-legged animal can reach at such locations, so can we (we having an advantage of having hands).
Generally when somebody talks about the tourist places of Uttarakhand the names that come up are Nanital, Dalhousie, Haridwar/Rishikesh, Bhimtal, Mcleod Ganj, etc. But what doesn’t come up are the villages of the state (e.g. Ramgarh, Binsar) which have much more to offer to trekking enthusiasts. Planned expeditions are good but ad-hoc and unplanned expeditions are even better coz the fear of the unknown has its own excitement factor and it can pump enough excitement in me than a ball can do for a dog.
No comments:
Post a Comment