I think I’m late on this. I should’ve written this when the memories were fresh, but now that I’ve sat down to write this each and every moment of my trip to Leh has started to rush down the memory lanes again.
I like ad-hoc trips but this trip was one that coulnd’t have been an ad-hoc one. I started planning for it long back. Everyone around me was aware where and when was I leaving. My excitement level was so high that even if I smiled people around me asked “kya hua kuch naya plan socha liya kya Ladakh ke liye”. If I was online surfing, there’ll be atleast three tabs open on my Google Chrome that’ll be related to Ladakh. In short my excitement was quite visible.
I won’t be describing the details of my trip as I’ve already done hundereds of times infront of all my friends. Some actually have started to carry ear-plugs along. But that obviously doesn’t bring down my enthu to tell my stories (I'm refraining myself from carrying loudspeakers n mike to describe my Ladakhi adventures)
I’ve been to places and each time I go to someplace nice a thought appears in my mind “why can’t I settle here….settling here wud b gr8…”. A similar thought reappeared when I was at Leh. But after traveling parts of Ladakh and visiting many villages I realized that a life there is tough. Ladakh witnessed floods in August 2010 and the rehabilitation work was visible even during my visit. I saw the place where the song “Satrangi Re” from the movie Dil Se was shot. The place was in ruins. This realization actually instilled some fear. A life in Ladakh is not a walk in a park.
I’ve always considered mountain people a little slow (sorry Pinky but u’ll have to agree with me on this one) and a lil dumb but I started respecting them after my visit. I’ve never ever seen people 
so humble. A person is walkin infront of you, look into his eyes and he’s bound to say Juley (Hello in Ladakhi). Forget about gals, I’ve never heard a guy who’s a total stranger to me say Hello. I’ve only heard strangers ask “Does this metro go to rajiv chowk?”, “Which road goes to AIIMS?”. The other thing that’s so visible is that the people there are very very hard-working (although they don’t open their shops on time and to top it off they close their shops early).
The trip was obviously memorable because of the locale and the people but what made it even more memorable was the mountain goat (aka Pinky) who gave me company. THANK YOU.
A place like Ladakh is so quiet that at times even when you’re thinking you can hear your own voice in your ears. The place is so cut-off from the hustle-bustle of the cities that the only bustle that you can hear is the breeze passing by your ears. Even the bustle of the breeze is common to human ears. What's rare is the hearing of human voices. The place is away from all the anger, motives, ego, hypocrisy, lies and above all the rat race. And unfortunately I got to see a lot of it just before my trip. The only thing that kept me going was the planning that I was doing for the trip.
I’m so deeply in love with this place that I’m afraid that I’ll ever fall in love with some other place ever again, someplace that can bring down Ladakh from the number one spot. I have whole of my year (all the coming months) planned up and it’s the Valley of Flowers that’ll be the next place that can, if not beat then atleast come close to Ladakh’s adventure. Till then Ciao.
Cheers for the most ultimate adventure called LIFE...
No comments:
Post a Comment