Across Space and Time

The laws of physics hypothesize that there are wormholes – portals that can take you somewhere else in time. What physics calls wormholes, I call travel.
In the predawn light of an equatorial June day, I stepped from the 21st century hustle bustle of Bombay into a relic of 19th Century British India. Victoria Terminus has stubbornly resisted the tide of modernity. It’s only concessions are the electric lights that shine upon a plethora of passengers that lie here much as they did 160 years ago.
I walk up to a ticket counter, eschewing the fuzzy plastic machine in a corner. 20 rupees, or 0.35 USD, is what it costs me to travel into the past. I step into a metal capsule as it speeds away from the heart of a metropolis into the sprawling suburbs, stripping away years with every mile of the two hour journey. Our destination today is Lohagad, a mountain fort in the hill range of the Sahyadris. The region is dotted with these – each a fastness that carried lordship of all the lands it surveyed. Taking one was a feat of strength and planning requiring months of toil – and I planned to take them all.
I disembarked at the nearest station – armored and armed for my assault. As I trudged out of the railway station wearing the grim visage of a hardened campaigner, the sun peeked over the horizon. Its gentle rays shone with the promise of a beautiful day and a brutal battle to follow. Little faces peeked out from the huts and stalls lining the path. “Lohagad, sirji? Guide? Show way?” I chuckled at the little ones, going as far as to boast, “Is the Iron Fort going to hide from me?” Prophetically as it turned out.
My laughter lasted till the first turn in the road – the one that brought the fortress into view. The massive edifice leered down at me. I girded my loins and set out with the measured pace of a man with an implacable foe. The hills of the Western Ghats are a beautiful sight - one of 25 hotspots of biodiversity in the world. They’re home to an amazing array of flora and fauna, endemic to the region. But I only saw the trail.
I wandered in the increasing heat as the fort was swallowed up by the land – or maybe I was. In a haze of fatigue I wandered on – ‘til shade was gone, til water was gone, screaming defiant’ as Robert Jordan would say. My backpack light and heart heavy I broke out onto a patch of open land to see a granite ridge before me. I walked on to it and found the fort across a valley. It laughed at me over a landscape it had ruled for 500 years.