Finding Faith.

I'll never forget the day that I decided to go to Ladakh, India - 'the land of high passes' with a random group of people I met on a website for a music festival to be held there in July 2010. As fate would have it, the music festival was cancelled at the 11th hour and the universe presented me with a chance to surround myself with silence.
I could be whoever I wanted in front of these 5 strangers and I chose to be happy. When you are surrounded by snow-clad mountains, a gorgeous sky that doesn't fit one peripheral view and an i-pod filled with the perfect music, everything just falls into place.
I am not and never have been religious, and have always struggled with spirituality but in Ladakh, a spiritual energy engulfs you. Perhaps it was the multi-colored prayer flags that move in tandem with the gushing winds or the Buddhist monks with their ever smiling faces and contented eyes that managed to evoke within me a divine feeling of peace.
10 days of treacherous drives through narrow, beaten down roads, and aching backs coupled with guitar playing and out of tune singing made the journey beyond perfect.
We went on a rafting adventure on the river Zanskar one day with 2 professional guides. 15 minutes into the adventure and our raft was over-turned by the consuming river and the biting cold water was eating us alive. Hours of trying to get everyone back onto the over-turned raft, and one of us was still far away. One of the guides, Pradeep, courageously jumped in to save the one afar and lost his life in the bargain. We managed to retrieve his body but we couldn't save his life. The unfortunate part was that everyone else on the raft also almost tasted death but each person was in some strange way responsible for saving another one.
We were 6 strangers who went through this together and while the grief of Pradeep's death will haunt us forever, we don't regret traveling to Ladakh. Our faith in fate was renewed forever, and we all were bound together by this trip.
I realize now that certain places are meant to be discovered because they let you dig deeper into your self. Certain people are meant to walk into your life to make you realize that every once in a while it's okay to renew your ideals and your being and start afresh with a new identity.
Ladakh and its boundless silence gave my mind the break it had earned. I now view every place I travel to with the same ideology - I'm here for a reason.
This piece is dedicated to the brave and heroic Pradeep.