India. Culture. The World.

I desperately try to breathe in as much of the thin air as 11000 feet above sea level would allow me. The air is cold, & given my current state, seems to carry a strange slyness. In the whisker of a moment, the beauty of the Kashmiri landscape around me has been overshadowed by the strife of its terrain. A small rock cuts longitudinally through the ridge in front and stepping on it means risking slipping deep into the valley below. As much as they try, my legs can’t find a footing for the next step. My throat has dried up, much like the moraines around, left arid by the glaciers that once washed down through them. From the camping grounds several thousand feet below, this valley had seemed like the lap of a beautiful woman. Now, it resembles the jaws of a humongous monster, zooming in & out of my vision, waiting to gulp me in with my first mistake. The sounds around have muted, shouts of fellow trekkers whoosh past me, yet all I can hear is my heart pounding & my head shouting “How did I end up here?” An angelic intervention from the trekking guide eventually saves me.

The question, though, prevails through the rest of the trek. I could have chosen the miniscule hitches of a metropolitan life. Yet I was here, facing the Himalayan pains of a trek in Kashmir & the fears of wild bear attacks, imagining death in the fangs of nomadic dogs who looked more like wolves, listening to such reprimands from Indian army men that made those from my boss at office look far more comforting. That was for camping in a region close to the troubled border with Pakistan. Just a week back, the area had witnessed militant combat. How, on earth, did I end up here? But somehow, in this very question, among these very mountains, I am beginning to find my answer.

After trekking for a week, I have visited seven pristine lakes, crossed three mountain passes & fought the excruciating pains of two stinging shoe bites to be among the most awe-inspiring mountains humanity has ever seen. I could have chosen leather shoes in a concrete jungle, but that wouldn’t have made me feel alive. Finally, back at the hotel in Srinagar, as I painstakingly try to shave off a seven day beard, a faint but familiar Sufi tune emanates from the lobby. The hotel owner sings an old Sufi song to his little girl. I've no idea when my whistling becomes an accompaniment to his singing & in that one moment, the question of ‘how did I end up here’ disappears. What does matter, though, is that 'I AM here'.