I Used to Travel to Escape

I used to travel to escape

Escape the familiar, the complex

I ask myself now, was it just that?

Was it not my instinct to explore, reach out, change

A beckon from the pulse of the intrepid, the surge of chaos?   

Now I travel to understand

Understand that people essentially everywhere are good

That goodness I feel when I am part of a sunrise,

That rush when I catch a train on time.

For a moment, a silent prayerful moment

In the blue mosque

I see a little girl

Silently observe the world go by

With a hand absentmindedly holding on to her grand dad.

Its just that. This pleasure of our travels,

It takes us by the hand

Silently, playfully,

Through the world’s wonders, its colours its splendours

For just that one magical moment, that warm smile from a stranger,

That is what I travelled all those miles away to experience,

Now, 

I travel to feel.   

To feel, to believe.

I Have Been Here Before

It was summer then, with the tips of rooftops awash with crisp sunshine, bright colours like fairies reflecting its surfaces. Now amidst this white powder snow, I marvel at the stark beauty; Ladakh makes sure it welcomes me with each time I visit. This is at Thiksey Gompa, one of the most visited, a must do on the tourist trail in Ladakh.

Would you go back to the Eiffel tower, each time you travel to Paris? May be you dint go all the way to the top the last time? Perhaps you would revisit a sunset at the queen’s necklace in Bombay; for a sun set after all has a different magic to it each time. For all the summers I travelled to Ladakh, this was the first winter I witnessed. If the place has a charming mystery to it in summers, the allure manifests in its every iota in winters, mesmerised I was, yes.

I am not much of a dancer; and in those layers of winter wear, moving, barely so. You don’t suppose a rhythmic step or two would be a part of the script that day, yet here I was singing and gracefully swinging along. Was it me or the magic I could feel throbbing through this landscape?

This was January 2013, just before I walked the Chadar trek, across the Zanskar valley. It was a quick day trip, just before we went off the grid, onto the seclusion of that icy white trail. It felt like home, it felt my own.

Is that another rhyme I see?

Aha yes, Ladakh tends to do that to me.