The night at panwali turned out to be quite eventful. We
shared the hut with 15 other garhwalis who were Maamaji’s friends. The night
was filled with bhajans and occasional dancing. That was till a few fiery and
hungry Delhites gate crashed into the party. They had a lot of trouble reaching
panwali and were overwhelmed with hunger and cold. The Shepard told him that he
does not have any more blankets to give them. That’s when an over-zealous man
in that lot said he will pay double of what the garhwalis were paying. That
started it. All the men who were dancing to devotional numbers charged at the
delhites for their unwarranted show of moneyed arrogance. A melee ensued and
once it was over (the folks from delhi Himalayas
that I have seen till now. The next 10 kms was filled with quite a unique
terrain. It was mostly meadow land but what was breathtaking was we were
literally walking on the ridge with downward sloping meadows on either side of
the footpath. Undulating meadows on both sides as we walked from one peak of a
mountain to the next. It was breathtaking both literally and figuratively. Afterwards
just when I was about to burst after imbibing too much of the beauty, the
descent started and we reached Triyug Narayanan. There was a Vishnu temple and
this is supposed to be the place where Shiva and Parvati got married. Inside
the temple a perpetual fire is maintained as a tradition and all the trekkers
were supposed to pick firewood on the way to the town to offer to the perpetual
fire. Night was spent in a small hotel. Triyug Narayanan was the first town in
Rudraprayag district.
So I just reached back to Bengaluru and I keep thinking perhaps this is a good moment to write something. Some kind of mental snapshot is warranted. I am hoping to join a new company - Salesforce after working in Visa for just 1.5 years. I just completed another trek - some 80 kms walk in the park. During the trek, I wrote down a bunch of mental sticking points and the advantage of having such a list is to see which one of them are perhaps temporary and which ones might stick around for sometime and haunt one. During the trek, I kept reminding myself that I should not fixate on the destination - that lofty peak or that supposedly pretty valley. The trek itself was the prize that I have earned. And the one that I wanted to celebrate. And celebrate is the right word for it. There is nothing that comes close to describing what it was. Just stretching the body and mind and asserting its capabilities. During those walks, I got reminded of Illayaraja's song "Pitchai Pathiram" ...
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