There is something nice about taking a Druk Air flight out of Kolkata. You are assured that the plane will land at a place that has great weather, pretty hills, green paddy fields, a gurgling river, approachable people and a laid back lifestyle.
I am writing this today from Bhutan, where I will be spending the next eight days driving through mountainous landscapes in looking out for interactions with the hill people, watching monks going through their daily routine, making long walks through paddy fields overlooking green hills, dipping my feet in cold water of the streams and watching festivals in which monks wear halloween-like masks and dance to a huge gathering of people.
Every moment I spend in Bhutan, I distinctly get the feeling that I should just pack my bags and migrate here and retire. And do it today. The country is so peaceful, quiet and seems alien to all sins that the human life is associated with. Sometimes I feel, all that I need are slopes filled with grass to walk on, a clear stream flowing down the mountains to put my feet in and wade across, wildflowers that fill the heart and tall snowy peaks that can be faraway but fill the eyes. And along with this, if people live a life without conflict, there is nothing else to yearn for. Bhutan has all of them. But why am I still going back to place that I call home? I do not know. May be because home is where you belong, or home is where you feel an attachment to the soil or may be simply that’s how things are supposed to be. I do not know.
Bridges had fallen and the roads were cut off. A long line of waited for many hours hoping for things to get better. Buses were cancelled and they had no clear answers to when the services will resume. “It depends on the weather, sir,” was the fence-sitting answer from the person manning the phone at the bus company, who neither had any real-time information nor had powers to provide decisive answers.
Himachal Pradesh was seeing heavy rains in the past few days. As it happens every year, landslides had crippled the road infrastructure and there was a cloud of uncertainty over what happens next. Unpredictable as the weather here is, things might magically settle back to normal next morning. Or it could very well turn worse if another line of dark clouds made their way towards the mountains.
My local contact constantly kept me updated on all the information he was able to procure. He had someone or the other in every part of Himachal giving him updates. Yet, nothing seemed certain. I turned to Twitter, looking for all the latest information that one could ask for. I had become like a journalist with a undying fetish for breaking news, scouring for every information that I could get, so that I can make informed decision on our next move.
Chandratal. This is where we were headed before the weather gods made us change plans.
The road from Delhi to Manali was affected by incessant rains that had brought down a bridge at someplace 100km before Manali. Himachal Parivahan had cancelled the night’s bus, since the bus that had left the previous evening from Delhi had not reached Manali yet. Nor did the buses from Manali make it to Delhi. We were stranded in Delhi for a night and were struggling to know the current status, so that we know what to do on the next day. My logistics organizer insisted that we rent a car and just head out, as someone would be working at the bridge and everything would be fine by the time we make the ten hour journey to the point-of-problem.
We were stuck on the way due to unseasonal snow-fall in the remote mountains of Lahaul & Spiti. Despite being summers when the sun should be shining and mercury should have been in the twentys, weather gods had changed plans and turned the sky dark with clouds and the ground white with snow. It was unusually cold outside. But thanks to the timely help from the locals, we had a safe shelter and a place to keep us warm.
