Highway to Hills !!

My Travel Confessions !

Travelling is like leaving your trails behind, a way to remember what (beautiful) moments you lived. I recently headed Daaman expecting snowfall with five of my friends. With Chest Infection in the process of being recovered, you wouldn't expect your mom to permit you to travel in a freezing place. You do not feel well; you are taking antibiotics for like more than one month, and your doctor has strictly warned you to stay away from cold. In this situation, can you resist the temptation to go out and travel wild with best of your friends? You sure can, can't you? Yes, I can understand the feeling, the same happened with me.

I said I will be out for a two day conference, yes I know it was not a very bright thing to do, sorry Mom! At 6 in the morning, I packed my bag, kept an extra pair of trousers and stepped out of my house praying that nothing goes wrong. It was dark and I was covered with all-dark cloths. The only part that was uncovered was my left eye. I was sure any vehicle with broken headlights would hit me today. Gosh! I was lucky, no vehicles with broken headlights but a Micro Bus went so close by me that I had a mini heart attack. I met my friend Bunu on the way and we went towards Micro stand. The Micro was almost about to leave when we cried "Micro" "Micro" and ran towards it. In the hurry my mind forgot that I am supposed to keep my head down while entering into a Micro and Bang!
Wow, I couldn't cry but you can imagine the pain. I thought this was not a good omen to start a two day trip about which your family is completely oblivious. Anyway, we continued, met other friends in the Kalanki Bus Park, booked tickets and all excited to go.

 The Toilet Event

Our Bus was supposed to leave around 8. We had tea and blown-up sukkha-roti made by a Baje. At that time, I thought he must be the guy who makes all those puffy and swollen beautiful rotis you get to see in advertise. Few minutes before leaving, I had to go to pee. I inquired about a toilet nearby and the Baje asked me to go backside where there was a public toilet. A Nepali can imagine a public toilet in Nepal but the toilet blew off my expectations. It was worse than I imagined. However, there can be no other call more important than the nature call. There was a big hole in the door; the whole time I sat down I prayed no one would come nearby the toilet. I had to pee in such a hurry that I couldn't remember when did I zipped my pants. Thanks to my sub consciousness, I did it.

I came out and I see two people, a man and a woman standing outside the toilet with chillars "lose money". They asked me to pay for the facility I had just used. I could not-not tell them how unsatisfied I was with the facility.

 I said, "If you take money then you should also be responsible for maintaining it"

"Yes, why not, I should have even poured some water and placed a cushion before you go to toilet right?"  was the woman's response while the man just stayed there and laughed.

"It's your job to clean it if you take money for it, otherwise why else to take the money?" I was furious.

"Don't shout much, I'll beat you and throw you right here" the woman barked. Her tiny eyes and big eyes could have scared anyone.

I couldn't say a word.

You wouldn't want to be found beaten up by a fat woman in Kalanki Bus Park while you are supposed to be in a Conference somewhere in a descent place.

Disappointed, I went into the bus and with the company of friends, slowly, I forgot the pain of being bullied by a toilet keeper.

Destination Daaman

You reach Daaman after five hours travel in Bus. The Bi-road ko Bato with beautiful scenarios and continuous turnings on the way will not let you sleep even if you have had no sleep last night. Plus, many local travelers get into the bus so it's never silent.  Most of them are school and high school students.

There was a Gaine, a Folk-Singer in the bus who had Sarangi with him. He sang beautiful songs for us about how earthquake destroyed us. Touch of emotional humor in his songs tranquilized us for a bit. After finishing the folk songs, all of sudden he started to sing a Rap Song. That was a funny song, his song was a random sarcastic song where Michael Jackson, young generation, youth's dress up sense, and corrupted leaders were the elements. He asked for money in rhythmic way itself, and we all were happy to give him what we had and could.

Our Soltini Guide

We got off in Daman, 2322 m above sea level.  We decided to go in much higher place as there were not much places to stay where we got off. We were told that after an hour walk we could reach to Simbhanjhyang so we headed towards it. 

On our way there was an old dog that followed us. At first we thought, she wouldn't come with us very far. But she was there in every hills and every shortcut we took. In fact, there were times when she showed us shortcuts. In the way we met some local people and they informed us that this dog guides people to simbhanjyang from daaman. Wow! We couldn't believe that. We loved her company, she climbed every hill we did, she stopped for us wherever we took photographs and fought with other dogs for breaching their territory just to be with us. We named her 'our Solitini guide'. We stopped at a hotel and she stopped there too.

We threw our bags in the hotel room and decided to walk around. We witnessed a beautiful sunset view through one of the hills. Even there she was, our solitini guide, but she also had other dog company in the hill. A red hot beauty far away in the horizon who is about to take a nap can make anyone or anything in this earth calm and so were we and the dogs too.

I was not the only one- Night with Friends

We all are crazy, aren't we? But very few people know our story and the plot behind it. At times, we have played a hero, a good friend, bad friend, jealous friend, the villain in his story, a stupid daughter/son, the victim, a witness and a lot more characters in the story of our life. But, rarely, we let people witness our story. If there's any company in this whole world with whom we may feel comfortable to share pieces of our secrets is the company of our friends.

The night was the night of friends, and a small doze of alcohol can really open up the comfort-ness of the comfortableness. We shared our stories, the difficult ones, the easy ones, the funny ones and the ones we thought we would never share. Out of all, 'I was not the only one' moment was the most relieving moment I guess. How much relieved would you be to know that you were not the only shoplifter, the only one who had weird sexual dreams, the only who was scared about your puberty, the only one who had crush on a teacher, the only one who had thought of attempting suicide, the only one who had hard time in childhood believing that people can have sex, and a lot of only one(s)! I guess If there were no friends, the only employment in this whole world would be of Psychological counselors only. And, the medicine they would prescribe us would be the friends tablets, imagine, you taking two 33 Mg Friends tablet every day. Each after a meal! Horrible!

Friends are the angels with stupid faces, aren't they? :D 

The Frozen Morning and Farewell Soltini..!!

The Next Day we wake up, everything has turned white. Not snow, but frozen Tusaro. You wouldn't want to go for a long toilet at this hour because you won't be able to separate what would be extremer in your butt, a knife cut or the coldness of the water?

We decided to walk upto Chitlang from Shimbhanjyang before catching a Bus to Kathmandu. Before we left, Pragya wanted to give some food to Soltini. We searched for her but she wasn't there anymore. Nearby people informed us that she had already left and must have probably gone back to Daaman. Ttomorrow she would be there with other travelers and we will be somewhere tomorrow only with her memories. I wondered if she would remember us. Soltini is the perfect guide and a travel friend you would want in a trip. Farewell Solitini….!! Long Live the Era of Dogs.. The most loyals of friends!

Weird Encounters

Scenic beauty, bunch of your best of friends and the wonders of Hiking! Nothing could go wrong. Though, at times we kinda got lost but thanks to my friends' intuitions and travelling skills. And, of course, there were humble Nepalese every now and then to confirm our track routes.

However, in all these, there were some weird moments that did not give me good feeling. On our way to Indrasarowar, we encountered few small children playing football in the road. As soon as they saw us coming, they ran towards us and started to beg for money. Can you believe the smallest one asked for "1500" Rs! "Panda See rupaiya dinuna Didi". Oh God! Seriously! Fuchhe You want 1500 Rupees? And there was a little older guy who asked 5, 10 Rupees claiming he would buy copies with the money. Later we figured that the smaller one must have misheard "Pan Das" as "Panda Se". I asked the older boy which school he reads, but then he did not answer in fact he tried to divert my attention. Their parents weren't nearby; I wondered who might want their children to beg. We tried to convince those children it was not a good thing to do, but we knew we can't change them. Bune had Popcorn (bhuteko makai actually) with her. We gave it to them and went along. Thanks to the contributions of NGOs in the country. Now, Bachha bachha knows how to ask for funds.

The next weird encounter was with the local people in Markhu. We saw beautiful oranges in the tree there. Pragya could not resist tasting them. We decided to buy few. We asked one of the house owners to sell us oranges from their tree. They agreed and we waited outside taking some random selfies and photos. There was dried maize hanged in everyone's houses which looked very beautiful.  After few minutes, a woman brought some orange from inside the house. We paid her, took the bag of oranges and went along. Later on we found that all the oranges in the bag were damaged. None of it was picked from the tree. None of it was edible or the minimum of what we saw and expected. The house owner cheated us in the day light. What happened to our culture of hospitality and honesty?

And, the third, and the last weird encounter was the most bizarre one which took place on our way back to Kathmandu. By the way, from Maarkhu we reached to Indrasarowar , Chitlang. The most awaited and wonderful place of the entire trip! We reached there after 6 hours continuous walk from Shimbhanjyang. Indrasaroward is the biggest manmade lake of Nepal formed by the Kulekhani Hydro-electricity Dam Reservoir. They call it biggest I call it the most beautiful one. She was calm, silent, deep, green; anyone can spend hours just looking at it. Plus, an island in the middle makes her perfect. She is serenely beautiful and you will madly fall in love with her. By the way, Essspppecial Thanks to Baseer for taking special photos of everyone in all the special places ;)

Well, coming back to the weird encounter, in Maarkhu, we came to know that there is no local bus to return Kathmandu. Because of the fuel shortage these days, they only regulate one Bus which had already left at 12 o'clock. However, we found class 9 school kids there whose School Bus was about to come to receive them from Kathmandu.   We asked their teacher to give us lift to Kathmandu. He agreed and managed few seats for us in Bus. There were two buses. He was in one and we were in the other one. There was a different teacher in our Bus. As we were about to reach Kathmandu, the teacher in our Bus said that we need to pay Bus Fares. Satish, my friend, asked him how much should we pay then he replied 500 Rs each. We were shocked; we argued 500 Rs can't be the fare for 3 hours ride. Then he replied that it was the fare charged by Bus Service provider for two-way route as they had to come to Chitlang too for receiving us.

"But we had only asked for lift, we did not hire the Bus to pick us up" Durga replied. We were about to give him money but we wanted to lessen the fair.

"Yes Sir, we will pay the required fair but it’s very high. We weren't informed about paying 500 Rs before getting into Bus. We are just students. I hope you can understand that as a teacher and your school is also nearby our friend's house. We can talk later also". Satish tried to convince him. Hearing this he suddenly changed his tone. "Okay then, I'll convey the message that you guys were just expecting lift" He let us go after that.

As soon as he got the hint that we might come to his School inquiring about Bus Fare he hesitated to ask for money. We knew the other Teacher had agreed to give us lift in good faith but the Teacher in our Bus wanted to take money from us not as Bus fair but for his personal benefit. We later on laughed realizing that only if he had asked for less amount , we would have already given him but the foolish teacher became some greedy that he himself hit axe on his foot. However, in all this sarcasm there is a deep pain caused by the hidden wound in our society.

Our children do not think it is wrong to beg, we cheat our own people in daylight, and our teachers are so corrupted that they do not hesitate to cheat people in front of their own students. Obviously this is not the case for all, but it is a gesture of what our society is turning into.

……………….

Well well, I don't want to end this beautiful trip with a sad tone. This two day trip was among the best trips I ever had. All the criticisms I made about society depicts that somehow I am also responsible for what is happening and what is going to happen. So, like everyone else I also have a responsibility to not to be bad reflection in society.

Travelling is not just living the moment, travelling is living those moments even long after you finished your journey.

P.S: High 5 to my special friends who can make anything extra-special.!