Turning back the pages of my travels after passing through innumerable days of solitude and a myriad of bitter emotions is very often a moving experience. As I write these words, I find myself filled with excessive hope and imagine myself tasting the salts and sweats of days ahead.
My Northeastern odyssey made immediately after college with my friend Nijil, may well be a towering personal moment which I can never possibly recreate. Looking back on it always leaves me with pulsating nerves filled with yearning and passion. The journey began on a hot June evening at Thalassery Railway station and extended into early August, ending at Ernakulam Railway station (after an 80-hour train journey back from Guwahati). A single chapter will never vividly capture everything I've seen and experienced throughout this one and a half month journey; I can only hope to describe the travel as separate individual memoirs. Here I share a 3-day fragment of that journey where we, Nijil and me, found ourselves adrift in the mountain state of Sikkim.
We reached Sikkim after staying at Darjeeling for four days. While Darjeeling was a place that created in me a sense of curiosity and determination to pursue new things in life, Sikkim taught me the virtues of living life as it is and finding beauty in togetherness and collectivism. Even though we had no clear plans to go anywhere, we knew we had to come to Sikkim once we realized it was just a few kilometers away from Darjeeling. Gangtok, the capital town of Sikkim, was very different from what I had imagined. This was partly because of the time we visited - when summer was at its strongest, and partly because I had expected Gangtok to be a pristine and peaceful town. Gangtok was not as crowded as Darjeeling, but it was definitely crowded enough to break our ideas of peace. Furthermore, the past few weeks found us moving through congested spaces, overpopulated streets, and noisy neighborhoods that cultivated in us a desire to relish the peace of Himalayas.
While we walked around in Gangtok, most of the people we met asked us to go to Nathu La to find the peace we were looking for and to have a Sikkim experience unlike any. We checked with various tour offices and booked a jeep on a share-basis for the next day.
Nathu La, which roughly means 'The pass of the Listening Ear', is a historic mountain pass in Sikkim. It was part of the old Silk route, acting as an entry point to India and connected the cold mountain valleys of Tibet to the lush green plains of Bengal. While traveling through the rough terrain that leads up to the pass, I imagined how it would have been years before - somehow in my mind, there is this image of a Chinese trader on a horseback, braving the coldest of winds and the toughest of mountains, in hope for finding warmth and wealth in the subcontinent. Nathu La was a vibrant route for trade between India and China during most of its history. Following Chinese occupation of Tibet, Nathu La became a lifeline for Tibetan refugees through which they moved first into Sikkim (which became an Indian state only in 1975) and later onto India. The pass was closed following the 1962 Sino-Indian war and was reopened only in 2006.
During our visit, the pass was a prime entry point for pilgrims striving to reach Mount Kailash in Tibet. We saw numerous acclimatization centers on the way for Kailash Mansarovar pilgrims where their health parameters were thoroughly monitored before they got the approval to move forward. I always held this belief that a craving for beauty coupled with a hardened pursuit to find it makes our faith quite overwhelming. I remembered my own naive spiritual expedition (years before I became the staunchest of atheists!) to Sabarimala (a hill shrine in Kerala) - driven by a desire to explore and traversing a painstaking path to the top of the hill, I felt my faith to be resounding. I imagine most of the people who travel along the same road which we were going through would be in a state of deep meditation as they make the journey; they would be moving along the harshest and perhaps the most beautiful terrains of the world to experience a place which will bring them salvation. As much as an atheist I was, I could not take away the beauty and emotion of that process!
While I consider it in a philosophical sense, I believe that we are all living an existence we know very little about. Our world is quite often an abstract entity that we create out of our thoughts. The travels we were making may well be seen as an endeavor to understand ourselves - something which many believe to be a spiritual experience. When I began to think like that, I thought that our journey and the journey made by a pilgrim is not entirely different. There is glory in the miles we leave behind, there is glory in the miles ahead of us, there is glory in the effort it takes to be in motion and there is glory in our destination.
We reached our momentary destination of Nathu La by afternoon. The pass and the border seemed like any other military camp, but the two large gates we saw from the parking ground immediately made us clear that it was not. When we were getting closer to the border, we found the presence of our military asserting itself a little more. We were warned by our driver to not take pictures and an Indian soldier reiterated the same as we got out of our jeep. We were asked to leave all our electronic equipments in our vehicle and that we should not interact with Chinese soldiers who patrolled their side of the border. I do not know if this was a normal course of action or something which was enforced recently following increased border skirmishes with China. We were guided to the border camp and from there moved further onto the border fence. The fence itself was no remarkable thing, it seemed like any other fence separating farmlands or private properties. But the purpose served by this iron fence, which was only as tall as my waist, was to separate two mighty countries of Asia - two countries that could overpower the world if it broke apart this fence and become an axis of power.
There were Indian soldiers vigilantly monitoring our side of the fence and a few feet away there were Chinese soldiers monitoring their side of the fence. Contrary to what the soldier asked us, there were many Indian tourists vying to get the attention of Chinese soldiers. When a Chinese soldier finally responded and began talking to a few tourists, everyone surrounded him with curiosity to perhaps identify what the Chinese ate or how they slept or how they talked. We avoided the crowd and moved a little away. Nijil found a place to sit down and maybe view the whole commotion in peace, while I loitered along the fence. There was a grumpy Chinese soldier who was actively avoiding everyone and was meticulously monitoring the fence. While tracing his steps, I noticed that the Chinese side was a small step above the Indian side and that the small fence was roughly tracing this step. I kept walking aimlessly and thought of how meaningless lines drawn on maps separated people, made them fight wars, and create a state of alarm almost always. When you are here, at the border, the lines we fight about seems very absurd and artificial. The mighty Himalayas continue in spite of the border conquering greater heights, the dust blown away from India settles in China and the air we exhale mixes with the air around and may well be inhaled by a Chinese soldier standing next to us whose job was to prevent us crossing over.
While I was in thoughts, the grumpy Chinese soldier looked at me and gave a small smile. He signaled me to come over and have a talk. I tried asking him his name in English and Hindi but found out that he understood no other language except Mandarin. With the very little English he knew and often using his hands to build up images, he somehow made me understand that he was from a village far away from people who spoke strange languages. I realized that his irritable appearance may well have been born out of this sudden frenzy which he found himself in. To this date, I do not understand what appealed to him suddenly to have an interest in a pitiful introvert like me. Maybe it was because I left him alone to begin with and yet looked at everything with a sense of curiosity. Maybe he saw a part of himself reflected in how I behaved, in how I stood blank.
What followed was one of the most intimate and memorable moments I had during travel as he held my hand over the fence, shook it fiercely, and asked me if I would stand with him for a photograph. There are many things I feel bad about in life, that day I felt bad we weren't allowed to take our cameras or our mobile phones along with us to the border. He called a fellow soldier, gave his phone to him, and asked me to join for the photo. He put his hand on my shoulder and I put mine on his while his friend took the photo. This little stunt made an Indian soldier come up to us and asked me to stay away from the fence. The Indian soldier exchanged a smile with the Chinese soldier while asking us to return to our vehicle if we had seen enough.
We went back to our jeep and after our fellow passengers came began our descend back to Gangtok, while I kept thinking about that moment. However narrow-minded the people who govern us may be, however endangering their politics, here we were - two human beings holding each other, between us a man-made fence that may separate us physically but not our human spirits!
We reached Gangtok and decided to spend the night at the bus stand. The bus stand was in a standstill that night and we found the calm we were looking for after all. I was reading 'The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and Nijil was reading a book written by Dalai Lama. It was getting cold and dark, and the security guard who watches over the bus stand at night came at around 8 PM. He asked where we were from and what we were doing here at night. We talked to him a bit about our journey and how we were trying to get through each day spending as little money as possible. We told him that hotel rooms were costly and we just needed some space to rest our heads for the night. We half expected him to throw us out, rather he quietly went inside the office and took out two wooden benches.
"Lie down and sleep!" he said, "How can you sleep on chairs?!"
My immediate reaction to that act was a severe overflow of emotions that I fought hard to contain. I lied down on the bench and tried reading once again but closed the book quickly as the sentences that were written became blurred by my thoughts. I kept it back inside my bag and closed my eyes. 'We are all but different voices which say the same thing' I thought 'Chinese, Indians, travelers from Kerala, night watchmen of Sikkim.. we all say the same thing!'
My Northeastern odyssey made immediately after college with my friend Nijil, may well be a towering personal moment which I can never possibly recreate. Looking back on it always leaves me with pulsating nerves filled with yearning and passion. The journey began on a hot June evening at Thalassery Railway station and extended into early August, ending at Ernakulam Railway station (after an 80-hour train journey back from Guwahati). A single chapter will never vividly capture everything I've seen and experienced throughout this one and a half month journey; I can only hope to describe the travel as separate individual memoirs. Here I share a 3-day fragment of that journey where we, Nijil and me, found ourselves adrift in the mountain state of Sikkim.
We reached Sikkim after staying at Darjeeling for four days. While Darjeeling was a place that created in me a sense of curiosity and determination to pursue new things in life, Sikkim taught me the virtues of living life as it is and finding beauty in togetherness and collectivism. Even though we had no clear plans to go anywhere, we knew we had to come to Sikkim once we realized it was just a few kilometers away from Darjeeling. Gangtok, the capital town of Sikkim, was very different from what I had imagined. This was partly because of the time we visited - when summer was at its strongest, and partly because I had expected Gangtok to be a pristine and peaceful town. Gangtok was not as crowded as Darjeeling, but it was definitely crowded enough to break our ideas of peace. Furthermore, the past few weeks found us moving through congested spaces, overpopulated streets, and noisy neighborhoods that cultivated in us a desire to relish the peace of Himalayas.
While we walked around in Gangtok, most of the people we met asked us to go to Nathu La to find the peace we were looking for and to have a Sikkim experience unlike any. We checked with various tour offices and booked a jeep on a share-basis for the next day.
Nathu La, which roughly means 'The pass of the Listening Ear', is a historic mountain pass in Sikkim. It was part of the old Silk route, acting as an entry point to India and connected the cold mountain valleys of Tibet to the lush green plains of Bengal. While traveling through the rough terrain that leads up to the pass, I imagined how it would have been years before - somehow in my mind, there is this image of a Chinese trader on a horseback, braving the coldest of winds and the toughest of mountains, in hope for finding warmth and wealth in the subcontinent. Nathu La was a vibrant route for trade between India and China during most of its history. Following Chinese occupation of Tibet, Nathu La became a lifeline for Tibetan refugees through which they moved first into Sikkim (which became an Indian state only in 1975) and later onto India. The pass was closed following the 1962 Sino-Indian war and was reopened only in 2006.
During our visit, the pass was a prime entry point for pilgrims striving to reach Mount Kailash in Tibet. We saw numerous acclimatization centers on the way for Kailash Mansarovar pilgrims where their health parameters were thoroughly monitored before they got the approval to move forward. I always held this belief that a craving for beauty coupled with a hardened pursuit to find it makes our faith quite overwhelming. I remembered my own naive spiritual expedition (years before I became the staunchest of atheists!) to Sabarimala (a hill shrine in Kerala) - driven by a desire to explore and traversing a painstaking path to the top of the hill, I felt my faith to be resounding. I imagine most of the people who travel along the same road which we were going through would be in a state of deep meditation as they make the journey; they would be moving along the harshest and perhaps the most beautiful terrains of the world to experience a place which will bring them salvation. As much as an atheist I was, I could not take away the beauty and emotion of that process!
While I consider it in a philosophical sense, I believe that we are all living an existence we know very little about. Our world is quite often an abstract entity that we create out of our thoughts. The travels we were making may well be seen as an endeavor to understand ourselves - something which many believe to be a spiritual experience. When I began to think like that, I thought that our journey and the journey made by a pilgrim is not entirely different. There is glory in the miles we leave behind, there is glory in the miles ahead of us, there is glory in the effort it takes to be in motion and there is glory in our destination.
We reached our momentary destination of Nathu La by afternoon. The pass and the border seemed like any other military camp, but the two large gates we saw from the parking ground immediately made us clear that it was not. When we were getting closer to the border, we found the presence of our military asserting itself a little more. We were warned by our driver to not take pictures and an Indian soldier reiterated the same as we got out of our jeep. We were asked to leave all our electronic equipments in our vehicle and that we should not interact with Chinese soldiers who patrolled their side of the border. I do not know if this was a normal course of action or something which was enforced recently following increased border skirmishes with China. We were guided to the border camp and from there moved further onto the border fence. The fence itself was no remarkable thing, it seemed like any other fence separating farmlands or private properties. But the purpose served by this iron fence, which was only as tall as my waist, was to separate two mighty countries of Asia - two countries that could overpower the world if it broke apart this fence and become an axis of power.
There were Indian soldiers vigilantly monitoring our side of the fence and a few feet away there were Chinese soldiers monitoring their side of the fence. Contrary to what the soldier asked us, there were many Indian tourists vying to get the attention of Chinese soldiers. When a Chinese soldier finally responded and began talking to a few tourists, everyone surrounded him with curiosity to perhaps identify what the Chinese ate or how they slept or how they talked. We avoided the crowd and moved a little away. Nijil found a place to sit down and maybe view the whole commotion in peace, while I loitered along the fence. There was a grumpy Chinese soldier who was actively avoiding everyone and was meticulously monitoring the fence. While tracing his steps, I noticed that the Chinese side was a small step above the Indian side and that the small fence was roughly tracing this step. I kept walking aimlessly and thought of how meaningless lines drawn on maps separated people, made them fight wars, and create a state of alarm almost always. When you are here, at the border, the lines we fight about seems very absurd and artificial. The mighty Himalayas continue in spite of the border conquering greater heights, the dust blown away from India settles in China and the air we exhale mixes with the air around and may well be inhaled by a Chinese soldier standing next to us whose job was to prevent us crossing over.
While I was in thoughts, the grumpy Chinese soldier looked at me and gave a small smile. He signaled me to come over and have a talk. I tried asking him his name in English and Hindi but found out that he understood no other language except Mandarin. With the very little English he knew and often using his hands to build up images, he somehow made me understand that he was from a village far away from people who spoke strange languages. I realized that his irritable appearance may well have been born out of this sudden frenzy which he found himself in. To this date, I do not understand what appealed to him suddenly to have an interest in a pitiful introvert like me. Maybe it was because I left him alone to begin with and yet looked at everything with a sense of curiosity. Maybe he saw a part of himself reflected in how I behaved, in how I stood blank.
What followed was one of the most intimate and memorable moments I had during travel as he held my hand over the fence, shook it fiercely, and asked me if I would stand with him for a photograph. There are many things I feel bad about in life, that day I felt bad we weren't allowed to take our cameras or our mobile phones along with us to the border. He called a fellow soldier, gave his phone to him, and asked me to join for the photo. He put his hand on my shoulder and I put mine on his while his friend took the photo. This little stunt made an Indian soldier come up to us and asked me to stay away from the fence. The Indian soldier exchanged a smile with the Chinese soldier while asking us to return to our vehicle if we had seen enough.
We went back to our jeep and after our fellow passengers came began our descend back to Gangtok, while I kept thinking about that moment. However narrow-minded the people who govern us may be, however endangering their politics, here we were - two human beings holding each other, between us a man-made fence that may separate us physically but not our human spirits!
We reached Gangtok and decided to spend the night at the bus stand. The bus stand was in a standstill that night and we found the calm we were looking for after all. I was reading 'The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and Nijil was reading a book written by Dalai Lama. It was getting cold and dark, and the security guard who watches over the bus stand at night came at around 8 PM. He asked where we were from and what we were doing here at night. We talked to him a bit about our journey and how we were trying to get through each day spending as little money as possible. We told him that hotel rooms were costly and we just needed some space to rest our heads for the night. We half expected him to throw us out, rather he quietly went inside the office and took out two wooden benches.
"Lie down and sleep!" he said, "How can you sleep on chairs?!"
My immediate reaction to that act was a severe overflow of emotions that I fought hard to contain. I lied down on the bench and tried reading once again but closed the book quickly as the sentences that were written became blurred by my thoughts. I kept it back inside my bag and closed my eyes. 'We are all but different voices which say the same thing' I thought 'Chinese, Indians, travelers from Kerala, night watchmen of Sikkim.. we all say the same thing!'
❤️
ReplyDeleteNice one brother
ReplyDeleteNice..
ReplyDeleteVery nice Anand !
ReplyDelete