#staring at the landscape for hours every day and reading and writing in solitude

[theragamuffininitiative]

Life dream goals update: I wanna be a fire lookout so bad. There are only a few problems with this (not counting how few positions are available, the general lack of pay and benefits meaning a lucrative job the rest of the year, and the fact that folks with applicable degrees are higher on the hiring profile) .... I have bad vision and a smoke allergy.

[wingingitonwheels]

Stage 4: Gobernador Gregores - Baja Caraoles (over two days!)

Kindness:

There’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end. – Scott Adams

WHAT an epic few days!

I’ll be honest, this part of the journey formed parts of 3 plans. I’ve always wanted to ride in a desert, for all its extremes: beastly winds, wilderness, solitude, and aridness. There is no such thing as a shortcut and it’s totally exposed, nowhere to hide, and hour upon hour of being in your own head. I’d read lots of adventurers talk about desert madness, that it’s boring, just vast emptiness. It may be that I come to the same opinion when I’ve ridden much of western Patagonia, but despite the Herculean effort to cross a desert plain yesterday in the face of an approaching storm, I’m not broken yet. My current writing spot is at the Baja Caraoles Hotel and restaurant. It’s much like the Earth version of The Mos Eisley cantina from Star Wars, where all manner of living bipods collect, sharing stories, smoking Cuban cigars and drinking wine. There aren’t many options in the direction of travel…North or South on Ruta 40, the relative well-trodden route that runs from the far north at the Bolivian border (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Route_40_(Argentina)) and terminating at the much disputed border with Chile at Rio Gallegos. As you’d expect, Fido welcomes its guests at the door, by occasionally raising his head to see what manner of being will come next.

It’s 5000km long and one of the longest roads in the world; Argentina’s Route 66, yet by comparison, little known, other than motorcyclists who are my greatest companions on the road.

I’m starting to accept that this may form the majority of my journey through South America, with many challenges crossing borders into Chile. It means that for the times they’re visible, I’m staring up at wonder at the vista on the horizon, wishing I was in, rather than looking at The Andes. It is acceptable at this time, as my entry into the heart of the mountains had not been planned in any route until further north. But there’s a real probability that unless Chile chills, the country will not form part of my odyssey. Sad though this is, Argentina has so far blown my mind. From the landscape to the kindness of just about everyone I’ve met, it’s only because Chile is there I want to go, to see the mountains from that side, to ride over, and back again as many times as possible. But in reality, in Chile, there’s only 60km between the mountains and the sea. You’re landlocked by sea and mountains. Luckily, one of my plans involved riding to the border on every paved mountain pass. So for now, this is my plan…and I think there’s 14!

I also consider that I could have ridden this north to south, as was my intention when I landed in Buenos when the prospect of Ushuaia closed down. What in the end set me on my path is I couldn’t quite grapple with the idea that from a Buenos Aires start and route west and then south I would be carrying all my winter gear, potentially for 2000km before I needed to wear it. If I’d ridden that way round, by the time I’d got to Patagonia, it would have been autumn, and the weather would have been turning. As it is, in Patagonian summer, I woke to close to zero temperatures this morning and donned my full winter kit - which stayed on until I finished my ride at this oasis in the desert. So, my kit was finally justified!

The stage I’ve just ridden should have taken one day; it would have been long at 226km but not something that phased me. But 1 hour in, it was clear the day was going to be a battle of attrition- me against the wind.

Planning for the stage, like the day before, I’d loaded up with enough food and water for 12 hours. In my experience, this was the most remote spot on Earth I’d ever cycled. My research told me that there was no village, shop, hotel or watering hole for the distance, and thus I planned to take it super steady. The problem is, the wind when it reaches a certain knots per hour headwind becomes a fight. It’s not possible to just ride easy as your just trying to move forward or stay upright as your smashed from side to side. 2 and a half hours and 30 miles in, I reached a bend that I’d prepared would deliver me into a headwind for 50 miles. I braced myself. Luckily, I’d seen my first ever wild Armadillo whilst slogging up the first climb. I sent Mark a message saying “it’s time to make like an armadillo”. If you’ve never seen one, they’re round and armoured, and scuttle close to the ground. I wish so much he hadn’t scampered away so fast (as fast as an armadillo can!). And so it began. My slowest flat ride ever.

I allow myself to take a break every 2.5 hours, and calculate how many I’m likely to have in a ride, breaking it down nicely into manageable chunks. As a friend commented today: how do you eat an elephant? One chunk at a time. I thought she was referring to the huge quantities of food I needed to consume to keep riding day after day, dragging up to 8kg of extra weight. But no, great metaphor for what I do. One stretch at a time, one day at a time, look one day ahead and. I more. That’s quite “dog-like” except a dog only thinks 1 meal at a time…or maybe one walk!

I’d anticipated being at the end of this stretch close to 3 hours on any typical day, and maybe 2.5 hours. But at 3.5 hours, I’d barely made half way. Plodding on, I saw a car parked ahead and a man holding out a bottle of water. The grin on my face could not have been bigger. I stopped, and got to know Mateus and his 15 year old son, Philipe, from Buenos Aires. Each time I finished a glass of iced water, they gave me another, till eventually, water started coming out od my ears. So they decided I needed food, and gave me a 1kg Rice Krispie bar and a bag of honey roasted peanuts. What more can you do when you are the receiver of such kindness but to hug your heart out, and offer your place to stay should they come to the UK. The way things are going, I am going to have an Argentinian only visitors at home by the time I return. And that’s great!

After much love, I turned my pedals again and continued the relentless slog towards Baja Caraoles. Eventually, I found what looked like a fairly industrial set bungalow, where I took refuge on its grass from the wind. Whilst trying to regroup, and downing the food that Mateus had given me, the owner came out. “Ok?” “Si! Just taking a break. Ok?” “Si! Perfeto”. 10 minutes passed and I remounted my bike. In that time, the approaching clouds had turned a threatening shade of grey and the wind had taken it up some knots. Weighing up the situation, to continue would mean I would definitely ride into this storm, and there was no prediction as to how it would develop. I went back to Magna (as I learnt later) and asked tentatively did he have a floor or a bed I could shelter in for the night. I wasn’t hopeful…but then he signalled me to follow him and showed me a dilapidated extension with a kitchen with no function and a room with two mattresses. I couldn’t have been happier if a helicopter had landed to take me to my planned destination. I held my hands together in praise and then on my heart. Of course, it meant that dinner would be a healthy diet if mixed fruit and nuts, some crushed mini muffins and some cheese snacks, with the next day’s breakfast being my mixed fruit and nut reserves planned for the next day’s ride. It didn’t matter, I was dry, safe and warm. There was a toilet, if no shower, and Mark and Sue’s insistent Christmas present of a sleeping bag was finally used. Happy days.

I was set in for the night and about to go to bed when rather alarmingly, Orlando (who I had not seen before and Magna “appeared” in my kitchen. Having seen the decomposing carcass of some mammal in the room adjacent to my bed, I was a little startled. But it was an offer of dinner. They said chicken. Excellent! The bike gods had done it again.

I followed Orlando into his family kitchen. The dynamics were interesting! The two men of the house couldn’t have been more engaging. There were many children running around, the most beautiful being 2 year old Belen. I wanted to play with her but I was an alien! Later, a 5 year old Carlito appeared. I at least got a high 5 from here. In exchange for dinner, I offered free English lessons to 11 year old Mia, but my smile and ways were not enticing and she disappeared. Strangely avoiding the room and eye contact was Orlando’s wife. Not one word, not even hello. Whilst Orlando did everything he could to communicate, and when Magna was done with trying, he just turned up his happy Argentine music (which plays a strange resemblance to crazy Dutch folk music, which doesn’t quite do it for me - link at end of blog!), and started dancing.

Cooking took some time! And when it appeared, a moment of sheer horror. I didn’t know what it was. I’d expected some weird **** when I came to South American but not so soon! With Orlando staring at me so that he could sense my wonder at his Brother’s secret recipe, I had to pull this one off big time. I had to portray “deliciouso”. Before I began, Orlando told me it was lamb. It must have been the lamb’s hoofs. He said it would make me strong! But having not touched red meat since 15, it was likely to make me vomit. The gristle and fat and bone…what would this do to my temple of a body, and what about the lambs??? I’m a good faker when I need to me and I think I pulled it off. Beggars can’t be choosers and this family welcomed me in and did this purely for me, from the goodness of their heart. I’m forever grateful for their kindness, and whilst they wouldn’t accept payment, I accidentally dropped some cash as I left and hoped they’d buy something for the many children.

It was freezing when I set out at 7am. The sun had not quite banished the shadows and the wind was still blowing. I’d studied the wind maps and knew I had at least 1 hour of headwind before a potential tail wind. When it eventually came, I sailed for 30 miles, over gravelled section for which there was no justification and which were mercifully short…up to 200 metres and a completely different beast to two days prior.

After 5 hours, I reached Baja Caraoles and took my place amongst the Star Wars characters of motorcyclists and my first American tourists, Alberto and Diane. They, seeing me arrive by bike, made many enquiries and me to them; from Boston, Alberto having travelled to 106 countries around the world, and a love of Cuban cigars and coffee. They sent me away with 1/3 of their pizza for the road. I loved these people! I wanted to stay in this place.

I, instead, chose to stay loyal to the booking I moved from then night before. This was a mistake. It was a squalid room and shared bathroom with plywood dividing that from my room. When I told the owner that the shower had leaked and offered to clean it up with a mop, they gave me a rag and a bucket and no words of thank you or don’t worry. The final insult was to say if my husband was coming, they’d charge him the same rate to stay in the same ****** room. It made me happy to inform them he was not here. The woman also suggested I leave my bike outside on the open street. Luckily her partner intervened and showed me with bike to my “room”.

I’ll be sleeping in my sleeping bag tonight and using my clothes as a pillow. You can’t win them all!

I could have ridden on for 50-80 miles to the next potential stop opportunities today but Hotel Bar Caraoles is warm and welcoming, and I need a rest! Could be pizza for breakfast and an early start!

Most people are good and if you start with that as your default, then there’s every chance you might be delighted! 😊

[joyfullyimportantyouth-blog]

What I’ve Found From Riding Trains, by Isabelle Hoonan

Even if countries were connected across oceans by trains, I still wouldn’t take them every day. Even if the gilded splendors of a Moscow mosque or the thin air of Everest were readily available, I would take caution to parcel out this privilege. Perhaps I would hop on once a month to preserve the delicacy of anonymity. Riding a train to a foreign locale is an act of accepting calm before unsettlement. It is an intentional act of leaving, followed by a chaotic thrush of discovery with each new thing you encounter: it is a gift to not waste. Should the opportunity arise to disappear on a train for a while, towards something you do not know, it should still be reserved in rarity so it doesn’t lose its meanings.

Imagine closing your eyes in the shady enclave of the Redwoods and waking up to the smell of creamy espresso in Budapest. Your face is welted by the imprints of your backpack zipper because you took care to sleep on your few belongings. Instead of the steadiness of an airplane ride, sitting on a train is to be a witness of the changing landscapes, of the people coming on and off the platform, the scrum of moving forward and learning how to sit still.

I have found three things I have faith in while riding on trains: love, solitude, and asking questions. They are, in ways, extensions of each other. To love is to embed within the grains of affirmation and failure. The humility and ego that come uninvited with these experiences of loving require asking questions of yourself and another, while also stepping away to remember who you are outside of someone else.

There’s no order to loving and being alone and asking questions: they are all a combustion of reacting to what must be done to be better, to be greater than what we think we are. To survive. They are our mirrors of experience deepened into no-name meaning. Clarity is not a guarantee, because we all are capable of lying, of having former selves answer for us.  But a train pulls us along to see what is to come.

To ask questions is not as intellectual as it may sound. It is to want to feel a situation outside of your life view, to know the stories that happened before the outcomes. It is to strive to not be trite no matter the hardships you’ve pillowed beneath the joys, because questions are not about who you are. To ask questions… is a loving choice of asking to know what you do not know, an act of saying you do not assume, that you will not judge, that you are listening. It is a gesture to surrender to the expanse of all that you may not ever know fully when you speak to someone. These moments of asking, in silence and the soft punctuation of voice, are interims of existing. They consist of an invisible transformation after everything that’s already been done but now voiced. They are a guiding prelude of everything you must do now. Hold onto them, let them go, and let them return.

I found love on a train in India. One morning, I was woken up by the strange strokes of small fingers against my dirty socks and the smell of burning trash when I blasted my eyes open. Three sets of children’s arms were half teetering on the ladder to my upper bunk, giggling as I twisted myself off of my lumpy backpack to face them. They ran away, bumping into old women in magenta and capsicum hued saris. They wove their way towards samosas being sold through the cracks of metal barred windows rusted from the 1950’s. I settled into my book, a pilfered find from a hostel back in Varanassi, Alex Haley’s “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” My boyfriend slept soundly on the bunk below. The thin plastic mattress creaked as I shifted to stretch a little before we would get off in a few hours to the mayhem of Mumbai.

It would have been 28 hours on the train, our route starting in Varanassi near the ghats and ending in Mumbai’s maze-like metropolis, where cows walked in the roads next to skyscrapers. This was our second full month together, which began in Nepal in October and would end in May in Mumbai after seven months of travel, without a single day spent apart.

When I look back at this relationship, my very first boyfriend, I cannot help but feel that it was more than just my first series of train rides: it was learning how to give trust to uncertainty, because things always seemed to work themselves out after 28 hours. We rode so many trains on that trip that became a stamp of first love, the gift of freedom that gave us mornings huddled together on a rain soaked train winding its way through the jungle of Sri Lanka and the promising endlessness of starched bright desert in Jasailmer. 

Sometimes we were quiet from the night before, when we argued about money or about small infractions, like how I wasn’t okay eating street food (so dumb, just get sick it’s fine, I think now). Sometimes we were so content drinking chai out of small ceramic cups, a rupee each. Sometimes I could feel the burst of my heart against the walls of fear when he would run off the train with not a minute before it left, swinging around the corner into our section with newspaper-wrapped samosas and I would wrap my arms around him with this melting relief.

Those trains led us all around India, all the way to the North of Thailand from Bangkok, where we worked for a month at a holistic rehabilitation center near Chiang Rai. We found our way back to India running onto trains that led us from Kolkata to Agra, to Rajasthan. It pierces me how much of the good and the bad were catalysts of the train, of losing money and stumbling upon conversations of what we wanted in our lives that would last for hours... the exchange of ideas of what we were reading swelling our need to move and find things out for ourselves, together and apart in our own thoughts. The mixture of sitting still while staring at the reel of passing desert into darkness, only to watch it all fall away, brought the next round of chai’s and holding each other’s gaze. It was as if to let the other know we were there without saying anything, that it was okay to be afraid sometimes, to trust, because that too would fall away. Home was far away but becoming wherever we were sleeping that night. I imagine this when I imagine how my traveling life began on trains. I was twenty.

I found solitude on a train from Seattle to Bellingham. Amtrak became my constant companion my first year of college, when each ambling walk to class became myself obsessed with figuring out who I was going to be, and who I was going to be was not where I was in this docile hippie college town. The swarms of joining and breaking social groups in the dorms, where girls would form quick alliances then herd from gym to cafeteria to class, confused me. I had dreamed college would be a slew of coffee dates and discussing pretentiously directed seminars on Camus. People who had lived in Paris would become my friends, and they would inquire about my time living in England as a thirteen-year-old loner who found solace reading in the musty library and asking strangers if I could eat with them. Basically, I expected my life to be like a low-budget indie feature film.

Each weekend became a disappointment of how lame the parties were, although I still wanted to go to them, and classes packed with four-hundred people discussing Murphy’s Law. I would go home to see my parents and unload my existential grief, but these train rides gave me a harsh glare of my entitlement, my craving for direction that I couldn’t create at that moment, a space for me to daydream of what was to come, which involved going to far off places where I would truly feel like an “artist.”

So I would draw and draw, write, think, listening to music and seeing the mountains meeting the Sound in a new way. I remember my first winter break lugging my duffel onto the train and settling at a window seat, the saltiness of the air and my feelings weighing heavy on my pen as I set myself on drawing my way into Juilliard or some New York bound school. I was all about the accolades, the rewards, recognition. 

Doing art made me tired of myself sometimes, and for good reason, because I asked so many questions but didn’t know what else to do with myself. Why couldn’t I just be someone who simply enjoyed things? If I was to accept my peripatetic leanings, I needed to decide what kind of artist I would be, which is probably why I posed like a judgmental-sensitive Kate Moss fascist in all black 24/7, dangling my Baudelaire book and willingness to take a tequila shot at a fake rave because I was so intent on being well-rounded COOL. Ugh.

Maybe I’d be an actress or a street artist or… I don’t know. At that moment, I was really into replaying the start and stop of the night before, which had transpired like a really shitty Boy Meets World revival that I thought was really, really deep. I had tried to kiss a boy I’d already kissed before, swirling in innocent dorm drinking, celebrating the end of finals and the ending legalization of Four Lokos. He was from Colorado, liked watching Planet Earth but had sworn off weed in favor of incense, and was very unattainable because he was in an open relationship. So… complicated, and thus very appealing to figure out. This was even before astrological compatibility was en vogue.

He made me want to do shrooms because apparently you could see the universe in a kaleidoscope and have some Jungian insight about your priorities. He was worldly and had lived in the Utah desert and was set to go to India and wrote Arabic on his notecards with my calligraphy pens when we would study together in the library. But yes, he had rejected my optioning that we could be a thing, because he was focused and that made me angry, because it meant that I had none if I was going after a boy who wouldn’t chase me. So I did what I always did when I fell down, which was to reject the rejector and still chase after them half-heartedly and be sort of apocalyptic about how my art would always be the most consistent and torturous thing to pursue. I filled so many afternoons drained with furiously typing poems that I later hated. I wish I had seen the sweetness of it all then, which now I see as beautiful for trying to make things matter, even if it was all a bit contrived and suburban girl angsty, like a bad 90′s sitcom spinoff doused in nice clothing and bad cocktail choices in a college town.

“I’m okay,” I would think after I would finish the train ride and disembark towards another destination: home, filled with heated coffee cups and roads I knew well enough to sleepwalk drive, even for a temporary time. I was nineteen.

I found asking questions on a train heading from Toulouse to Bordeaux to St. Foy La Grande. I was twenty-five, on the heels of a breakup, and headed to go meditate for a week straight to “get rid of” this self-antagonizing, self-fabling stewing. I wanted to stop screwing myself over. I couldn’t keep dwelling.

It was time to transfer at Bordeaux, a mad dash to get my ticket and run to the next train for St. Foy La Grande, where Buddhist nuns would be awaiting to bring a group of us to Thich Nhat Hahn’s “hamlets.”

I scanned the train times and asked a stern looking attendant where I was supposed to go in halting French, trying to rephrase before she threw her hands up and gave up. “Fuck… okay,” I got mad at myself then realized this was whatever, I’d figure it out. I decided to say c’est la vie and run to the platform I thought was usually the route, with an end stop of Bergerac. I ran through a bunch of peacoats and perfectly lipsticked French faces to the platform with an end stop of Bergerac and found it was my stop: ça roule.

“Is this the train to St. Foy La Grande?” a woman asked me in English. She was carrying a small luggage with her and had a twangy Australian accent, looked about in her sixties, and had sassy frosted pink lipstick and had matched her powder blue luggage to her cashmere sweater. She was also traveling alone and had a beautiful French train employee named Pierre carrying her other bag for her. Her name was Sheryl. I liked her immediately. She had the exact kind of throw caution to the wind but take care of yourself older woman allure that I wanted. We ended up talking the whole train ride to St. Foy La Grande, where I asked her questions and she asked me some and more.

I asked where she was from (New Zealand, my faulty mistake). I asked why she traveled (her husband had died a few years ago and she needed to move). She gave me the salt of the earth older woman advice that I so craved as a wandering but not quite so young but sometimes a beginner mid-twenty-something-year-old.

“I started traveling when I was young, but over the last few years I haven’t settled much until now,” she told me. “No matter how much I moved around after Alan’s death, the grief still followed me. I could be waking up in a villa in Santorini, greeted by the sun and the surf, looking fantastic in a white string bikini with sangria and pool boys surrounding me, and I would sometimes feel close to nothing. I would feel grateful while watching a sunset, but my head would be a haze of sadness. These things follow you, you know. Loss. You just have to learn how to sit still with time and somehow, after going through all of that hell, you find some light without needing to try so hard.”

Now she was having a light affair with her gardener and had the cut the bullshit and go be awesome attitude that was hard-earned with age and experience.

“Honey, as hard as it is, it’s important to learn how to keep it light. I was like you and tried to find the depth in questions.  I wondered how men who didn’t wonder so much about me could be figured out or try and find something that didn’t quite exist in them. Just learn to leave it. Just be an international woman of mystery, and the suitors will come calling, but they’re only the appetizer. The most important journeys, like train rides, are the ones where you ride alone or are accompanied by a friend to cut you up in laughter. Or the ones you stare out the window wondering where you’re meant to be. These journeys are the ones that sweeten the real love, that bring a friendship deeper to yourself or with a girlfriend. They are the ones where you discover yourself most that will give you the type of grace and grit that allow you to say hello and goodbye to places and people that don’t ask anything from you as long as you don’t ask anything from them. These sweeten the deal of life.”

When I headed back from St. Foy La Grande to Bordeaux to Toulouse Matabieu, I had spent a week meditating, especially on Sheryl’s life wisdom. I had thought a lot and not thought so much simultaneously. Who knew breathing could be breathing into something greater. It lightened my soul to feel the depth of being good enough for now again, of being curious, of realizing it wasn’t all about me, all these thoughts and feelings backstories but not the main show.

The main show was being right here, no dress rehearsal needed or discussing too much so as to not infringe upon instinct to act with that grace and grit Sheryl spoke of. I sipped a super fine glass of wine after a week of tea and watched a sheet of bright blue sky and laughed at and with myself, this me sitting at a cafe by the train station while the nuns waved, pretty damn happy with myself. Because being young and free can be a whole life thing if you can laugh a wild laughter in the heart of sadness, not to discredit, but to say “I’m back” even for just a second. I was twenty-six.

[indecisivemessatyourservice]

One of the things that I vividly remember about Jaisalmar is how desperate all five of us were to go there, excluding me maybe. I look back and kind of assume that something was not right with either of us in that phase. Nanu (Niharika Gogoi) was clearly struggling with mood swings each day, Sakhi (Pranami) was figuring out her life and decisions for future to an extent that she was kinda beginning to puncture her self confidence. The boys, again, I have no clue about but they did want a break from Delhi clearly.

For me, I remember feeling like I needed some amount of solitude to figure out what was happening around me, because I was of the opinion that people were moving ahead of me. Everyone I know was either dating, seeing someone or working on some great projects, and I kind of felt left out. Not in a way to question my worth, but enough to feel horribly lonely. So lonely that I thought I needed just my earphones and an empty room with a cosy bed. I re-read words and misinterpreted expressions to assume strongly that I was putting my weight around on other people’s matters. When you’re low, you potentially think worse and pull yourself down further. I was beginning to do that.

Jaisalmar did not seem like an attractive trip for me. Also, after I turned down Shree’s request to goto Shimla, which I was actually looking forward to, I felt it would be betrayal to go off with them. Especially since I told her my father would not allow, which he actually won’t. I remember for the longest time, I gave absolutely no opinion about the plans; even when the group was made, even after the itinerary was planned, even after the accomodation was sorted. When it came to the tickets, that’s when I freaked out.

When it comes to excuses, I can make some very decent ones very convincingly. But what I have learnt about myself is that when I am not convincing enough, it clearly means that there is a part of me that wants to do as I am told. And the next part is downhill, cause I realise I really cannot put up a fight with myself, not when I want it myself. So I end up caving in, doing or going where I was asked very half-heartedly.

Chinmoy kind of dropped an emotional bomb on me saying he won’t go if I don’t, which was stupid of me to yield to. But again, gestures, however, superficial they maybe, are always a weak point in my case. I put up so much to people, that when they reciprocate with the same polite manner I embarassingly drop my guard. It was stupid, but it meant a lot that Chinu would change plans as per my decisions, however untrue or true it might have been.

So we went, all five of us, for the first time together. For Sakhi, this was her first trip ever. For me, it was the first trip with either of them. The thing about journeys are that you get to know a lot more about the people you go with rather than the places. So I stay observant to my companions, carefully taking into account all that they do. It always is interesting, when it is not annoying. And I always expect catfights or dramas in a trip with first timers. Pleasantly, there were none this time.

Of course I have pictures to show how beautiful and vibrant the city was, how well accommodated we were, how much fun we had and how charming the landscape and equally gorgeous the sunsets were.

What physical proof I do not have with me is the feel of it all. I went with four people I knew (well, almost) and loved inside out, joined our hosts about whom I knew nothing, to a place I have only heard of but not enough to expect something grand out of it. The curious mix of familiarty with the unknowing, in a setting that automatically recreates itself to beautiful standards in different hours of the day was what made Jaisalmar what it was, in my memory.

Jaisalmar, in its aesthetically ancient forts, in its dry roads, in its colourful clothing, in its serene sunsets, in its sharp edges of the dunes and in the comfort of its own grandeur was what we needed. At least at that point of time.

When we had walked across a field of an apparent haunted town Kuldhara, on an impulsive visit one night, we had all looked up at the sky. For a moment the nagging fear of seeing a ghost or anything supernatural had collectively subsided. The sky was glorious, every single star stood apart and glowed like fireflies at arms reach. The barren field gave for a most open, panaromic view of the night sky that was begging to be touched. Our mouths hung open at the beauty and we could not help gasping in delight. I remember being embarassingly gleeful, reaching out to Chinmoy and Nabarun on either side, and hopping along with them to the rest of the deserted, scary looking town. The fact that was 3 am in the morning did not bother us much. At some point, Nanu, Sakhi and I were even laughing hysterically on some excuse, clearly creeping out the already uncomfortable men.

Also, Piyush was an amazing host. He was sweet, kind and always ready to go out of his way to keep us comfortable. Staying at the Army Cantonment could have been so much more intimidating but it was the most hospitable stay we could have asked for. I took my time warming up to him, he was the only one in the group I knew nothing about back then. But once I did, I was all praises.

The incessant laughter between us girls as we planned out the day’s outfits, the annoying (oh god) nagging Sakhi and I were subjected from Nabarun, the nagging we directed towards Chinmoy ourselves, the constant bickering between Nabarun and Sakhi, Nanu’s successful attempts at pocking Chinu until he screamed at her or my embarassing table manners during dinner.

It is like I am trying so hard to grasp at what is left of the trip. Like when, while Amit Trivedi sang ‘Zinda’ from the player and we stared open mouthed at a herd of large, majestic camels that crossed the road, a few inches from the car we were in. Or when we raced across the Sand dunes on camelbacks with Me screaming my lungs out or Sakhi coming close to tears. When Nanu and I sat on the edge of the boat in the Gadsisar Sagar lake, almost close to sunset, and we breathed in the serenity while agreeing that we were at the right place at the right time. Or maybe when we sat atop the Jaisalmar fort with Piyush and a few other officers, and took in the view of the entire beautiful city at midnight, blessing whatever it is that allowed this trip to happen.

I think about how my father was against all outstation trips that semester, he felt I have had enough of that and should be focusing on my entrances. I remember my first day at Jaiselmar, all worried about his reaction when he gets to know I went away with them without letting him know. He does not take disobedience lightly and he frets and frets until I lose my mind. But most significantly, I remember letting him know casually that I was in Jaisalmar with the four of them, and him, after an initial minute of surprise, saying, “Okay. Have fun then, you three girls needed this anyway.” I still think about how right he was.

I saw my four friends differently from that period of happiness, I saw myself differently since that trip and I saw places and moments and emotions differently since the time we got back. I kept telling them that I needed to write this down, to record every infinite feeling I was going through at that point of time. Most of it is lost and gone with the few months that stand between the day we returned and today.

Which is why this was necessary, writing it all down here. Life since then had taken leaps and bounds. We all are separated by work and circumstances right now, but are somehow managing to catch up with each other’s lives. Things are changing so fast but, bless me, unlike before, I have started to learn how to cope with the speed of it all.

But even today, if I can go back and sit on that boat and watch the sunset from that lake, with these four annoying people and Piyush again, I will. Very happily and very readily. Knowing that such a thing cannot happen, I can only continue to reminisce and fondly treasure the memories of it.

Thank you Jaisalmar. ❤️

In pictures, from top right, Sunset at Sand Dunes, a half view of the city fort from the main road, Nanu at Gadsisar Sagar Lake, and the City Fort at night