The Call of the Mountains!

Himalayas – the term I have been hearing since school and with the blog-era, these mystifying mountains always tweaked my curiosity. I read about their alluring and enticing nature and wished to get ‘Himalayed’!

Maybe my expectations were too bookish or maybe I was not the mountain person, as my first nudge with the Himalayas left me depressed and craving for the plains and sun. After much self-persuasion and cutting off any expectations, I initiated the desire to get ‘Himalayed’ all over again.

The concept of happiness was puzzling me time and again. I was rebelling against the societal norm of living and the concept of settling down to a planned, monotonous life when ‘BHUTAN’ happened! My first self-planned long distance budgeted travel. I will be doing Bhutan injustice if I just pen down the places we visited, what we saw, what we did and the rest of the blatant information.

I see Bhutan as being the ‘Land of Happiness’ which, sadly, is on its way of becoming ‘India-ed’. Like my persistent desire of seeing India in its past glorified version, I felt the pull in my heart when all through my travel in Bhutan, I saw the country going down the path of ‘development’. I wished to tell them to not make the same mistake as my country has made but alas, a person knows it’s mistake only after it’s committed.

Surreal landscapes, mystifying mountains, rustic living, self-imposed isolation – I found all this in Bhutan and alongside this I also found – technological penetration, westernisation, loss of cultural heritage, imprinting of ‘job-based’ living, initiation of economical psychology!

I found televisions everywhere, and with these came the Indian movies, sitcoms, Western influence. The youngsters seem to quickly adapt to factory made clothes like jeans, shirts and shed their art of weaving and being sustainable. Same as India, the present parents pamper their kids with packaged food and give in to all their tantrums.

For a country whose economy was agriculture based, its quickly shifting to be based on jobs that provide ‘security’ in life. I have still not made peace with the concept of security from jobs and the loss in the emphasis on agriculture.

After moving to East Bhutan, I found my connection to Himalayas. I was speechless most of the journey by the immense proportion of the mountains, their stability and grandness. The rivers inspired devotion in me and some rare birds blessed us with their appearance on the road. Once again, I started reminiscing about how the world would have been just a few hundred years ago, before the industries, the vehicles and the robotic lifestyle.

For a person, who is insured of food and safety, it may sound wrong on my part to put down ‘development’ and ‘jobs’, but I left Bhutan with these thoughts – I am certainly born in a wrong era, I am more of a yester-century human and though Himalayas are mesmerising, I welcomed the sun and the plains with a huge smile on my face! I certainly belong to the sunny, hot plains of South India!