Wandering Thinker & a Pondering Writer – Travelogues – 4

He stopped by the river looking up in the sky… He didn’t hesitate to randomly stare at the wilderness around the place! A gentle splash of water on his exerted face… And everything seemed all right!

So he had already realized that a lot of distance from the top of the mountain had been covered. He also thought about the parts that were up ahead of this tricky journey, one that hadn’t yet actually started. After many years of trying to understand what connected him to the magic of the mountains and why he kept seeing the beautiful images again and again during the slumber of the night he realized it now… He had always been a fan of the terrain, being an avid mountaineer and generally being fond of exploring Himalayas he knew that this was going to be something he would do for sure. This time around though he had taken a huge break, a break to backpack all the way to the daunting mountains and figure out how far could he go. He already had a history of a lot of ardouous journeys that he had covered up until now. Taking across this long and tiring journey was something he had prepared himself for.

He had to get all the way to the mountains called Tahilla. After crossing a lot of mountains enroute the top most part across this no man’s land in a terrain that had not been trodden upon for many years. A glimpse of a few nomads and some local wanderers is all you could get around this part of the world. Sometimes you would go for days and weeks without coming across any soul on the land of the lost. But he didn’t worry so much about the pitfalls of getting lost… For he knew what direction he had to follow. He had instincts, one of an avid mountaineer, he could capture trails, one similar to a hunter. He had all those qualities that he acquired sublimally over a period of a decade of traveling across such mountains.  He knew that this quest of his was one of the most important. Why? he asked himself sometimes… An answer to which took him back… always to ask himself another question… ‘Why not??’

15 years ago his grandfather had died… He always was the reason for him to get inspired into hauling away across all these mountains. They always spoke in detail about the various terrains and the kind of forrests they were engulfed amongst. There were a lot of maps and epigraphs with charts that his grandfather always carried along with him. Shange, (meant Buddha) as he was named by his grandfather knew a lot of the secrets of various destinations across these terrains. Some tough, some rough and most of them always ordained with various different levels of challenge! The ones that called upon the most ardouous travellers to push the envelope and try and fight the harsh conditions to come across various hazards of a journey into the wilderness and into the unknown. Only to discover a secret and a very important key peice of puzzle that no one had solved before. Shange’s grandfather always knew that this quest was not one of the empty types. Many a times he told Shange to keep an eye on the odd things and certain trails that were easily spotted to take twists and turns. Yet, they challenged each other at points to figure out short cuts to different points. Tough, but faster to reach… Many a times when they went hiking, they always closely observed the nature around themselves. They always meticulously detailed out their plans to pick up peices of references or traces that could be useful in one of the future revelations on the journey as it traversed through these terrains. There were a lot of clues and a lot of references from various other places. One that were quite relevant to this journey of his. A treasure hunt of sorts, so to speak. And by the time he had reached the first river, he knew that the journey had now begun and it was going to be a completely different escapade from here on…

 “This is where I’ll set up my tent tongiht…. Looks good enough to camp…”  he said to himself with a sigh of exertion and tiredness that he could feel beyond his bones…

 He stopped by the river looking up in the sky… He didn’t hesitate to randomly stare at the wilderness around the place! A gentle splash of water on his exerted face… And everything seemed all right!