Sometimes it’s better to enjoy one’s own company, one’s own thoughts, one’s own mood, one’s own choice of food, one’s own feelings with thousand other meanings flying above this vast blue sky, across this huge mountains reaching to someone somewhere unknown of happenings…!! Let’s give love a chance, making our heart dance, once again with joy and pleasure, without anything to measure just dive in with me and together we shall see how beautiful life is with someone constantly to miss..!!
Yes, these were some random lines I wrote on that beautiful monsoon solo trip to a small but beautiful hill station called ‘ Mussoorie’ . I have a very old connection with this hill station. It was my parent’s honeymoon destination and my first ever trip with them when I was merely 3 years old. That year onwards I have been to this place a number of times. But this was my first ever solo trip to the hill station. The reason being my start of a journey through PhD degree
I had left my home 8 years back to pursue higher education and then job stuff. So, practically I am living alone for past 8 years; changing cities and places carrying my stuff in bags. I have come at a stage of exploring myself. I have decided to re-introduce me to myself in context with this vast and beautiful world. I am not a frequent traveler but more of a wannabe traveler and critique to the places I visit.
I have always dream of travelling far and beyond the zone of my comforts. Perhaps I never found the courage or time. So, after reading a number of posts and blogs of avid travelers, solo women travelers, family style travelers and a thousand other categories of travelers, I decided to take a small tiny step towards this quest of getting inside their shoes. So, this blog post is like a documentation and an experience sharing platform. So, let’s begin…
was my second week of course work classes at college and I was already frustrated with daily formalities and boring lectures. I prepared a mental plan to visit Mussoorie with few of my seniors or friends. Mind you such mental plans I keep on making almost once or twice of every month.
So, finally Friday evening arrived and I thought knowing the busy schedule of other people that why not I go alone. There was a safe side to it since I knew about the destination and all the roads leading to it. The unsafe part was the weather. It was the month of July and a heavy rainfall was happening everywhere leading to the possibility of land slides in hilly areas. But then I thought well that can be taken up as another challenge. I have to go and experiment with this one. An inner voice literally pushed me from outside.
So at around 11 pm on Friday I was surfing through this site called ‘Trivago’ and somehow booked my hotel in Mussoorie for one night. It cost me around 2000 Indian rupees and I was pretty satisfied by the photographs of the room and the hotel. The name of the hotel was Hotel Basera at mall road near Gandhi chowk.
For a minute after booking the hotel I could not believe that I did the booking. It was so unusual for a person like me to do such a thing. It was very random and quick. But this act pushed me to pack my bags and set my alarm of 6 am next morning. I informed my senior about my to be adventurous trip and told her if you still find me sleeping in my room the next morning then you can assume that I didn’t leave at all .But the opposite happened; I got up around 5 am and left my hostel around 6 am.
On arriving at the bus stand which is quite near to my college gate I completely forgot about the Kanwar season. This a brief reminder to everyone that there is a Kanwar yatra that happens in the monsoon season near Haridwar which is an annual pilgrimage of devotees of lord Shiva in which these people fetch holy water of river Ganga and travel to their native places on foot in order to offer the holy water to the local Shiva temples.
Currently, this religious yatra has become quite unsafe for other pedestrians and travelers because of many reasons that I cannot discuss here. So, I saw everywhere these Kanwar people looking suspiciously at me and I was really worried about how will I get on the bus to Dehradun alone. But I gathered courage and went on with my general inquiry for the bus. See here I would like to say if the God’s wish matches with your wish then no matter what you will complete the task and your wish will be fulfilled. These lines are put here because the moment I stepped near the inquiry counter I found my two juniors waiting for the same bus. Oh! what a relief I got after seeing them.
Dehradun:
The journey to Dehradun in a bus that costed me around 81 Indian rupees went really good. We chatted a lot throughout the journey and I found out that these people were going to a place called Chamba on bikes which they were going to hire from Dehradun.
On arriving at Dehradun ISBT, I took a blue sharing tempo which is called ‘ Vikram’ in this area to Mussoorie bus stand. The ride cost me 10 rupees. I reached the Mussoorie bus stand and took my ticket to Mussoorie of about 56 rupees. The beautiful bus journey to Mussoorie made my small attempt fruitful. The moment I saw the mountains my heart jumped with excitement.
“It is always the same with mountains. Once you have lived with them for any length of time, you belong to them. There is no escape” – Ruskin Bond. These beautiful lines came to my mind on the journey.
MUSSOORIE:
I was getting a bit sleepy and dizziness was what I was experiencing probably due to the hills and no breakfast in the morning. A huge mistake. I learned this lesson that whenever one is leaving for a journey morning breakfast is a must. Because this thought dawned upon me that who will take care of me if I fall ill here. I don’t have any companion. But thankfully on arriving at the hill station all the dizziness and sleep just faded. It was raining at moderate scale and I had a task in front of me to search for my hotel Basera.
Upon inquiry, I found out the directional signage and followed the trail. Honestly in the middle, I felt as if whether I have committed another mistake of booking a shady hotel or not. The thought that sometimes what is shown on the not is not what is, in reality, came inside my tiny brain. I prepared a mental countermeasure to it that is to leave Mussoorie by afternoon. But surprisingly the hotel was very good and safe beyond my expectation. It was an off-season for tourists but still there was a lot of crowd in the hill station and also in the hotel that I booked. I found my room very cosy , neat, clean and safe.
shivam 