The expanse of the mountains

It was a late late evening, the bus painstakingly dragging itself along the mountainous roads. Nerve racking cold. So cold that I believe even my breadth was frozen. A group of strangers, braving a day long bus ride to this far off village, hidden somewhere along the dotted lines of the Indo-Chinese border. I fell in love with Chitkul. Not just because of the sheer expanse of the frame but because it was so strikingly, intricately brilliant. I had never seen the mountains this close. Every frame was enlarged. As if someone had stretched the margins delicately to include every inch of the white landscape. The largeness of it had caught my breadth then. Even now, one year after, I miss those days. Days when I just sat looking out of the window at the mountains. They answered so many of my questions in a heartbeat. I truly believe in the magic of the mountains. They do heal.

Did it heal me, you ask? Not so much. But the mountains are really not at fault for their incapacity.  Rather I am, for my persistence. There were days when we would just climb down the gorge and sit at the riverbed. Dozing, meditating, inhaling, just plain feeling. I think all of us had a story, a wound perhaps that we kept hidden in our hearts. Those ten days we were letting them loose. Not a lot of us would talk for extended periods of time. We would suddenly find ourselves in pin drop silence that stretched long and wide. Have you sat across a stranger in absolute silence for an hour?  I have. It is amazing how much silence speaks. Mountains teach you one thing for sure. They teach you the insignificance of human issues. When there are such sights at every corner you take, would you really want to go back to something or someone that you're having doubts about? Quite often not. Mountains make you stronger. Stronger to tolerate the irrelevance of the cities.