Dreamy, Quaint Dharamshala
Travelogue
When you drive in from the airport, you have no knowledge, none at all, about what lies in wait for you.
You live in the city, you have ‘seen’ places, you have ‘been’ to places, all of them ‘beautiful’ (such an overused word) and there is a ‘ho hum’ air about whatever you think you are going to see.
But believe me when I tell you that NOTHING can prepare you for Dharamshala, in the depths of winter.
By the time we were halfway through to the place we were planning to spend our nights and dump our bags in, I could feel my heart begin to beat in anticipation and excitement. I was twisting and turning in my seat so that I would not miss anything, anything at all. Every turn in the road offered the sight of a valley, the vision of a gorge, a look at some of the tallest cedars I have ever seen: so hoary that their trunks had developed callouses on them. Through all of it, the sun peeped, laughingly at me, my husband watched me in amusement, and the cab driver tried his best to keep his smiles in check at my antics. I forgot that I was a ‘seasoned traveller’ and too old to behave like a child at her first-ever treat.
Up one curving hairpin bend, down another, and at every turn, the smiling faces of the people, standing on the shoulder of the road, waiting for you to pass by, without an iota of either hostility or irritation on them. It was cold, sometimes bitterly so. But you know what? It just did not register. I saw more smiles and laughter in this one week than I had seen in a year of weeks. The sun smiled at me, so did my pale crescent moon. At midnight, I went out into the gallery that ran around our room and stood stock still; like a gigantic inverted bowl of random but myriad diamonds, the stars smiled at me; in the hotels and restaurants and tiny places selling hot momos and steaming soup, the pretty Tibetan women selling trinkets, and at the stalls selling curios, the men and women, beautiful, rugged, crinkly-eyed, smiled at me. I bathed in the smiles, drowned in them, surfaced briefly to go down again, and again. and again…
At the end of every light-filled day, when we came back to our room, my heart sang with gratitude and love and hope and joy and a peace that defied description.
©️ 2022 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
Shoutout to Sharing Randomly, and her poem about travel
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