Today, after many days, I have got the opportunity to write, and now when I sit down to write, I will take you to a place in the Indian Himalayas from where a 7816 meter (25643 feet) high peak is visible, whose name is 'Nanda Devi'. Let's start the journey. The matter is a bit old but not so old that it can be called historical. This incident happened when I was working and was making my life hell by working 14 hours a day in the office. That time was so bad that when I fell ill and was admitted to the hospital, I was still lying on the hospital bed doing office work.
Seeing the high hospital bills and my low salary, I started feeling sad. Seeing my sad face, my office colleagues said, enough of this office-office, let's go somewhere in the mountains. Everyone unanimously told their manager that “if we do not get 5 days leave, we will leave the job”. The threat had effect and we got 5 days leave. On my request everyone agreed to go to Auli. We four people beat the office system and board a bus from Delhi to Haridwar on Friday morning.
It took just 6 hours to reach Haridwar from where we boarded the next bus which would drop us at Joshimath. This distance is 276 km and the bus took 10 hours to cover it. So in this way we reached Joshimath after 16 hours where we booked a home stay and spent the night in Joshimath. Next morning we woke up early and hired a taxi and left for Auli which is just 11 km from Joshimath. Is located at a distance. Just after half an hour we were standing amidst the snow covered mountains of Auli. Cold air is coming at my mouth from all sides and it feels as if my face is frozen and I cannot feel anything.
There is a ropeway here and today we are ready to take any risk to relieve the stress of our office. After immediately booking the tickets, we board the ropeway which is taking us far up into the mountains. It seems as if all the bad things of the world are leaving us and we are spreading our fingers and absorbing all the goodness of the mountain within us. Looking at the snow covered mountains, all four of us are talking about why we did not show courage for so many years and why we did not come to these beautiful mountains earlier. All four of them put their hands on me and say in one voice, “We do not like both our boss and our office at all” and now we will keep coming to the mountains and will not let our lives get ruined.
After getting down from the ropeway, we start walking towards the snow covered mountains above Auli. Although the height of Auli is 2909 meters but now we have reached a height of 3800 meters. Because my companions have come to such a height for the first time, they are facing problems in walking, one is lying on the ground breathing heavily, one is vomiting and the third is acting like he has fainted and I am helping all three of them. Seeing this, I am saying that friends, live this freedom because after a few days it is not going to come back again.
As we go further, we see old snow fallen on the mountain where we throw snowballs at each other, my hands become numb due to putting my hands in the snow. We use a piece of wood as a sled and have a lot of fun sliding on the snow. From here, the queen of mountains “Nanda Devi” is visible, which is the highest mountain peak of Uttarakhand. This mountain is my most favorite mountain in the Indian Himalayas. Seeing this, a different type of energy circulates in the entire body. I look at Nanda Devi mountain for a long time, we all are ready to go back after having a great time.
Soon we reach the ropeway and then come back by taxi to Joshimath where our room is. Today is the third day that we have been here and now tomorrow we will have to leave for home. The next day, while sitting in the bus, we all talk about what a beautiful journey it was, if only we could get 3-4 days leave every month, then we would never have the stress of working 14 hours a day and our mental state would also be very good. It will be good. We promise that every year we will take some trips to the mountains, what is useful will continue throughout our life. I even said that if the boss wants, he can deduct money from the salary for the number of days we take leave, but let him give us leave. After lunch in the afternoon we cross Rudraprayag. In the evening the bus drops us at Haridwar where we all take a dip in the river Ganga and take a bus to Delhi and reach our respective homes. When we go to office on Tuesday, the boss was looking at us as if we had come back from having fun in Thailand.
Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi by me and I have taken the help of Google Translate to translate it into English. All photos are clicked by me and edited in Lightroom.