Process Of Traveling

Our journey started with packing all of our decathlon purchases into rucksacks and taking the road into the Himalayan mountain region. Gradually passing the Shivalik hills the road took us to the Himachal range. One such road took us to Kharkiya, a small village in Bageshwar district of Uttarakhand. Kharkiya is a beautiful village with a few small shops, restaurants & rest houses. There we parked the car and then the journey on basic mode of transportation, i.e. by foot, took it's natural pace of pleasure. Our legs took us to Khati Gaon, being the last point of civilisation in the journey which is five kms from Kharkiya. Waterfalls accompanied us on the hiking trail and donkeys kept overtaking us. At Khati, after a cup of tea which tasted like milk-powder tea, we gained back our strength and walked 17 kms to reach Dwali. Dwali is a place where PWD and KMVN have constructed a few rest houses, and a kitchen. The cook and caretaker, Madan, was kind enough to serve a ...

T raveling is a great experience. It is not simply the exertion of exchanging places or moving from one place to another- it is  first - hand  knowledge of people and places. We may read books, see movies but actually going to places and meeting people, interacting with them, listening to them ,  is a totally different experience. When I first set eyes on the world's most celebrated monument, the Taj Mahal, it was a very different and unique feeling. I still remember a British lady standing next to me, commenting " O nly a few sights are actually better than their photographs".    N ot for nothing did the  travel ers  and explorers like  Marko Polo  and  Hsüan-tsang   undertook the risk of going   far off ,  unknown places. Our own saints and sages undertook such journeys right from Adi Shankaracharya to Swami Vivekanan d.   No experience is comparable to trekking and hiking in the hills. The sheer thri...