A Long Night

Less than eighteen hours to the flight and there I was, crying my heart out. Backpacks were half-packed, winter jackets and shoes scattered all over the floor. The drone and electronic gadgets were charging silently in a corner, probably wondering whether they would make it to the trip at all.

The Himalayas have never been an easy passage for me. Every trip to those mountains comes with its own share of heartbreak or anxiety. Sometimes both, arriving together without warning.

There was no single reason for the meltdown. That was the honest answer, and the exhausting one. A collective string of career choices, private and social life, everything at once. None of these were new. All of them had been circling for months, waiting for a night when the defences were low enough to let them in. The night before the trip, apparently, was it. I wept without much reason to stop, while Naviin was still at the office, wrapping up work so that the next week would be entirely his own.

I pulled myself together before he got back. The second round started almost immediately when he walked in. He stood at the door for a moment, bags still on his shoulder, reading the room. Clueless about what he was walking into. He tried his best, which mostly meant sitting nearby and not saying the wrong thing, and eventually that was enough.

Music came to the rescue about an hour later. I put one on, then another, and somewhere in between I started thinking about shots and light and what the mountains might look like at dawn. The self-realisation arrived alongside it, reluctant but present, and I found my way back to packing.

Texting my cousin and friend helped more than I expected. I didn't explain much. I didn't need to. They are my trust fall. Unconditional, available at any hour, and completely unsurprised that I was falling apart the night before a trip.

We were backpacking this time, which meant no extra shoes, no extra favourite shirts, no comfort padding of any kind. Every gram I added would sit on my back from the streets of Delhi to the trails of the Himalayas for eight days straight. I was keeping it light, or at least trying to.

Naviin and I stuffed clothes into our bags like two people who have travelled together long enough to negotiate without words. My bag being slightly bigger, it inherited the extra winter jackets and his extra tees. People say life partners start to reflect each other after a while. Five years down the line, I think we have completed our exchange. I now pack lighter than I ever used to. He, on the other hand, has become the exact opposite of what he once was.

Our bags weighed 9.5 kg and 10.3 kg each. The extra daypack carried the gadgets and would be with us as a third traveller.

A Himachali winter was what we were after. After much deliberation, a few disagreements and a near-diplomatic breakdown, we settled on Kasol, Kullu and Manali. Three places, three different energies. Kasol for the river, Kullu for the valley and Manali for the season's first snow.

I had been thinking about this trip for months, the thinking that happens in the background of ordinary days, when you are sitting in traffic or waiting for a meeting to end and your mind slips quietly towards mountains. The hope was to catch the first snowfall of the season, that particular kind of Himalayan luck that either finds you or doesn't.

After cross-checking the stay bookings and flight timings, I booked the cab for the next morning. Any sensible person would have gone to sleep at that point. Instead, I wandered around the house with a camera brain, framing shots of places I hadn't arrived at yet. My body eventually made the decision for me. I got barely two hours of sleep before I was up and getting ready.

There is something about the silence just before a trip that I have never been able to describe but always notice. That morning it sat in the house like something held in. We clicked the bags shut, locked the house and headed down. The cab was already waiting.

The lift with the mirror is non-negotiable for me, especially before a long trip. One last look before the world shifts. That morning the two oversized backpacks had taken up most of the mirror and we stood wedged into the remaining corner, which felt about right.

I called mom from the cab and promised her I would behave, just like I always did as a child. I quietly hoped everything would hold together back home until I returned. A familiar dose of travel anxiety, that. It never quite leaves.

December and the holiday season filled the airport with that unmistakable family energy. Children running ahead of their parents, bags being managed alongside excitement in equal measure, everyone headed somewhere cheerful. We joined the general mood.

We boarded the flight to Delhi, the first leg of the transit.

I can spend entire days rotting on the couch, binge watching series without a trace of guilt. But put me on a three-hour flight and suddenly my mind decides it is the last productive window before the end of the world. I had Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads ready to read, with a pencil in hand. It was an old habit from my science student days that I had never been able to shake. Naviin found this endlessly amusing and never missed an opportunity to say so.

An hour and a half in, my focus gave up and left. Naviin had already dozed off beside me, completely unbothered, as he tends to be. I spent the rest of the flight with my forehead against the window, watching the land below. The thoughts from the previous night made their attempt to find me again. I held them off the only way I know how, by giving my mind something else to do. I turned back to Frankopan, not reading exactly, but letting the chapter I had just finished turn itself over in my head.

Frankopan writes about the ancient routes that connected civilisations. These were the high mountain passes through which trade and culture moved across the world, long before borders existed. In a few days, I would be standing at one of those very crossings. That thought alone was enough to keep the other ones at bay. The Silk Roads, after this trip, were going to be my next book. Knowing that made the reading feel a little more like research, which is the only way I know how to read.

The pilot brought the big birdie down on the Delhi runway into single-digit temperatures. Stepping out of the terminal, the cold hit first, sharp and immediate. Then the air. Not dramatic, not visible, but present in the way that bad air always is, a faint sting behind the eyes.

Delhi, at the time of our arrival, was under GRAP 4 restrictions, the Graded Response Action Plan, which activates when the capital's air quality crosses into the hazardous range. At Stage 4, even construction gets suspended. We had our N95 masks on before we had taken ten steps.

Our bus to Kasol wasn't until 9.30 that night, which meant Delhi was ours to wander through until then. The mountains were still two states and one very long night bus away. But for now, Delhi had us. Delhi always does.