Into the Valley

Outside the window, Delhi's fog and smog had merged into a dense grey curtain that swallowed the whole road. Everything ahead just faded out. And yet the buses moved, all of them, with the unhesitating confidence that belongs either to very experienced drivers or very trusting ones. I could not decide which was more alarming. With a quiet prayer, I left the rest to the driver's presumably excellent spatial memory.

Sleep arrived before I even noticed it coming. I had a playlist ready for this trip. The songs kept playing in my headphones, without giving up on me. The bus stopped at a couple of places along the way. I did not step down. Somewhere in the early hours it slowed again. I stirred without fully waking, caught between sleep and the dim awareness of movement.

An overnight bus from Delhi puts you through a lot. What it offers in return makes it worth every bit of it. I slid the curtain open and wiped away the haze that had settled on the window through the night. And there they were.

The Himalayas.

Enormous, unhurried, sitting exactly where they have always been, completely indifferent to the fact that you have been travelling all night just to see them. You feel impossibly small against that vast scale, and yet something inside you that had been folded very small begins to open. It feels like the very first time, every single time.

This trip, we were heading to Kasol first rather than to Manali. On a weekend, Manali is a crowded situation. Kasol, tucked into the Parvati Valley along the banks of the Parvati river, was the quieter entry point.

River Beas was the first thing I saw when I properly opened my eyes. In a few minutes we would reach Bhuntar, where the Parvati river comes down from high up in the valley and joins it here. From that point the Parvati surrenders its name and moves forward as the Beas, carrying everything it brought from the mountains into something larger than itself.

I have always thought that is what travel does to a person. Just like the Parvati dissolves into the Beas. You do not resist change. You just continue differently. The realisation never comes while it is happening. It comes later, when you turn back and find the old shape no longer fits.

We checked our location the moment we were awake enough to hold a phone steady. To our genuine surprise, the bus was on time. These drivers deserve more credit than they get. They navigate fog, mountain roads, and the responsibility of hill-bound tourists, and they deliver. Ours delivered us alive.

Alerting the conductor about our stop required the full deployment of whatever Hindi we had between us, supplemented by hand gestures and hopeful expressions. They let us off after a brief negotiation involving a 5-star review. They got their review. We got our stop. Everyone was satisfied.

The first sight of a new place is, without question, the happiest moment of any trip. We spotted the board for our stay from the road, which felt promising. Then we looked down.

The hotel was not on the road. It was down a slope. A perfect welcome for two people with bulky backpacks. We stood at the edge of that road, staring at the slope ahead of us.

This, apparently, was how Kasol said good morning.

The path down to the hotel was steep. Mud had no intention of cooperating. Those scattered rocks could serve either as footholds or as the beginning of a very undignified fall. Naviin looked at those rocks and saw a manageable trail. I looked at the same rocks and saw myself rolling down the slope.

We had barely started the descent when a local woman came climbing up the same path. Effortlessly, balancing a large vessel on her way up. To her, the slope was flat ground and gravity was a matter of perspective. Naviin, naturally, turned to me. He had just found the perfect argument. I almost gave in. I took a few steps further down, genuinely attempting it, before my instincts ran one final simulation of the slip-and-roll scenario and delivered their verdict clearly.

I was taking the longer route. Naviin followed me.

We reached the hotel without incident. Small victories.

Check-in was only at 11 am, as anticipated. The plan was to leave our bags at the reception and spend the morning café-hopping until the room was ready. We were prepared to wander Kasol in the freezing cold, four or five degrees and not a degree more, purely on the strength of caffeine and the excitement of being somewhere new.

What we were not prepared for was the view.

The hotel was surrounded by mountains on all sides, not as a backdrop, not as a distant feature, but as the immediate, overwhelming reality of the place. The morning light found the peaks before it found us. We stood there for a moment, not saying anything in particular. The bags came off our shoulders.

As I stood there, the load on my back came off easily. The other one, that I had been carrying since the night before the trip, loosened a little. I felt lighter. The way a gust of fresh air finds you when you least expect it and wakes something up inside you. A small but certain confidence.

The staff were only just beginning their morning when we arrived, and we were asked to wait at the reception for check-in. Good news came shortly after. Our room, which was actually a camp hut, was ready.

We dropped the bags and stepped back outside. We were still standing there when he appeared from the direction of the river. Large, furry, moving towards us with the confidence of someone who had never been told no. A German Shepherd. Judging by his manner, he owned every inch of the place.

With the mountains behind him and the morning light shining on his coat, he looked like he had simply materialised from the landscape. He reached us, sniffed us thoroughly, assessed us and then allowed us to pet him. The excitement we showed must have been difficult to miss, because one of the staff appeared shortly after and mentioned that there were three more.

They were, without competition, the main attraction of the property. The other draw was the location itself. The hotel was right along the Parvati river, the same river I had caught my first glimpse of from the bus window that morning. We had been travelling into the valley as it was making its way out, two journeys in opposite directions, crossing paths here.

Cafés and stay places lined either side of the river, and the path along the bank connected them all.

Kasol, we were beginning to understand, was that kind of place. One where the itinerary writes itself, one café and one river bend at a time.