Thanks to a beautiful travel video by Kenny Sebastian where he spoke about how travel brings a calming effect on him, I wanted to share the story that has been inside me for a while.
Electronics and I never go well with each other, so I can never imagine myself making a travel vlog. Hence, I’m trying my best to fill this post with whatever I felt.
I always make it a point to travel to someplace or the other. Because it is an outlet for me. It is something that always makes me feel good about myself and makes me appreciate the smaller things in life.
Life has been really unkind to me for the last 7-8 months. External factors shelved a few projects and quizzes that I was really looking forward to. This combined with the pressure of running a company, living alone, working out things, etc. But things were not working out already and so I decided to pull through somehow on my own.
Thanks to me for being me, I’m too good at handling failures. I’ve been facing them ever since I started quizzing. So, it’s almost 14 years of it! I’ve always considered failures to be healthy and always chucked them and moved on to another. But you can only strain a rubber band to a limit. And the limit was actually exceeding. I knew what medicine I would need and somehow convinced my friends to travel with me to Coorg.
I’ve always wanted to spend the New Year’s away from all the hustle and bustle. And I knew this time it was happening. But something even greater happened on the New Year’s Eve. So, after being to Coorg, we were doing our routine visits to all the popular destinations.
But our caretaker told us that the road behind our tent led to one of the popular mountain treks. Since none of us had ever experienced one, we decided to give it a chance and explore. He told us it would be a walk for about 4 kms. So, we were game and knew that we could easily accomplish 4 km.
We got up in the morning, had little food and started our way uphill. As we kept progressing, we thought the summit was just in front of us. But we had to keep walking for 4 STRAIGHT HOURS! None of us felt hungry or thirsty. We stopped at a few places to gasp at the beauty of the surrounding and as we kept walking our mobiles pealed saying we’d just entered Kerala. It was actually surprising.
To add fuel to the fire, my footwear tore completely after I slipped a little. No wonder they are called ‘slippers’. But we were undaunted and kept pushing ourselves and finally made it to the summit.
It was here where things changed for me. First of all, there was an eagle soaring at my eye level. It was floating against the wind looking down to find prey. Second of all, the mountains.
I found a rock at the edge of our mountain, sat down and looked at all the mountains. The blue cover of the mountains, the unobstructed rays of the sun lighting the entire place, and the songs on our Carvaan was just boosting the mood inside me. I just sat there laughing at myself for being such a fool to be fretting about continuous failures.
It was actually the time when I was convinced that I wasn’t a failure at all. I was actually successful because I’ve got this beautiful life, with so much air in my lungs helping me at least pursue what I’ve been wanting to do. And the greatest gift that a man can ever buy to himself is not a Rolls Royce, but memories like these.
I sat around and looked at such a calm and peaceful environment. None of my friends spoke with each other. Everybody was on their own retrospecting their lives and shedding the sadness that was rooting inside them. I knew that my projects or quizzes aren’t going to come back just because I felt fine. But I for one knew that whatever failure may come in life, however bad it is, I’d remember this moment.
It is actually true that money comes today and goes tomorrow, and the answer to all your questions lie in the universe. I did not even bother to make a video of that place. Because it will be etched in my memories forever. It was at this very moment I began to understand smaller things matter most than the bigger picture. In fact, an ocean is made of droplets of water only.
I forgot about everything that happened to me. I just smiled at the mountains, thanked them for the answers, and made my way back. My professional front did suffer. But I was really surprised at how I accepted them. In fact, the universe was testing how much strain I could handle, and I did not succumb ever since. My thoughts towards all these things changed drastically. The New Years were even more special. With no light pollution of whatsoever, we were able to see the stars clearly. It was like floating in the space.
We were all lying down mesmerized by the beauty of them. The sky was literally glittering. And somewhere in the horizon, there were firecrackers bursting at our eye-level. This in combination with the freezing temperature, the smell of the grass and trees around, the sound of the crickets (I think) or some other insect was just enough for us to lay down peacefully. It is an experience that one cannot even buy with a trillion dollars.
The very next day, I knew I had to somehow make enough money to go on yet another adventure and thanks to a few kind souls for not shelving a few projects, we made it to Thailand. My mental health grew tenfold after traveling to Koh Samui in Thailand.
Ever since I’ve only been feeling happy about all the things that are happening to me. If nothing happens, I’d still be happy that I’ve got an able body to breathe and go on an adventure!
PS Sorry for sounding like Buddha.
#RandomThoughts 