I had just 5 days between the end of the yoga training and the expiration of my Indian visa (and my flight home). I thought about how I wanted to spend them whilst at the ashram, and settled on a few days in the Himalayan foothills, only a few hours north of Rishikesh. Shimla had also been a contender, but when I realised it would take a full day to travel there and the same back to Delhi, I went off the idea. I felt tired after the training and I wanted to be somewhere beautiful and quiet and in nature, and I did not want to spend 8 hours on a train to get there. However, there was a huge storm in our second week, a late monsoon cloud burst, which destroyed parts of the only road into Mussoorie, leaving it cut-off. A few days before I was planning to head there, I checked with one of the hostels I was planning to stay at to confirm that the road was open. They assured me that it was. So, after one last breakfast and one last coffee and cake with all the girls (and Alvero, the one man on our course, a Mexican guy that was full of surprises - I initially thought he was a gym lad but turned out to be the kindest, warmest man ever (who was even a granddad!)), I caught a tuktuk half an hour out of the town to a flyover which served as the bus station. The bus was 1.5 hours late, and I sipped on a cold sprite and ate some masala crisps to pass the time. When the bus eventually arrived, on the wrong side of the major road resulting in a mad dash across the frantic traffic, I made myself comfortable for the short 2 hour journey. Fourty minutes into the journey, the bus man came to my seat and here began a great confusing conversation, the jist of which was that he accused me of cancelling my bus ticket, meaning the bus would no longer go to my stop (as I was the only passenger for this stop) and would terminate beforehand. After adamanently explaining that I had not cancelled my ticket, he conceded and the story instead became that the bus company had cancelled my ticket because it wasn’t worth driving to the destination for one person. Apparently they had texted me this information, although only 30 minutes before the bus time and also without using my country code, so I didn’t receive the message. After a lot of back and forth, and much indignation by me, helped by a friendly guy translating, they refunded my bus ticket to me in cash right there and I was left on the side of the road to continue my journey. The friendly man stayed with me and insisted that we get a tuktuk to the train station as a taxi would be cheaper from there. Turns out this was incorrect and the taxi was the same price. The taxi delivered me a short walk from my hostel in the old hill station town of Mussoorie. The hostel was one of the worst I’ve ever stayed in, with the darkest, dampest rooms ever. There was a huge hole in the ceiling above my bed, and when I peered in, I really wish that I hadn’t. Despite this appalling accommodation (in its defence, it was £3), I enjoyed wandering around the little town of Mussoorie, eating Tibetan food (momos and laphing), and exploring the British colonial sites like gunpoint (where a large cannon would fire to mark the time). The people were friendly and polite, without the usual forceful, slightly scam-heavy style I expected in India.
After one night at the awful hostel, I got a taxi down to a tiny village even more in the hills, and checked into my last stop of the trip. It was a gorgeous hostel spread out over the bottom of the valley, over a little stream. It could’ve been something out of the teletubbies. To end the trip on a high note (pun intended) I was staying in a treehouse! It was beautifully built with the tree, branches moving inside the interior as well as supporting the structure. It had two floors and a balcony, and even its own bathroom. After being in a shared room for the last month, I savoured the solitude and space the little treehouse gave me, perched up above the rest of the hostel. Although the thought of the horror of experiencing a storm during the night did cross my mind a few times…
There was only one other guest when I arrived, and one joined later the next day. Both Indian guys, both very lovely. After an afternoon of ultimate chilling (sitting in the tree and watching the world go by), I went on the back of one of the guy’s scooters to check out a viewpoint and mountain peak in the morning. The views of the foothills stretching endlessly out, becoming more hazy with each layer back, were framed by the tips of the snowy peaks emerging from behind. We had breakfast back at the bottom, on the green of the stately-style garden (it was George Everest’s, a prominent British surveyor who had spent his life doing geological surveys of India). Once we were back at the hostel, one of the staff took us on a short walk to a secret waterfall, a little way up the stream. We had the waterfall to ourselves. In fact, we also had the viewpoint to ourselves, and the hostel! The cloud burst and destroyed road had put off most travellers, so the whole area was deserted despite it being the start of peak season. We swam in the fresh spring water of the waterfall, freshened up by its coolness. I spent the afternoon relaxing again, sunbathing on the grass and reading my book. It almost felt like I was at a European resort, except that I was bitten my two leeches whilst sunbathing and so had to take a sunbathing break to put plasters on my ankle and toe to stop to endless bleeding (a first for me!). In the evening, the second guy asked if we wanted to join him in going to a temple with a great view for sunset. He had been coming to this place once a year for the last few years, so knew all the good spots. We drove over on mopeds, through a waterfall which had appeared on the road, and around curves in the green, rocky cliffs that reminded me of the Ha Giang Loop in Vietnam. The spot was indeed great for the sunset, and we sat silently on the ground as the sun slipped behind a cloud and then the hills, and the haze lifted with the dusk to reveal a winding river at the bottom of the valley. Again, the snow-topped peaks waved hello at the very back of the horizon. My last proper sunset of the trip, as the following day’s would be from the train.
I had a quiet breakfast of chai and cauliflower paratha from a little cafe hovering over the river and reflected on my trip. By the end of the yoga training I was exhausted and felt ready to go home, excited for it even. But the last few days hidden away in the foothills, bathed in quiet and space, had re-energised my travelling spark. The idea of skipping my flight crossed my mind, and I entertained it for a while, imagining a life where I travel full-time. Where I spend the next few months exploring the villages of northern India. The thought gave me butterflies in my stomach and a glint in my eye. But then I thought about my life in London. About my new little house with Sam. About my friends and all the things we love to do together. About starting as an associate at work. About my hobbies. About good coffee and even better pastries. And all of that made my stomach flip with joy and my eyes sparkle too. Maybe I wanted both, maybe I’d be equally happy with either. In any case, I finished my breakfast and shared a taxi down to the rail station with one of the guys and caught the train to Delhi. Unlike my previous Indian train journeys, I had opted for the more expensive “Executive Chair” class which made the 6 hour journey thoroughly enjoyable. The highlight was that I was able to order my dinner from a restaurant near to one of the stations, and have it delivered to my seat - genius! The lowlight was the absolute nightmare that was trying to book the train in the first place, which required me first registering for an IRCTC number (it took hours to sort out - ask my yoga roommates!). I arrived late into New Delhi station, just gone 11pm, and steeled myself for what I knew would be an unpleasant final journey to my airport hotel. First obstacle was the crowd of taxi drivers outside of the train door telling me that the metro to the airport was not running at this time (I knew the last train was at 11:40pm). Second was finding the metro entrance, which was across a dimly lit thoroughfare of tuktuk and homeless madness. Third was that this was not the correct metro station for the airport line, but told via an angry man shouting at me in Hindi, and then eventually a calm lady who explained in english. Fourth was the second dash cross an equally dimly lit road with more tuktuks to the correct metro station. Fifth was the rush to buy a ticket before the counter closed. Sixth was the dark walk through a road under construction to get from the metro to the hotel on the other side (the actual metro was great). And finally, at midnight, I was safely within the walls of an extortionately priced Holiday Inn, sleepily checking in before flopping onto the ginormous bed and taking a hot shower. Why an expensive Holiday Inn you ask? Well because I had originally booked a cheap but lovely looking hotel with great reviews, one of the many airport hotels on booking.com that were located right next to airport metro station, except when I checked the location of this hotel on google maps I realised that it didn’t exist, or at least not with the same location and not with the same photos. I cross-checked a few of the other cheap airport hotels and found the same. They were all located in a region across the highway from the airport instead. After some googling it seemed the airport hotels were all a scam and either fake or terrible, and the area they were in was very dodgy. Feeling like I’d just avoided a bad situation for my final night, I decided I’d opt for safety over everything and cashed out the amount for the reputable, certainly not fake, and actually right by the metro station Holiday Inn. And I’m very glad I did! In the morning I made my way to the airport and caught my flight back to London. Uneventful, except that I sat next to a very lovely, very nervous guy from Punjab heading to Edinburgh for the first time to start university there.
And just like that, two months is over. Two days at home before going back to work, during which I need to move into my new house! Wish me luck…