Is this goodbye? No it’s not, and goodbyes suck big time. I will call this a beautiful end to this series but there will be more, new beginnings, new hopes, people that will make us laugh, smile, touch our hearts and friendships that will last for a lifetime like the ones I made in this trek.

In every trek I went to, I made lasting friendships, few but lasting. And these friends stuck on. It doesn’t require a certain number of years to be close friends and in this case, it truly didn’t.

A bunch of people, paying money to sign up for a trek and struggle every day trekking for 10 kms where your body gets punished to get a view of the Himalayas means there is that one strong connect that binds us all. We are all crazy enough to do this and we are rebels in our lives too.

Not conforming completely to what society wants. Even in this trek I saw our crazy bunch being rebels, refusing to toe the line, refusing to be the ‘good boy’ or ready to settle down ‘good girl’ to their parents, their sanskar. No more being a hypocrite, they went back with their perspectives changing. And how does that happen?

Folks, that only happens when one comes out of their frog in the well society, caste and community, not meeting the same people who have only one agenda, earn-marry-settle-have kids syndrome and see people from different walks of life while trekking. Then they realise there is a big world out there with endless possibilities.

And these connections will continue to evolve. Recently, Tarang, Bhim, Riddhi and I had a video chat that made me very happy. And we decided to do this once a month, to catch up on each other.

In the words of my whacky buddy from the first Deorital trek, Badar a.k.a Bunny as he always uses this hashtag in his posts. What a wonderful world! What else I want! He is another guy I don’t need to say hi hello nothing, I say Bunny! He replies, tell me! That’s it 😊

And folks that’s what life is about. Love, only love and nothing else. The mainstream world and it’s uncle wants you to believe that we live in dark, bleak times, they are feeding on your fear, they are thriving on it because fear means control. Don’t give that power to anyone. Not the media, not the ‘experts’ not anyone. Remember the people you are surrounded with, family, friends and friends who are family. There is a lot of love and positivity around you.

I leave you with this quote from Oscar Wilde which is engraved in my cup, ‘ A dreamer is one who can only find his way home by moonlight’ 💙

So keep shining, keep smiling and we will look back at this years from now, what the hell happened! 😊

Till I write again, Jai Hind 🇮🇳

PS: A small video below shot by Tarang when we were taking a lunch break with the view of the mountains.

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