“It’s a crazy walk. At places, the trail disappears and you have to hack your way through dense, leech-infested jungles. Outsiders haven’t set foot there in twenty years,” Govind reported ominously.

“When can I go?” The slightest whiff of foolhardiness and I was on it like a Lagotto, sense and sensibility snapping like twigs under my feet.

“I’ll find out, maybe I’ll come too.” The affliction was spreading. 

Govind had just returned from north-east India, where he had met a young Arunachali woman called Tine Mena. The first female Everest summiteer from the region, Tine defied a bad weather forecast to sneak up alone to the top. Fortunately, she survived to receive the accolades. She lives with her husband, Pranav, on the outskirts of Roing, a small town in the Mishmi foothills, at the juncture of the Northeastern Himalayas and the Indo-Burmese ranges. Together they run a mom and pop adventure outfit, hosting and guiding trekkers. This intrepid couple was the one to tell Govind about the hike.

“They’re happy to accompany us,” Govind relayed later. “It’s business for them. Plus, they’re kicked that we’re interested, despite their description. The plan is to walk for six days through the Mishmi Hills along the Ithhun river or its tributaries, bunking in with the villagers, or pitching tents.”

The next few weeks passed in preparation, more mental than physical. Most people find no pleasure in travel that guarantees leech bites, large hairy spiders for tentmates, fatigue from walking 6-8 hours a day in the middle of a menstrual cycle, and, for the sake of the tag of ‘responsible traveler’, the company of used sanitary napkins until the end of the trek. I believe that these people are yet to experience the kinship of shared challenges – extreme fatigue, trauma, fear – as well as small accomplishments. Above all, I go for the oneness with nature that stirs my soul to write. Even if words can be elusive as I finish a day’s walk on legs that refuse to carry me, and feet that died hours before.

I pressed my forehead to the plane window. We were going to land at Dibrugarh, in Assam. Below us, a placid, brown tributary of the Brahmaputra meandered in playful twists and turns around bright green paddy fields. Cattle dotted large grassy patches and tin roofs of lone huts glinted in the afternoon sun.

(Please email me at bharsimran@gmail.com for the rest of the story or buy my upcoming book.)

I first met Christina and Abhishek in Ladakh, a remote Himalayan region in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. They were teachers at the Moravian Academy, a primary school in Khalatse village. I had just quit my corporate job in Delhi and was joining the same school as a volunteer teacher.

It was a Sunday afternoon when I got there, panting under the weight of my bags. Christina was the first person I met.

“New teacher?” she asked cheerfully, as she came forward and reached for one of my bags.

I nodded, tired from the five-hour long drive to the village from the airport at Leh, Ladakh’s capital. She immediately ushered me into her room, made me a hot cup of tea, and then literally tucked me in for a nap. This, as I later discovered, is quintessential Christina. Her husband Abhishek, though less exuberant, is equally warm and friendly.

Many days into my stay at the school, I remember a conversation I had with her one evening.

(Please email me at bharsimran@gmail.com or buy my upcoming book for the rest of the story.)

Kashmir Cottage, contrary to what the name suggests, is located not in Kashmir but at the end of a sleepy lane, off the main road between McLeod Ganj and Dharamsala. McLeod Ganj, also known as Molo Ganj, Little Lhasa or Dhasa (from Dharamsala and Lhasa), was named after the Anglo-Indian Donald Friell McLeod, Lieutenant Governor of Punjab in 1865. It has been home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile since 1960.

The cottage is socalled because it belonged to a Kashmiri family which was part of a sizable community that lived in Dharamsala in the 19th century. Later, the Indian government gifted it to the Dalai Lama as a residence for his mother, Dekyi Tsering. Now, it is run as a guest house by the Dalai Lama’s sister-in-law, Rinchen Khando Choegyal, married to the youngest of his four brothers, Tenzin Choegyal, fondly known as TC. TC himself is a revered Rinpoche, which means precious jewel and is usually the reincarnation of a prominent Buddhist master.

(Please email me at bharsimran@gmail.com or buy my upcoming book for the rest of the story.)

Once upon a time, I decided to take a break from the city and go live in a village somewhere far away. I already had one in mind—Khalatse, a village of about 1500 people 100 kms west of Leh on the national highway to Srinagar. I had fond memories of it from childhood. My father, an army man, had been posted there and I had spent two long, glorious, sun-burnt vacations exploring the place. I’d recently learnt that it now had a small primary school and had since been fantasising about teaching there. With no running water, electricity only for three hours a night, very patchy telephone service and holes in the ground for toilets, it sounded remote and far away enough.

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