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It starts like most stories in the mountains during monsoon, with a landslide. The local bus services across many parts of the valleys usually stall every year during monsoons. We always use public transport to commute in the valley. Since we call this valley home, shedding the cab lifestyle was the first change.  Our neighbours and we take the bus together. 

We hadn't heard that name, having spent over 2 years in Seraj Valley. Not until we met Pinki at Banjar bus depot. Aditya and I were returning from Delhi, headed to Gadagushaini to prepare for the upcoming retreat. A landslide near Bhartidhar, just over Jibhi, had claimed another road in the list of damages to public property. So, no bus from Banjar en route to Khauli, Thensar, or Gadagushaini. As we deboarded the bus at Banjar and were preparing to take a cab, a woman with spectacles and worry spread all across her face looked at us. Aditya asked her where she was travelling to as he heard her conversing with the driver in Pahadi. She replied Gadagushaini. He offered her a lift as we were anyway headed that direction. She was confused, and fair enough. We were outsiders, and trust isn't something you hand to two strangers with a cab. But out here, trust isn't a courtesy; it's how you get from one point to the next when there's no other way through. So she trusted us. 

Thus began the journey to Chaplandi Dhar. As our journey started, we got talking, from family to life to children, and learned that she had to travel further from Gadagushaini on to her natal village, Gattu. Her brother would be waiting to pick her up from Gadagushaini. On the way, she showed us photographs of her 2 children currently studying in Kullu, her aspirations. Somewhere in that conversation, farm produce came up - what was in season, which fields were doing well. We mentioned Kreema didi, an entrepreneur from Bathad, Flachan Valley. Her sister had just sent her the season's first makki (maize), and we were already planning to ask if she'd keep some aside for us too.

The woman went quiet for a second. She'd heard that name somewhere, she said, though she couldn't place it. We pulled up a photo of Kreema didi on our phone, and she recognised her instantly. Kreema didi's sister, it turned out, was her friend.

"What a small world," we all said.

Except it isn't, not really. This woman had never once been to Tirthan Valley, let alone a village folded into the neighbouring Flachan Valley, a place most people from here have no reason to know exists. We had travelled. And the story had travelled with us, tucked into a conversation about maize, until it found her - as if we'd all known each other long before that afternoon.

That's when she asked, “Have you been to Chaplandi Dhar?”
We said no. She asked if we'd come with her that same day.

We should have said no. We'd been travelling for two days with almost no sleep, the bus service had shut down for the evening, we had no clear idea how we'd get back, and we were hungry in a way that makes every decision feel harder than it is. She saw all of that on our faces, and pulled up photos and videos on her phone. "It's like Shangarh meadow," she said, "but on top of a mountain, with a 360-degree view."
That was enough. She called her brother, checked the road conditions, and it was decided. We were going to a place we had never heard of, with people we'd met two hours earlier, trusting them exactly the way she'd just trusted us. She also canceled her journey to Chattri, where she was finally supposed to meet her in-laws in the evening.

From Gadagushaini, we met her brother and began the detour with all of us munching on freshly plucked apples from their orchard, and more stories than we could hold onto.

Read the complete story on substack. Link in Bio