The epiphanies of life

Journeying within our own selves is one of the most awe-inspiring, fulfilling and adventurous one. Sometimes it feels like an uphill task where the peak seems to be ever so far and some other times it has the excitement of unwrapping a gift or like meeting someone on a blind date when there is a charged anticipation to meet someone who will 'click' or like reading a mystery book with each page bringing me closer to a clearer picture and some other times it even feels as soothing as gardening!

I wonder whether this journey within should have an age to it. Should a 30 year old be more spiritually aware than a 20 year old? Or should a 70 year old be totally aware of his life's purpose because he is nearing the end of his life? But then these are just beliefs. And my belief is that there cannot be stringent rules about timeline or degrees of this spiritual awareness as it is a personal journey. And I certainly believe that circumstances and situations in life go a long way in help in making such journeys possible.

As with everything else that matters it starts with being aware. I have been aware of what is self realization, spirituality, knowing yourself and the journey within for quite sometime now. But honestly these have only been words and actions that happen to people and would be great if it happened to me but unfortunately it has not happened to me. So my initial belief was that knowing my real self is like a back-end process which I do not get actively involved in and that it will happen someday....just wanted to know when will that be! Moreover I used to search for more gyaan outside and not within, completely oblivious that it will be only ME who needs to go within and search for the real ME. I thought living independently, being self reliant and having opinions is what 'makes' me. My knowledge about me was extremely shallow but enough to live like any other person. There were things which I didn't quite appreciate in me but that was because "others" or "situations" were the culprits all the time. It was because of this person that I reacted this way.....or because I am going through this so I behave this way and mixing up my beliefs with other peoples beliefs and considering them to be facts or "this is how it should be". But I also know that I was looking for help, some guidance on where to begin and how to go about searching the real me. Reading books didn't help me as much as I would have thought. What I was looking for was to know a process to dig deeper into my thoughts, beliefs and values. How does one do this? I wish there was a beginners crash course to help me out to do this ;-) After1.5 years of messing up myself and those who loved and cared for me and feeling constantly sucked into this spiraling well, going through hell and basing my responses on people and situations rather than myself. No amount of reading the books, listening to the spiritual speakers or anything at all help me in this journey. I just knew I was stuck for a long time somewhere and this is not my natural response and yet I was the one who reacted in situations the way I did. But I felt directionless, I didn't know who to approach what to do and how to untangle the maze. And then it was like the prayers were answered. It felt like going through the Karma but eventually also getting an opportunity to transcend. This led me to also think why do we associate Karma with sadness or pain? Is it because pain has a long battery life and happens more than a Happy Karma...this will be in my blog soon. I also got my opportunity to transcend through the pain, I began to attend a life-skills training program which introduced me to what, who and whys of me and my being. It felt like a series of Ahaa moments one after the other. This led to the next stage of my life - Awareness.


Awareness if coupled with enough experience and/or a thirst for further knowledge leads to the stage of knowing. This knowing can be a very impressionable stage much like the teenage where there is rebellion, there is a need for experimentation, even turmoil as one is faced by ones own belief system. This time is rather unsettling for people and a lot of them do not like to go further in this journey as it is a very challenging period. This is the phase when I realized what I have been believing is not something that I actually believed in or that they were not my beliefs. I realized a lot of me was still in what I call the Embryonic belief system. I had not discovered what I truly believe in. This is also a time when I began to meet my real self. I did not like what I was discovering about me though. I wanted to believe that I stand for the good values, good belief systems, right attitudes and sometimes considered them to be so right that I also considered it as being a fact! Because facts are not challenged isn't it? Facts are facts because they have been duly challenged in the past and are now where they stand.

Munsiari Magic!

It took me about six months to finally come to a decision that I was indeed facing a mid-life crisis in my career and if a long break or a sabbatical had to be taken it had to be now or else I had to shut-up and continue staying in the rut. My instincts helped me reasoned out and for once my family and friends supported my decision albeit with rationale!

And so began my journey to the magical Munsiari! Munsiari was infact not my first choice, I was thinking about not travelling to the unknown but to some place that I would be more comfortable and closer to the cities just to unwind and think! But this was right the opposite of taking a sabbatical (i wanted a sabbatical from everything that I had been doing) and this intense need to just break free from everything comfortable and known made me tread along the uncharted and I was glad I spoke to Pankaj who gave me this brilliant idea of a Homestay at Munsiari.

Munsiari is this quaint village or a pocket of tribes in the Pithoragarh district in the North-eastern part of Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand was part of the erstwhile state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in India before UP was split and Uttarakhand emerged. Nestled in the lap of Himalayas one can easily understand why Uttarakhand is also considered the "Land of Gods or Dev Bhumi". Pankaj had a friend Malika who used to be a sarpanch of a few villages in Pithoragarh and had led a women's collective who would work on a number of livelihood, social, economic and environmental issues. This collective had branched out in eco-tourism and had initiated about 20+ homestay programmes to promote eco-tourism and social interaction of these tribal people with the so called city people or anyone who would care and dare to get a taste of their lifestyle. I looked up the net for both Malika and Munsiari and was in awe of both of them! I knew this was the place to go for a break and recharge my life-cells.

After long email conversations and connections with Malika on what to expect in Munsiari, how to reach there, what to bring along and so on I booked my train tickets from Ahmedabad - Delhi - Haldwani and a cab to Munsiari. I preferred the rail route as I had plenty of time to enjoy the journey, it took me exactly 48 hours from Ahmedabad to reach Munsiari but the journey was totally worth it!

I reached Haldwani at 5.45 in the morning and I found it difficult to contain the excitement of my first single female traveller trip to an unknown place far away from home and family and friends! I found the cab waiting for me at the Haldwani station and we were promptly taken to a local road-side chai shop where I had my tea and sweet butter-bun. We waited for about 30 mins to pickup a fellow passenger and then off we were to Munsiari. It was a Maruti Alto and at first I was not sure whether this cab was good enough to take us up the long winding road to Munsiari specially after I saw the lofty mountains far away from Haldwani, but I assumed the locals were far more knowledgeable how to drive up the bends and rocky roads so I dropped my worry and began to soak in my excitement. There were 5 of us in the cab including the driver who was a very talkative local called Bahadursingh. Bahadursingh broke the silence and started talking to all of us about how the roads had gone bad to worse this monsoon, what with 3 major landslides and torrential downpours having ravaged the roads and uprooted the trees.This meant a detour to Munsiari instead of the usual route which meant 15 hours to reach Munsiari instead of 12. His very matter of fact explanation managed to unsettle me for a while as I imagined the bad roads and land slides and picturised the cab falling down the high mountains! I immediately pushed that thought aside and concentrated on the views and the roads and let the journey play its part on me. Travelling always has soothed my nerves and made me happy. The driver continued to chat with the other passengers who were from Uttarakhand and were travelling from Dehrudun to Munsiari. They began discussing the weather, the climate changes, the crops and the people. They discussed the windy weather conditions further north of Munsiari and discussed how each one survived their trip to those locations and mentioned anecdotes of their trips. I started settling into the Munsiari mood and enjoyed their talks. The ascent started and I sat up straighter in my seat and wanted to capture all the scenery in my mind camera to go through it later. There's one huge picasa album in my head and go back to it even today to re-live those moments of travel and Munsiari!

We managed to see places where the trees were uprooted and had destroyed the villages below and the landslides that had scraped through the mountainous terrain exposing the deeper mountainous land and rocks for us to see the havoc that nature had brought on us. I wondered whether with these landslides and other natural disasters do we really understand the gravity of the situation yet. I thought how nature had been warning us through various calamities and upheavals of the impending disaster that may strike us anytime. That thought made me realise how little I have travelled and promised myself I must take such trips more often now that I have realised that I do not mind travelling alone. I brought myself back to the locales and started clicking pictures both in the mind and on the camera. It was beautiful. We stopped at an old worn out and unclean place for lunch. This was the first time I would be having meals at a shack in an unhygienic place but that offered food for the regular passersby and the other locals. I requested God to protect me from any sickness and ate the local food. Apart from rice there was nothing on the plate that I could quite figure out. Apparently I was eating rice with a vegetable curry some lentils and a local delight which was similar to Kadhi. But it was hot and had some taste so I finished the plate and felt fine. The onlookers gave me a look that said "what is she doing here?" and "will she really be able to eat this?" I paid for my food, thanked the owner and parked myself in the cab while others joined. The road ahead would be getting more difficult to climb we were told and since it got dark earlier than usual we were asked not to ask for any pit stop from here onwards and hold on tight. I was all the more excited and wanted to see what was coming. Bahadursingh had to manoeuvre the cab in thick mulch and unsteady and very narrow road a couple times while we all held on to our seats and me chanting prayers of safety! The winding road got steeper and the scenes got more and more beautiful with various water falls and river Gori Ganga showing its glimpses amidst the mountains and valleys frequently. It was not cool inspite of the mountains and river and I wondered whether this were the ill effects of global warming or whether this was only the day temperature. I was looking forward to the cold weather. The later was correct, as the day progressed and we were closing in on the evening we had reached almost the top of the mountains and Munsiari was just round the corner. It was starting to get very cold and very dark and misty. It was the beginning of the magic, I smiled and took a deep breath. All this journey and scary bends was all worth it I thought.

The first thing I noticed when I entered Munsiari was the number of dogs on the streets! I never had any pets and though I don't hate animals I do not quite understand what to do when one sees at least a dozen dogs casually walking on the street at any point of time. I mean do they bite or just casually walk along...I wondered. I believe animals have every right to live on this earth as much as we have and would not like any harm for both me and the dogs. It was getting extremely cold and I had only a shawl with me in the cab, night was rapidly setting in and we were not able to find my home-stay or so I thought. It was completely dark now and I was the only passenger left in the cab. All I wanted to do was reach the home-stay, probably take a warm bath, eat and curl up in the bed. As soon as I got down the cab the lights went off and it was pitch dark with no street lights and narrow roads. I was ill at ease instantly. In a second I thought Gosh! I do not know the place, the people, the house, the locality...what if Basanti (my hostess at home stay) was not able to find me!! Bahadursingh left me at the mercy of a chap called Ganesh who was to take me to Basanti's place which meant I had to carry 2 bags and myself up the small hill where the home-stay was. I took 4 steps in the dark and all I could feel was grass and stones at my feet and right up to my hands and face, not knowing where I was walking up and what was the path that I was talking did not help me at all. I was already breathless with the climb and Ganesh immediately helped to carry both the bags. It was so difficult to just pull my own weight and I cursed myself for not being fit. I finally met Basanti who took me to a room with attached bath which had a couple of chairs, a bed with a blanket and a pillow and another bed and a couple of tables. The room was lit with a lamp which worked on the accumulated solar energy for power cuts such as I was experiencing.