Wanderlust

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"Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience."- Leonardo da Vinci
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Reached home late last night, after spending a few days - three to be precise in Saat Taal. Saat Taal is a poor cousin of Nainital, only much prettier. It is like the prettier country cousin, who no one notices when seen alongside the cool city girl. It is a nothing more than a hiltop, surrounded by seven lakes, about an hour's drive from Nainital.

To step back a bit, I landed myself relatively inexpensive air tickets to Delhi through the Internet and found myself there on Tuesday evening. Quite pleased with myself, I reached home and announced my designs for the holiday to which my sister suggested that I head to Saat Taal in the Kumaon region. So the very next day, after promising to Ma that I'd be back for the weekend, I headed there. Fortunately, some arrangements had been made for my stay at a local parish. And once I got there by a combination of train, bus and SUV there was a nice little bed into which I could sink in to sleep- it being late evening. However, I woke up soon afterwards, sank my teeth into some really great chicken and sat down to marvel at the beauty of the hillside by night.

Life can be considered good when the only decision to be made is to choose between Two Lives or The Glass Palace. Power supply here is intermittent, and even at full blast the voltage is miserably low. Hence the soft incandescenece of the tube light is almost always bolstered by an array of emergency lamps. I chose The Glass Palace, and not just because it came highly recommended, from people the world over. I think the best had been the one which described it as the Doctor Zhivago of the far east. The next few days were spent walking around and reading and little else. I spent a considerable amount of time sitting by one of the many lakes, reading, thinking, wondering. Saat Taal is only visited by day tourists, on a planned circuit of the nine lakes which are found in the Nainital region. Even those visit only that lake lake which is directly accessible by road. I found a little lake which was connected to my hillock by this tiny isthmus and which no one ever bothered to come by.

I guess I am one of the few people who can spend days on end reading or listening to music, without so much as speaking a word. Whenever the caretaker would see me head out in the evening, he would ask- Chicken? And I would nod indicating the affirmative. That was the closest I came to communication. Walking around the hills or sitting by the lake can be a great time to introspect. You are in a land where there is no TV, the locals speak a language you don't quite understand. There's of course no mobile connectivity. There are a few comps with the Internet at the parish school, but thats it. You are cut-off from the world as you know it, and while you walk around with only the buzz blue bottles and the chirping of the birds for company, you know exactly how much it is worth.

But well, soon the weekend was here and I had to head home, as I had promised to Ma. Home was the usual. The now customary post dinner arguments on matrimony, some times turning extremely acrebic. I am quite used to it, but it seems my parents are not ( they are still not really talking to me after last night). So my sister suggests that I go to Agra and see the Taj by the night. I agree. Tickets have been procured for Monday. This time one-way.

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"At last by wanderlust and rhyme
Prefers to keep Indian Standard Time."
- Modified from "The Golden Gate"- Vikram Seth
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