Now everybody has a quite a few journey stories about when everything goes wrong.
And everyone is prone to exaggerate them a bit for dramatic effect.
But this is not one of them.
This is not a story about when everything goes wrong.
This is about when everything went Right.
We decide to go to Kanatal. It is a spectacular place nestled relatively anonymously within the hills of Uttarakhand. A beautiful hill station minus the hordes of corn-eating-summer-holidayers and Red-chuda-shiny-outfit clad-honeymooners.
What people said we did wrong ?
1. We chose the beginning of the monsoon
2. We started late in the day
3. We did not account for traffic and the weather in our travel calculations
4. We did not plan a stopover en route
Long story short – we drove for ten blinding hours in pouring rain that threatened to wash our vehicle over the edge.
5 of those hours in pitch dark straining our collective eyes wondering how the driver was figuring out what is road and what is – an unsolicited opportunity to bungee jump without a rope.
We watched with wide eyes dozens of abandoned vehicles dotting the roads – some smashed, some flattened, some tired and some just dead.
We saw brown boulders roll off on to the road in front of the car like the hills were spitting out mutilated betel nut threatening to stain us.
Three of our party had to climb out in the icy rain to move branches, a telephone wire and boulders to make the road motorable.
A lot of people asked me why didn’t we turn back? Seeing the rain and the situation.
I have to admit – it never crossed our minds.
So what exactly is right about this story?
Well….Our car DIDN’T get pitched off a precipice.
It DID NOT break down and cry.
NO boulders squashed us.
We MANAGED to negotiate the blocked road.
We GOT to where we were headed in one piece.
The sun SHONE in the morning.
We BREATHED fresh unadulterated mountain air and I felt my lungs swell with life.
Everything went right 🙂
EverydayEverythingEveryone 