It was a warm summer day buzzing with excitement. It was the day we were going to leave for Munsiyari. A small village town tucked cozily in the foothills of Himalayas in the Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand. I packed my bags, frantically looking for my sunglasses which somehow always find their way in some dark corner in the cupboard every time I am packing for a trip. With everything ready and bags on the curb in front of my house, I looked up at the sky, a weird grin came onto my face, I almost started sniggering. It was the feeling you get before every trip, every time you leave to explore something new – someplace new. It was dawn, the sky all red and the feeling of a lazy spring evening, on came our traveler (minibus). With my extended family loaded up in the front, I took a seat at the back, in quiet and we were off.
It was an overnight journey and we were expected to reach our destination the following afternoon (didn’t happen). Night journeys in buses are grueling but exhilaration of getting to a new place makes it feel like a cakewalk. Early the next morning, we stopped at a small gas station next to a cliff. The view was splendid and it made for a great spot for some people watching. A lady taking her son to the school, a man trying to fix the antenna probably to get the TV cable working; a hundred feet above, two 7-year-olds playing with goats. And then it began pouring as we ran to our minibus.
It was 2 in the afternoon, our destination was nowhere nearby. With elders along with us and the long journey taking a toll on their health, we decided that we can’t make the journey into the night again and so by 6PM, with our destination still 120 KM away, we had found ourselves a small village en route our destination where we booked rooms in a small makeshift guesthouse for about Rs. 800 per room and we took 5 rooms. What was perceived to be a casual stopover, turned into its own adventure. The place, as we realized later, was absolutely stunning, the natural beauty waiting to be explored, away from the tourists. Here, a glimpse of what view you can expect from the hotel balcony (We went in that forest!)
