Clouds in the valley...

It’s been quite a few years since my first epiphany at the beautiful sands of Diveagar – a beautiful stretch of sandy peacefulness somewhere along the Arabian blues. It was Christmas eve, 2011- a bright and beautiful Saturday in winter Mumbai, tempting anyone to run away from the confines of the city to any place that was far away. Nishant had gone back home, Justice was busy with family, so that left Preeti and Nikhil who easily agreed to go ‘far away’. Far away for that day was Harihareshwar – a beautiful beach in Raigad district, about 200 kms from our maddening metropolis. But what amazed us that day was the serendipity that was Diveagar. It started with our devoutly religious driver telling us of a Ganapati temple on the way that was worth seeing. Apparently, a woman had discovered a golden Ganapati bust in her coconut plantation while farming; she agreed with the villagers to erect a temple nearby and house the statue therein. This sounded quite interesting, so off we took a...

The call of the mountain song (Mt. Pandim viewed from Yuksom) Day 0 & 1: 6th March Evening + 7th March: The journey begins “Arey bhaiya! aap samaan kyun utha rahe ho!Hum log ko pehley jaaney dijiye ….uskey baad samaan jayega...ab aur samaan nahin jayega!!!!” Period.  And thus continued the ranting of our Shotgun to officially kick start our wonderful journey in search of nirvana in the last Shangri-la of the human world (okay, okay no more hyperboles!) WITH a motley group of a dozen odd crackerjacks, there could never a moment of dullness. (In fact, one of us was so excited about the forthcoming train journey (as he had travelled by a train just twice before, one being Munsiyari trip) that he asked his fellow auto traveler “Yeh jisme hum ja rahe hain (sleeper class) sabse ghatiya hoti hain ya isse bhi ghatiya kuch hota hai?” Well, with a bewildered look he appreciated the adjusting power of his co-passengers and took a bhisma pratigya not to use the to...