Isolation Introspection

They say – that in tough times, you can see one’s true colors..

Being alone and isolated can cause brain atrophy & despair? So, what is actually with this pandemic lockdown? I witness people being excessively nasty to the help within the society. Heck, I have seen them behave nasty with me - maybe they think I am the help because of the color of my skin. LoL

Well, this season has been an eye opener for me. Well, to clear the air – nothing bad did happen. Just the realities of my life – bitch slapped me in the face. The reality of me being alone.. of living alone.. of not having friends, not having well-wishers, not having anyone. Made me wonder- what am I having to contribute to the world around me, to the lives of the people around me? Anything? What should one do when the resounding answer is 'No’ & 'nothing'? How does one make peace with that? May be there is an answer, I wonder if I will figure it out..

What happened I wonder? Where did my life take a turn, that I am here today? I think & think & only think.. what else do I have to do? Sometimes I wonder, if I figure out the reason for this (personal) isolation- will it help? Will anything change? Deep down- I really don’t think so.

Sometimes I get really angry- I am angry that whatever friends I have, don’t think of me as much.. don’t care for me as much (as much meaning that – care, atleast as much as I do? I mean how hard is it to drop a text or call??) I don’t know. I don’t know if I am asking for too much here.. I probably am.

I am often question as to why am I even living- I mean – I have LITERALLY NOTHING – to look forward to - to fantastic future.. to a healthy life (I do have MS & a fuck all immune system). Well, maybe not a fantastic future but a future atleast – with friends and plans.. something? Anything?

I have 1 friend now- and I have to beg, seriously beg, make all kinds of promises and compromises and beg- for anything. It gets tiring.. I know- how much of pressure I am putting on that 1 friend?? I mean they also have their own life to lead, rt?? So, yea – I try my best to understand... it’s my fault for the burden.

So yea I wish- I wish I could turn back time, go back to the day where I thought it was ok to be friends with Clive. Go back to night I broke Harshi's heart. Make things better with me and Meliie. Be a fucking better friend than I have been to all every one of these people.

So, this is me- living each day as it were my last. Hoping everything will soon end. My endless cycle of isolation which I have carried on for the last 10- 12 yrs would end. I have got 3 more years to go! But going through each and every day has been so hard, has been such a struggle, such a challenge. With me, being so weak minded and weak willed, really does not help the cause. Simply because I know- I know, I cannot & will not be able to handle my life any more than this...

Its Complicated..

Why do we do the things we do, why do say things we say, why do we hurt the people around us.

Its baffling because I wouldn’t call it intentionally doing those things, it just may be that- we get so wrapped up in our own wants and desires that we choose to ignore everyone else’s feelings and emotions.

Have we become selfish or self-absorbed that we only end up thinking about ourselves, about what we want or need, that it does not matter- how it affects others? I wonder if it does matter..

Over time, I have come to understand what I want, the lengths I would go to get it, the lies I would tell myself to be happy, the people I would let get hurt..

What am I doing? What am I telling myself? Is it ok that I do this? Just because others do worse?

I believe this is because, it is harder for females to move on, we tend to get stuck.. I now I am stuck. Stuck in all those emotions, stuck in my mind, stuck, just stuck. Its different for men, they have different things to hold on to or to move on. I cannot tell you how complex it is for a female, complex in her head, how to explain why a woman holds on to an abusing man, why she repeatedly goes back to help the man who hurts her, why she keeps coming back hoping things will be different. Why she manages to get frozen in time, even though the world around her has moved leagues ahead.

I must tell you about this scene from one of the series I was watching- a husband & wife split, after 2 yrs of divorce he has moved on- gotten married and even has a kid. On the other hand, even though she was the one who pursued the divorce- nothing has changed for her –same house, car, job, life- nothing except the husband is out of the picture. She even still has her wedding ring kept saved in a box. So much so, after the 2 yrs, when things go crazy between her & the husband- she goes through this intricate process of ‘disintegrating’ the ring. Whereas the guy just moved on..

Looking back, it may seem pathetic. They say females have this unique capability of making everything complex- true. The significance or the lengths the wife (above story) went to disintegrate that ring probably only another female would understand.  We try so desperately to generate a desired outcome that eventually we do everything in our power to make it happen, no matter the cost.

I yearn for a direction that everything I do is not pathetic, I want my actions to matter, be different from the rest. I may sometimes even want to believe that what I am doing is not like other girls. I almost believe that, that is the case.  I do end up getting jealous of the man. They make everything seem ‘lesser complicated’. Maybe it’s their emotional make-up, being different from women, probably making it easier for them to move on & not get stuck or even hold on to a thought, emotion or people.

Genie in a bottle.

Yes, I am going to be talking about a real genie, but, before that I want to talk about a few other things..

Say something like “God” all of us pray to God. Always asking stuff, thanking for stuff, cursing for stuff.. it’s a vicious circle..How many of you can actually stand up and cross your heart and say- that you have someone who prays for you- obviously, someone who is not your parents! Or family! I frankly have not prayed for any of my friends- well none of them are sick or dying??!! Be that as it may, general people don’t pray for other people- yes, I know- I am generalizing- but for the sake of this article- let me generalize and yes, anomalies are a way of life.

So I like to tell this story to my friend, my very dear friend, that- I used to pray a lot- pray to get someone in my life who gets me or I get- just a friend.. yea.. I don’t quite remember why I was praying- I remember getting this feeling- that I was missing out on something big in my life.. do you ever get that feeling?

Anyways, there I was sinking in that feeling, I was like a teenager, bursting to do something rebellious, I had no clue of what I was missing in my life, no clue, was it money? Was it friends? Was it time?? I didn’t know. But I knew – I was missing out. So I prayed- prayed that I didn’t miss out, and this happens, I got a “Genie”

Yes, as real as Christmas I got a freaking Genie! Can you imagine that? Well it took me a while to imagine it myself! That was it, you know everything they say about genies are true- those things are mesmerizing. Of course they all have that dark side too. But, its tantalizing when you start getting what you want, when you stop missing out on ‘things’. Life as you know- takes complete bloody 180 degree turn- your mind has suddenly become rich, your life is now moving with a Ferrari Enzo engine, galloping ahead with all that horsepower. Oh God, you are on a permanent high! Can you imagine being on a permanent high for days and weeks and months endlessly? Its like a long perfectly drawn out Woodstock festival – where you have your mix of everything going on perfectly. Perfectly.

Yea.. I got a genie, and it was the best thing ever to happen to me, and yes, I know it sounds fictional to you, but unfortunately.. it’s not! The thing about Genies - people are very naturally drawn to them. They want to be with the Genie, get their attention, give their attention- they are always trying to please the genie- its absolutely amazing to see people drawn to them and the genie loves everyone. He wants to give everyone a fair chance, and he does. He wants to please everyone- yea- you should be worth pleasing- that’s the genies only condition!

So coming to the point, what do you do next? Do you be greedy and keep the genie all to yourself? Come on, people do get greedy! That’s why people work endlessly, buy endlessly, it’s the way of life. So are you going to wise enough to let your genie go- go find another lost soul to heal? When is the ok time to do it? How do you measure the amount of time or wealth you need before which you let your genie go? How much is enough? Or when is it going to be enough?

Think back 5 years, if you are older, think back 10 yrs. Think about the things you wished for then. Try to recollect how you imagined your life 5yrs later. Write it down. Come back to the present- how many of those line items have crossed of the list? Point here is, while there are always those dreams which never materialize, there is still a lot many which have come to being, but it didn’t really matter so much because other realities of life have caught up with you. Like perhaps you may have wished for more money – you got it- but life in general, got expensive- nullifying the fact that you got more money.  It then comes down to this- you either evolve your wishes along with time or you make peace with ‘you got what you asked for’ and in either case you move on.

So, believe it or not- I spent the last few weeks asking when people, if they got a genie when do you think it would be ok to let your genie go? Everyone had an answer- a certain slab- after which they wouldn’t mind giving it up. Which I have to say, I am sooo cynical- I do not believe a word any them said! If I have to put a fig to it- my earlier 5 yr analysis- by that theory- majority of us fall in the category of evolving our requests with time. And if you fall in that category- what is it to say that after you get your wish, you will not have another one after that? And another after that?

So in reality I am still trying to figure this out. It is a fact that it is genie, they are programmed to move on and forget about you once they move on. Will that be ok, for you to not have genie who is your friend, who has become an irrevocable part of your life, where you have come to respect each other. Be understanding of the genies true reality and let it move on?

My genie prays for me, without my asking- who does that? 

The Great Escape (Part I)

I circled the edge of the mother earth.. and stared down in the bottomless pits of death. I stood in the literal middle of nowhere and the smack dab middle of beauty.. just me, my mind, my body and my soul.

Getting stuck in a rut is the biggest nightmare.. well it was the biggest nightmare for me..But, I dared to dream.. I dared to strive to achieve those dreams..
Hope many times have you sat down with a bunch of your friends and made a "plan", travel plan, get together plan, future plan..etc etc? every time? And, how many times have you followed through on those plans? atleast once?" atleast..." "once"??

These guys in the pic below are are standing on the edge of the world, literally looking down on the world through the mist of the clouds....now look at yourself and think- when was the last time that you did, or experience something mesmerizing?


100% of people I have come across in my life and extremely good at making plans.But- 1-2% have actually followed through with their plans ( which is bloody awesome!) You cant really blame the remaining 98% of the folks.. life has caught up to them- their families, their jobs, money.. these folks are so wound up in their own little world of money making or wives and kids or working schedules.. that life actually passes them by. Blessed are those who have NOT realized this and are living it out the way life wants them to..They have nothing to look forward to & nothing to leave behind, except their money or their kids.. its what they call legacy.

Thankfully, I want to crave out my own legacy from my own created experiences. My legacy will the stories I leave behind ..
This story of mine, is a journey of the mind, body and soul.Hopefully my journey will inspire you to make one of your own.

This journey started at 1 in the night, at the Delhi airport- famished and exhausted, and not to mention worried about the perils that lay ahead of our journey!

With a peaceful start, we headed to Manali a small little pit-stop which will be the actual start of our journey. The journey itself has its picturesque start of circling around the edge of lush green mountains.. the river Beas treacherously running along one side, horses galloping along the other side .. water falling from the snow capped mountain tops.. apples and pine cones fallen along the road.

I have to tell you, now itself, that there is nothing more insane than this route. 3/4th of this entire route is flooded with ice water flowing down from the snow caps, "0" road support over these flooded areas  and each of these mountain streams are atleast 3-4 feet deep.

 SO yea.. you can forget about crossing this on foot or bike.. literally FORGET IT! it was here that we were eternally grateful for hiring the SUV we were in.

There were moments where you would be staring down headfirst in to the water or straight up into the cloudy dark skies, You will find yourself standing on the middle of the road and with bright blue skies with lush greenery on your left and cloudy skies with snow capped brown arid mountains on your right.

On route to Lahual and Spiti..

You have the sunny skies on one side and the scary thunderstorm on the other:

You cannot help but stand there & have the ice cold water fall on you, while stare in to the blue skied horizons.. this is the "Lahaul" region and apparently it lies in the rain - shadow

Along this 8 hour drive you come across some notable landmarks : "Gramphu".. after crossing Gramphu you come across an old place called as "Sisu".. this place is barren dilapidated  and used to hold fort to a small army camp. The helipad of this place is still there.. along side this runs the Chandra river and on the other side you will magnificent water fall. This pic is take from a distance of 4 maybe 6 kms away and you can still feel the magnitude of this fall. Locals, have no idea for how long this has been there.. but what we understand that people have seen this for for more than 20 years ( flowing with the same force)

welcome to the next stop:( btw our last stop for the day is right there in the milestone, below leh)


This is where you will have the one and only petrol pump in Tandi..

this is your origination of the Chenab river... the famous river which runs through Jammu &Kashmir. This river is formed from the confluence of the Chandra & Bhaga river

Alll the way from Tandi - 5 hours and 120kms later, you finally reach the 3rd highest motorable pass: Baralacha la..

Championing Baralacha La on the cycle!






Absolutely amazing.. completely desolate with not a soul in sight.. you will have the trucks crossing you once every 15 or 20 mins, but that's about it.. Surrounded by ice caps and chill wind whizzing past you, you are in absolute heaven. I was repeatedly asked which motor-able pass I would like the most-  Kardung la,  or the Baralacha la.. Hands down this place is mesmerizing! You need to be there to understand this, pictures and words will not help here.

It is said that both the Bhaga & the Chandra river originate from the snow melting from the opposite sides of Baralacha

The final destination for that day was Sarchu. And the route to Sarchu is so picturesque no amount of pics could cover it..

One interesting thing about this trip was this picture below. I took this with my phone- notice the white speck on the left hand side corner of the picture. Once I zoomed in it looked quite freaky, it had a humanoid shape coming from below.I actually googled this, there is actually "the ghost of Ladakh". Insane  as all those articles were on google - i have a picture right here in my phone! and it looked very scary!

 The route all in all, was truly beautiful! Golden mountains, blue skies, the vastness..You can drown in it..

We were first of all welcomed here, with the 2 rainbows, one behind the other.. a complete arch.. to the extend that it does not even fit in a single camera frame!

This place had 5 little tents surrounded by mountains.

If you are very lucky ( dare I say that I was) you will get to witness the lights dancing around the mountains. AT first glance you actually cannot believe your own eyes.. after all it has been a loooong journey..tiring and long.. but this sight is simple unsurmissable.

this is the place where I have witnessed the largest and the longest shoorting stars.a fabulous end to one hell of a day!

Now this is notable- Sarchu is basically a large desert which abruptly ends in the form of a sharp cliff!this cliff runs in to the Tsarap river flowing some 50- 100ft below you. 

crossing these raging rivers you reach the ever so famous gata loops.

 22 hairpin bends which take you to atop a scenic range. the Gata loops are dangerous and treacherous.. it took alot of patience and skill (along with the burning of your rubber tires) to get to the very scenic top,,but we made it in the end.. and it was all worth it..

It was a long and a tiring drive from Sarchu to Tanglang la..

Lachung La(5079m) is the second highest pass that comes in the Manali- Leh highway. Its also one of the two passes above 5000m that need to be crossed on the Manali - Leh highway. 

the 2 passes you come across on the leh manali highway the nakeela pass and the Lachung la pass.. so technically I have covered all the 3 highest motorable passes in the world! Kardungla, Baralacha la & Lachung la.

We are not even done halfway with our route:

As we move along the route you come across a stretch - a long loney strrtch. I like to call this place the abode of the Gods. there are these structures all along the mountains that look like towers looking down on you on the road.

There is an awe of a place is an expanse of lands stretching for kms and kms (40-45kms give or take). this Plateau is called as the Morey Plains,along side you have the Sumkhel Lungpa river

You tend to get so mesmerized by the Morey Plains.. that you are really REALLY not prepared by what comes next...

All along the Morey Plains- there is just one road. a good, plain, long stretch of one road.. you are pushing your speed to a 140-160kms/hr... 

and right there in the middle of nowhere is a small signboard - 3ft high- 2 ft wide, with an arrow sign for a restaurant.. We almost missed it.. had we been there longer, I would have taken a pic of that sign board...

So, here we had to go off the road.. the good road that is, and drive on the gravel path taking a detour off the road. Beware there was no road here.. not path.. absolutely no inkling of passageway.. there was long grass growing and gravel all around.. but we went on.. till after a good 10 mins of such driving we spotted a road at the distance. This road must have been some 4kms away. Relived at the thought of not being lost.. We went ahead..

Once we hit the road, another beautiful stretch which ends to a lake. Now seeing this we were esctatic.. yes thats the word - 1) we suppossedly reached our destination in record time 2) the lake looked surreal- you could see the specks of blue.... overall you could see a massive white slab. this looked like a slab of ice..

We were full on excited and speed on.. and we reached the end of the road- that is the very very nice tar road ended. We found ourselves in a small ( smaller) little village called "Koksar". Turns out we hadn’t reached yet. The river had mistaken for Tso Moirir was actually Startsapuk Tso. The slab of ice with the flecks of snow blowing along it was actually a slab of salt and the salt being blown around in the wind! 

Unbelieveable.. completely unebelieveable!

We got down at this place.. wondering our next move.. the lake looked really really beautiful.. it became like a must see sight for us. But then we were so energized by the whole trip uptil place.. gata loops, morey plains and Koksar.. that we decided to go ahead to our final destination!  So there we took direction and took off. An hour into driving.. we realized the area that we were driving into had been detoriating steadly. The roads were going from bad to worse.. till 2 hours later we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere.. now you may assume that Leh being leh.. everything seems like the middle of nowhere.. but this was different.. there was absolutely nothing there.. no road ways.. no trees, absolutely no life form, and not even a single prayer flag in the wind. Those who have been to leh, will tell you that you will find these flags. Very nook and corner of Leh.. Every nook and corner..

We were terrified.. we drove on the rocks and stones (which was completely non drive-able) for another 30 mins and stopped. We were shitting our pants ( excuse the language.. but it was true).. we had been driving for over 2 hours and in the desert wilderness and were potentially lost.. and in all this time.. there was not a soul in sight.. we honest to God terrified. We stopped and evaluated.. we had close to 80kms of fuel left.. which, in such areas is a MAJOR mistake.. of course neither of us wanted to discuss this error of how could we be so stupid and to drive without surplus fuel?/ HOW??? HOW STUPID??? But the terror over took all the feelings. We sat down frozen in our seats, hoping and wondering for anything good. The music got turned off, the laughter, the mesmerizations, the jibber jabber, all came to a halt….

we thought for a bit, did the basic calculations..

And we decided to drive ahead.. we would drive for another 30 mins, and if don’t find absolutely any sign of civilization, wherever we are, after 30 mins, we will turn around and come back… screw it..

We even took out our laptop and took a pic of the screen with the map. That was only source of info ( remember - no network, no people...


Tick tock, the next 30 mins started to tick along..with one eye on the fuel gauge and one eye everywhere- trying or struggling to catch a glimpse of something...anything.. then suddenly we found a pathway.. but it ended as soon as it started! but weirdly, even in the meaningless patch of roadway we found hope we went ahead, but this time with hope.. another 10 mins of drive we founds some flags.. prayer flags.. we were dancing with joy, we rushed to it, it looked like a temple.. but alas, when we reached there, it was barren.. a broken down place.. it may have been a temple sometime.. but now there was not a soul in sight.. nothing..

We were 20 mins into our drive.. alittle more and it was time for us to give up.. now we were really praying.. our little hope which we had along the way had faded off, again..we began making peace with this fact that we will have to turn around..completely disheartened we drove ahead.. you will never believe what we saw.. NEVER...


A School... just like that.. again in the middle of now where.. A school.. we could have shed a tear at that moment.. in the last bloody minute just as we were abount to turn around.. of all the things we find a school!!

I recognized the name on the school.. I remembered it from the map we had.. "Puga"!!

Completely relived we drive ahead and finally reach a sign board with directions we were still 2 hours away..

and we finally reach a single diversion with a single board.. no name.. no directions.. each pointing to a destination in own direction! Completely tired, exhausted and fed up we opted for shorter destination.. yea.. by this time.. we had given up. dont be so surprised.. U didnt go through what we went through.

the first glimpse, we reached the lake the area was as secluded as it good get.. mind you - from the time we left koksar we had come across barely some 5-10 lifeforms.. this was insanity at its best.

And we finally reached Tso Moriri. the lake was barricaded from the public, unlike the Pang gong lake.. but we still managed to be a aprt of this mesmerizing place! the the whole city karzok ( our final destination) could not have been more than 500m wide.. yes 500 meters only..!

This lake is untouched, by anything.. there is a military fencing all around the lake, the area around the lake is spotless. The lake is fed by springs and snow-melt from neighboring mountains.

There you go the final shot of the day! the water so clear that it has no color. it take the color of the sky. On a bright and a sunny day- you will have the waters turn so blue. on a cloudy sky - the turn turns grey and white.. the perfect setting..