My trip to Mcleodganj in Himachal Pradesh with my husband was special for many reasons. Before we took off we knew that in all probability my husband’s well paying job at a film production house run by a reputed company might be no more when we got back. Because there was talk of the company shutting down due to its non-profitable existence. Me, a freelance reality TV producer was between projects. And to top it all we were at a crossroad about our brand new home, because someone had to pay our ridiculously high EMIs. Which meant we were considering giving up our own home and selling it to put an end to the EMIs. In short we were too fried in our heads & badly wanted to get away from everything, which translated to getting out of the city. We just knew we should head up towards the mountains. At this point our Lonely Planet India came to our rescue & told us to explore Mcleodganj also known as Little Lhasa.
We enjoy being budget travelers & one of the perks of such travel is the train journeys. I believe the best way to experience real travel is to take a train. So we took the Rajdhani from Mumbai to Delhi. We were to take a bus from Delhi to Dharamshala. As always is the story with buses ours arrived more than 2 hours late. To top that we were asked to deboard & get into another bus even before we left Delhi. This excruciating wait was near an old dilapidated petrol pump. At seven in the evening this was turning out more adventurous that we imagined with an army of buzzing mosquitoes around us! We realized we were foolish enough to not carry any insect repellent & at the same time noticed these two girls with super heavy backpacks digging out their trusted mosquito repellent. Now the true reason I noticed them was because they were both blonde, a beautiful shade of blonde mind you & no, I don’t mean it as one of the dumb blonde jokes! They also seemed bothered with the whole bus being late business so we decided it was the wrong time to strike a conversation. From here begins the uncanny serendipitous twist to our story.
Without too many noteworthy incidents we reached McLeod. On the 3rd day of our trip we decided to do a trek up this place called Triund. We huffed & puffed our way up. While having hot chai & massaging our feet (and our cellulite coved egos) we saw these two familiar looking faces walking up with their backpacks. Yes, the same girls waiting for the bus with us. After they settled down, we went over & spoke to them. They were from the south of Germany. Janka & Diana have been keen travelers for a while. Janka was in college doing her degree when we met & Diana had a regular 9-5 job she was happy with. But they made sure they traveled together whenever possible. After a night of camping over our mammoth achievement called Triund, we trekked down early the next day. Back in the small town of McLeod, we went to this quaint little restaurant that served only Tibetan food. Midway through our lunch, we notice J & D (henceforth Janka & Diana will be J & D) walking right past us to the next table. Obviously we had lunch with them. The next day was warm & sunny so we decided to grab a beer in the afternoon. We landed up at this rooftop place looking over the small town. We were on our 3rd beer when J & D walked in. So we shared 2 more glasses with them. Next morning we decided to have some great breakfast at this place every guidebook seemed to be vouching. We reached very early, even before the kitchen was up & running, so had a wait for a while. And while waiting J & D strolled in! So we got a table with a great view of mountains & talked a lot. The same day they were also planning to go for a body massage like us. We went to the same guy who was recommended by Lonely Planet, one after the other. Now all this running into each other can be definitely attributed to coincidence thanks to the size of Mcleodganj. You can take a round of the whole town in less than 3 hours, on foot.
While talking we figured we had a lot in common. Diana is a lot like my husband. Intense interest in spiritual stuff… tarot card reading, numerology, psychic healing, the works. She was in constant search of new meaning to life, much like my husband. Whereas Janka was the practical hippie, living in the present, doing things she enjoyed & embracing all the memories, much like me. After McLeod they wanted to visit the south of India, few days in Kerala or Pondicherry perhaps. I could help with this since I am from the south & have travelled there quite extensively. Nor so surprisingly they were to leave McLeod on the same day as us. So we just decided to book our bus tickets to Delhi together. They also had a whole day to spend in Delhi before their flight. We had already planned on watching a film & eating some local food before our night train back to Mumbai. They asked if they could watch the movie with us. Of course we said yes, and thus two German girls who didn’t know a word of Hindi watched an un-subtitled Hindi movie with us.
We have made friends on our trips, we’ve struck up conversations with random people but we had never been through an experience like this before on any trip. We are very much in touch with our German friends, of course they are special after all.
P.S. Before our journey to Mcleod ended my husband received a call from his colleague saying the company was indeed shutting down & he would get 3 months of paid notice!
fathomlessdays 