Not all those who wander are lost.

So the long weekend happened, I made a loong vacation plan that didn't happen, but a mini one did. and was that super awesome or what!

I hadn't thought about it when I made the bookings, maybe I wouldn't have thought about it at all, until my director at work asked why the one week long vacation was needed.. then the sob story of me having to cancel part of the vacation came up and then this plan of the 3 day road trip over the weekend, and then he asked me, so you're going with strangers?

So yes, I went with strangers, and the fact that I haven't been this comfortable with co passengers on a trip in a loong time says everything.. who says we are strangers? we were all bound by travel lust/ history lust/ photography and food lust. that's great common ground, what's the point of going somewhere with people who aren't interested in the history of that place.. company is important and yes, maybe the road would have been a better one with people you know and antics we know, but there's a certain kind of happiness in being crazy with people you hardly know..

People from different backgrounds, different environments each have their own stories to tell... more stories to add to your own little ones.. more life experiences shared that only leave you richer.. who'd want to ditch that for the same jokes you hear regularly with people you meet almost everyday?

so that time when we play charades or put  music on in the vehicle and dance in the aisle? maybe that would have happened earlier than the last day when you travel with friends, but there would never have been an antakshari of playing only govinda songs, and maybe a never of playing old hindi kishore kumar and mohd rafi ones.. merely cuz your friends would have preferred coldplay, switchfoot or even honey singh ( oh the joy of not having his songs played, phew!)

the roads always been calling out to me, more so since I've joined work,  since the annual vacations from school stopped happening.. i soo miss timed holidays, visiting forts and museums with my parents, my dad always had a passion for wars,  and guns and long range cannons (something id like to bring up here, war is not chaas, and yeah, these kinda jokes are the ones that didn't happen cuz I went with strangers) anywho, its been a long time since I've been to a place with history,  and not merely a place to get tipsy and wasted, and this weekend took me to ajanta, ellora and aurangabad :)

wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.. and these ancient structures at ajanta and ellora left me in awe.. the fact that structures like these were built thousands of years ago with basic machinery, maybe not all the way back to the times of the Croods,  but only a chisel and hammer is pretty cool.. each cave was similar in structure built again over a span of thousands of years.. how is it that they managed to maintain uniformity? and how is it that they ensured that some piece of rock hang suspended on pillars that too maintaining proper equilibrium so that it lasts another ten thousand or so..

The mini Taj Mahal? It lacked the grandeur of the Taj, but there under the stars in the darkness discussing the partition.. and politics and trying out slow shutter photography? That's never gonna happen at the real Taj.. It's too touristy for that, not that this one wasn't... but us being almost the only people there in what seems like midnight to a sleepy town, is something that's gonna be etched in my memory for a really long time..

And right on top of the Daulatabaad forts peak, was a moment when someone should have spouted out Robert frost or Ralph waldo Emerson,  but my brain decided to shut there, not because my being unhealthy made me pant (pretty amazingly I wasn't all that out of breath) but because of the world below.. hanging your legs there at one of the edges of the world, that's another thing I won't forget that easy..

The quiet,  the peace,  the vastness of it all, makes you wonder if all this is really worth it (this meaning our constant daily travel struggles, getting through the day without a disagreement with your boss struggles). won't selling everything and building a wooden shack somewhere around the middle of a mountain make a lot more sense to life?  (wifi, mobile connectivity and electricity,  are of utmost importance even in this middle of nowhere.  and it has to be in the middle, top would be just too over the top; plus a maid who can cook, or I'd have to survive on the only thing I make, a mean tea)

I'm still a long way from finding my purpose, and this trip was a tiny reminder of what I want in life.. I am getting there, the haze of confusion is clearing up bit by bit, and the biggest thing it did was make clear what I didn't want in life. amazingly its 7 days and I haven't relapsed into moping around cuz a certain thing didn't work out.. and that relief is certainly taken half of the weight of the world off my shoulders.. so cheers to more such journeys and meeting more such travellers!

and quoting from LOTR again

Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though I oft have passed them by,

A day will come at last when I

Shall take the hidden paths that run

West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

:)