A journey in every sense of the word. I’m putting this up now, because it was an important period of my life. It represents more than just a road trip. This is a tribute to all of us who undertook the journey together. 
बावरा मन देखने चला एक सपना
March 26th 2016 – April 6th 2016

8 years. We’d been dreaming about it for 8 years. 2 words, 5 syllables and a hundred memorable stories before. Yamuna Yatra. A journey, a Yatra, a trip and so much more.

There are so many aspects to Yatra, we had all heard the stories that were precedent to Yatra, and yet nothing came close or did justice to the 12-day experience that is Yatra.

Yatra wasn’t just 12 days of staying with your friends, away from the nagging voices of your parents telling you to study. Yatra was a journey that was inexplicable or indescribable. It was more than sneaking a packet of chips onto the cars, just to be caught. It was more than looking out of the window of the car to be stunned by nature’s magnitude, more than cribbing about the bathrooms, more than being cranky about the daily dose of daal we had to eat, and more than learning how to shampoo your hair in the river while squatting over a rock using a mugga. The journey began from the dirty roads of Delhi from where we made our way to Musoorie and then to the valley of Lakhamandal. The river skips over shallow stones in the color of the brown and green pebbles covered in moss. It is so clean you can see schools of the tiniest fish swimming by trying to avoid the rush of water over large rocks.

Yatra was about trekking up five km from Janki Chatti to Yamunotri while having some of the most unexpected people pat your back and lend you a hand when you were out of breath. It’s about sliding people over and cheering your classmates on as they try and drag themselves down an ice covered cliff without flying over the edge to a bloody death. The view is stunning, despite the freezing weather. The air is cold and crisp and at the top of the glacier where the Yamuna begins to melt and run in rivulets it’s like watching the water melt from an ice cube, clear and glassy. The rugged edges of the Himalayan mountains shine gray and silver as you trek together or alone, forging a path that can only be described as unforgettable and when the journey ends you find yourself surrounded by friends. Yatra was about those 2 am gossip sessions where the teachers got irritated at our raucous laughter and the other times where you consoled each other and held the other while they cried.

Yatra was that time where you could recognize new friends and those closest friends who would be there to hold you when you were homesick, unwell or holding your pee when the loo was just too dirty to go. It was also a time where you realized that perhaps that one acquaintance, close friend or even best friend wouldn’t always have your back and were present in your life just so you could have a good time. It was having a heart to heart and forging relationships with people you once hated or never imagined you’d interact with.

Yatra was pretending to have a party in your vehicle while listening to the saddest songs so that the tenants of the surrounding cars were jealous of all the fun you were having. It was trying to change the music on the pen drive with a toothpick because the gaadi simply had no fast forward or rewind button.

Yatra was the hot Maggi and sizzling pakoda’s consumed after long treks and icy showers. It was posing for those ‘candid pictures’ and singing by the bonfire where even the worst musicians sung at the top of their voice. It was haggling at Paonta Sahib with the old lady who had extremely over priced goods and going with reverence to get second helpings of prasad in the gurudwara.

It was exploring intellect and a new multitude of opinions as we as a batch, as classmates learned about differences, development, rivers, friendship and so much more. At the same time it was popping in gol-guppas one after the other just so you could beat the record or savoring aloo tikki in Vrindavan. It was realizing that Yatra didn’t just end at the Taj Mahal, but was going to continue for a long time.

Yatra. The card games, be it Kot piece or Gulaam Chor. The tears, the giggles, the dirty clothes and the tempting ice creams and packets of chips. The car journey, the new friendships, the tiring treks, the music. The realization, the recognition. Yatra. In a synonymous word, Yatra was Discovery.

Written 4th April – 6th April 2016,

Feature Image : Deeya Biswas