Ishani Sen
The Road to Leh
The plane shook with a sudden jolt as it dipped through clouds, drawing a quick gasp from the passenger in seat 14A. She gripped her window armrest instinctively, then laughed at herself under her breath. “Relax, Tara. You’ve been through worse,” she whispered. Below, the Himalayas looked like a sea of frozen waves, pale under the morning sun. Tara Mukherjee had seen many corners of the world—Peruvian rainforests, Icelandic black beaches, the neon chaos of Tokyo—but India, in all its chaos and contradiction, always called her back.
This journey wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t for an assignment, or a brand deal. She wasn’t chasing likes or collaborations this time. No sponsors, no deadlines, no editorial brief. Just her, her DSLR, and a battered brown notebook she hadn’t touched since her father’s funeral six months ago. The day after he died, she’d booked this flight to Leh, telling no one except her housemate Maya.
Tara stepped out of the Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport into air that bit into her lungs. Thin, sharp, and strangely pure. Her boots crunched against gravel and she squinted at the snow-capped ridges in the distance, awed again at how close the sky seemed here. A young driver named Rigzin held a card that said “Ms. T. Mukherjee — Nomad Ink,” the name of her once-viral blog.
The ride to her guesthouse in Nimmoo was quiet. Rigzin, with his blue wool cap and sun-wrinkled smile, spoke only when spoken to. Tara didn’t mind. Her thoughts were a noisy enough companion. The winding roads seemed to unravel her tightly coiled grief, one turn at a time. She caught herself gazing out at the Indus River, winding silver between mountains like an old story.
By late afternoon, she was sipping butter tea at a wooden table outside her room. The air was still, broken only by the occasional rustle of prayer flags. Her camera lay untouched. Instead, she opened the brown notebook—its pages rough and smelling faintly of dust. On the first page, her father had written in blue ink:
“Travel, because truth lives in movement.”
She had forgotten he’d written that. A lump formed in her throat. He used to say that line when she was a teenager sneaking out for photo walks. It annoyed her then. Now it felt like an echo coming back from the mountains.
She took a breath, turned the page, and began writing.
Day 1. Leh. I came here to remember something I don’t want to forget. Or maybe to forget something I can’t remember properly. I’m not sure which yet.
Evening fell quickly, like a curtain. The temperature dropped and the stars came out like they had been waiting for her. Tara wrapped herself in a shawl and walked down to the village, where she found an old man sitting outside a shop humming something ancient. She smiled, greeted him with a soft “Julley,” and he nodded without breaking the tune.
“Do you live here?” she asked.
“All my life. You?” he said, in broken English.
“I live nowhere and everywhere. I’m a travel blogger,” she added, unsure why she still said that. She hadn’t posted in months.
He nodded slowly. “Then your home is in your shoes.”
The simplicity of the line stunned her. She offered to take his portrait, and he agreed with a shy nod. The photograph came out beautifully—his sunburnt skin, furrowed eyes, and a backdrop of golden dusk. It felt like the first real photo she had taken in a long time. Not curated. Not posed. Just truth.
Back in her room, Tara uploaded the image and added a caption:
“He said my home is in my shoes. Perhaps he’s right.”
#WindsweptRoads #NomadInkReturns
It got 327 likes in the first hour. The numbers didn’t matter like they used to, but the comments poured in—”We missed your stories”, “You’re back!” “So raw, so beautiful.”
Was she back? Maybe.
The next morning, she packed lightly—one camera body, two lenses, notebook, shawl. Rigzin was waiting. “Where today?” he asked.
“Zanskar,” she said. “But not the usual tourist trail. I want to go where you go.”
Rigzin looked at her with curiosity, then nodded. “Then we go to Padum. But slowly.”
They stopped at monasteries where monks whispered mantras as if into the stone. They walked through villages where schoolchildren waved at her lens. Tara stopped trying to capture moments and instead let them pass through her. At a high ridge, where prayer flags clattered wildly, she recorded her first vlog in over a year—unscripted, honest, eyes puffy from wind and tears.
“I came here thinking I’d document Ladakh,” she said to the camera. “But it’s documenting me.”
She ended the day in a small homestay, where a woman named Dolma served her thukpa and asked no questions. That night, Tara dreamed of her father, not as the man who had died in a sterile hospital room, but as he was in the old photos—young, grinning, hand outstretched to the horizon.
When she woke up, the sky was clear, and the mountains looked like they were waiting for her next step.
Shadows on the Zanskar
The road to Padum was little more than a memory of a path carved into the mountains, its edges fraying into sheer drops. Rigzin drove with the calm precision of someone who had trusted these roads for years. Tara, however, kept one hand on the side rail of the jeep, even though she told herself over and over that fear would only make the turns sharper.
Every few kilometers, the landscape changed like chapters in a novel. Stark cliffs gave way to frozen rivers, dry valleys shifted to sudden bursts of green. At one bend, they saw wild yaks grazing by a stream. At another, a red-robed monk hitchhiking. Tara asked Rigzin to stop.
She offered the monk a ride, and he climbed in with a quiet thank you. His name was Tsering, and he was headed to a small monastery just before Padum. As they rode together, Tara found herself strangely comforted by his presence, as if his silence was a kind of shield against the clamor of her inner monologue.
“Do you ever feel lonely up here?” she asked him.
He turned to her, his face lined but serene. “Not lonely. Empty sometimes. But empty can be peaceful.”
She scribbled that down in her notebook as the sun began to dip, casting long golden shadows over the valley. They stopped at a stone bridge strung with faded prayer flags, and Tsering climbed out.
“Stay for sunset,” he suggested before walking away.
So they did. Tara set up her tripod and waited. The Zanskar River shimmered like glass, reflecting the dying sun in pools of orange and indigo. She didn’t speak. Didn’t shoot. Just watched.
Then, when the light was right, she pressed the shutter.
Click.
That sound felt like breathing.
Later that night, they reached Padum and checked into a guesthouse run by a woman named Rinchen. Her two daughters hovered shyly near the door while Tara unpacked. She gave them each a small notebook—souvenirs she always carried for children. They disappeared giggling.
Dinner was simple—roti, lentils, pickled radish. The wind howled outside. Tara sat by the fire with her camera and flicked through the photos of the day. Tsering’s profile against the sky. A goat balancing impossibly on a cliff. A child peering through a cracked window.
Each image felt real.
She uploaded a photo of the bridge and wrote:
“The Zanskar moves like memory—slow, cold, and full of reflection.”
It was past midnight when she finally stopped refreshing her feed. Her post had gone semi-viral. A well-known travel mag DM’ed her: “Any chance you’d like to do a feature piece on ‘Grief and Geography’? Loved the tone.”
Tara didn’t reply.
She stared out at the silhouette of mountains and whispered, “What am I even looking for?”
The next morning brought snow—not heavy, but just enough to turn the edges of rooftops white. She borrowed a bicycle and pedaled down the dirt track toward the fields. The cold burned her lungs, but it made her feel awake, painfully alive.
She found herself near the river again, where a shepherd boy guided a flock across the rocks. Tara waved. He didn’t wave back but watched her with a curious stare. She raised her camera. He didn’t move.
Snap.
She showed him the photo. He gave the smallest smile.
Later, she sat near the banks and opened her notebook again.
Day 3. Zanskar. There’s something terrifying about feeling small and insignificant. But there’s also freedom in it. No one knows who I am here. I could be anyone. Or no one at all.
She heard the crunch of boots. Rigzin joined her, offering tea in a steel tumbler. They sat in silence, sipping.
“I never knew my father liked the mountains,” she said suddenly. “He always worked. Always deadlines. But after he passed, I found a box in our attic—maps, journals, old travel receipts. Ladakh was circled again and again.”
Rigzin nodded. “Sometimes people live with dreams they never chase. Maybe you’re chasing his.”
She blinked back sudden tears. “Maybe.”
That evening, she recorded another vlog. This time, the camera caught her red nose, messy hair, and tear-streaked cheek.
“I used to think being a travel blogger meant showing the world to people. But maybe it’s also about showing them the parts of yourself that don’t fit in words. Maybe it’s about finding pieces of others in places they never got to see.”
She signed off with a shaky smile.
The comments flooded in again.
“This version of you… feels like home.”
“You’re not just traveling. You’re healing.”
“Thank you for this. I lost my dad too.”
Tara closed her laptop and stared out the window as stars began to dot the sky. She thought of her father’s handwriting. That sentence again.
Travel, because truth lives in movement.
She whispered it aloud, like a prayer.
Tomorrow they would head toward a remote village near Rangdum, where electricity flickered like old memory and Wi-Fi was myth. Tara didn’t mind. Maybe offline was where truth really lived.
She switched off the light. The mountains, invisible now, still loomed. She could feel them pressing against her with quiet weight, holding her story safe.
Letters from Rangdum
The sky was the color of steel as they left Padum behind, winding deeper into the Zanskar Valley. Tara felt the altitude sharpen in her lungs, each breath thinner than the last. There were no more houses, no signals, no tracks. Just raw silence, ancient stone, and a road that vanished and reappeared like a mirage.
She didn’t speak much that morning. Her mind was wrapped in the strange sense of presence that came when your phone had no service and your thoughts stopped chasing other people’s thoughts. Rigzin drove quietly, radio off, eyes trained on the empty road. They passed grazing dzos, frozen waterfalls, and the occasional stupa painted with sun-bleached mantras.
Rangdum wasn’t a village as much as it was a suggestion of one. A few white houses huddled at the base of a cliff, a monastery perched above like a guardian of silence. Tara got out of the jeep and stretched, boots landing on soil that felt untouched by time.
An old nun in crimson robes greeted them. She spoke in Ladakhi, then in broken Hindi. Rigzin translated. “She says travelers rarely come this time of year. The pass may close soon.”
“I won’t stay long,” Tara assured, though her voice didn’t match the certainty of the words.
They were offered a room in the monastery guest quarters—simple, with a hard bed and one bulb that flickered weakly. Tara didn’t mind. She liked the creaking floorboards and the wood-smoke smell. It felt honest.
After a modest meal of barley soup and steamed momos, she wandered into the courtyard. Prayer wheels lined the walls, spinning gently in the wind. Monks passed silently, nodding without curiosity. It struck her that no one here knew what an influencer was. She was just another guest of the mountains.
She sat near a ledge and opened her notebook.
Day 4. Rangdum. This place doesn’t ask questions. It doesn’t expect updates or explanations. It simply watches, and waits. Maybe that’s all I need right now—to be seen but not judged. To let the grief breathe.
She tucked the notebook away and took out her camera. But for the first time, she didn’t feel the urge to capture anything. She just stared at the horizon. The valley was a painting—muted blues and browns, stitched with golden grass and the slow shadow of clouds. It looked like a story that didn’t need words.
That night, after the power died—as it always did after nine—she lit a candle and scrolled through old messages on her phone, even though there was no reception.
She opened a chat with her father. The last message was from him, months before his stroke.
“Let’s go somewhere, just the two of us. Maybe Ladakh. You can show me how to shoot those cloud timelapses you love. I’ll carry the tripod.”
She never replied. She had been busy. On deadline. Flying to Morocco for a paid collab. She hadn’t even read the message until the hospital called.
Now she stared at it and typed a reply she knew he’d never see.
“I’m here. I made it. I think you would’ve loved Rangdum.”
Then she turned off the phone and let the dark hold her.
In the morning, she joined the monks for prayer. She didn’t understand the chants, but the rhythm felt like balm on a raw wound. A novice monk handed her a cup of butter tea and smiled. “You look tired,” he said in halting English.
“I think I’m more awake than I’ve been in years,” she replied.
After breakfast, she went walking along the frozen stream behind the monastery. Her boots crunched over frost-laced ground. She saw no other people. Only yaks in the distance, and birds circling like tiny, distant commas in the sky.
She found a flat rock and sat. Took out her camera. Let it rest beside her.
Then, without quite knowing why, she began speaking aloud. Not to anyone present—but to her father.
“Do you remember that time in Mussoorie when we got caught in the rain and had to take shelter in that teashop? You told me every good journey needs to include getting a little lost. I thought that was just one of your silly philosophies. But maybe you were right. Maybe I’ve been lost all along.”
The wind answered her.
She stood, brushed the snow from her jeans, and walked back.
That evening, she wrote her most personal blog post yet. No hashtags. No photos.
“I came to Rangdum carrying a grief I couldn’t name. I think I’ve finally named it—not regret, not guilt, just absence. The kind that sits beside you like a shadow. But here, among strangers and stones, I’ve started to feel like I’m not carrying it alone.”
She didn’t expect it to go viral. But by the next morning, her inbox was flooded.
One message stood out. From an old reader.
“I lost my daughter in 2020. I haven’t left home since. But something about your words makes me want to try again. Thank you.”
Tara sat with that for a long time.
Then she packed her bags. Tomorrow, she would head toward Kargil. From there, maybe Srinagar. The roads ahead were uncertain. But for the first time in months, uncertainty didn’t feel like fear.
It felt like possibility.
Kargil, and the Silence Between Words
The road to Kargil was unexpectedly loud—rumbling tires over gravel, the occasional military truck groaning past, wind slapping against the windows like an urgent whisper. Tara sat in the front seat again, knees pulled to her chest, camera resting in her lap like a silent companion. Rigzin hummed something under his breath—a Ladakhi folk song, perhaps, or just a tune made of road and sky.
As they descended from Rangdum’s altitude, the landscape changed again. What had been snow-glazed minimalism became sharper, more defined. Craggy cliffs towered above, and the Suru River, slate-blue and restless, followed them like a co-narrator. Tara watched its course with quiet attention.
They stopped for lunch at a tiny roadside dhaba where the cook was also the server, dishwasher, and cashier. The walls were covered in peeling posters of old Bollywood films—Amitabh, Zeenat, Dharmendra. Tara bit into the paratha and laughed softly. “This feels more like home than my apartment ever did.”
Rigzin looked up. “You are not returning soon, are you?”
She hesitated, chewing slower. “No. I don’t think I am.”
Kargil arrived in the late afternoon—a quiet, watchful town tucked between mountains that had seen too much. Tara had read about its troubled past, the war, the weight it still carried. But today it felt like a place healing silently, like someone who doesn’t talk about their scars but carries them with grace.
She checked into a modest hotel called River View Inn. The name wasn’t a lie—the Suru ran just beyond the balcony, framed by pine trees and electric wires. She made tea from a kettle that sputtered like an old man clearing his throat and opened her notebook.
Day 5. Kargil. There’s a hush here that doesn’t feel empty. It feels earned. Like the land has fought for the right to be quiet. And maybe, so have I.
The room had no heater, just a thick quilt and a small electric blower. She wrapped herself in layers and stepped onto the balcony. A group of schoolchildren walked below, their uniforms bright against the gray town. Two boys kicked a football near a prayer flag pole. A woman with groceries passed, adjusting her hijab against the wind.
Tara raised her camera and froze.
She didn’t take the photo.
Some moments, she realized, deserved to remain unframed.
That evening, she went for a walk, alone. Rigzin stayed back, letting her have space. The bazaar was modest—dry fruit shops, woollen shawl sellers, stores with handwritten signs offering “STD-ISD” calls. A boy no older than twelve tried to sell her saffron. “Very pure, madam. From our own garden.”
She smiled, bought a small pouch, and asked his name.
“Zakir,” he said, chest puffed with pride. “Want to take photo?”
“Only if you want it.”
He posed like a Bollywood hero, hands on hips, smile wide. She clicked, showed it to him, and he beamed. “I look like Salman Khan!”
Tara laughed for the first time in days. Not the polite, social laugh. The kind that cracks through something cold inside you.
That night, she uploaded the image. Captioned it simply:
“Zakir from Kargil, future filmstar. Some dreams are warmer than the mountains.”
The post exploded. Comments from around the world. Someone even asked if they could support Zakir’s schooling. Tara made a note to ask him tomorrow.
She sat on her bed, wrapped in a shawl, staring at the photo again. His eyes held so much hope, so much defiance of his surroundings.
It reminded her of herself at seventeen—camera in hand, world ahead, no idea what she was running from or toward.
Her phone pinged with a text.
Maya.
“I saw your posts. You okay, T? You’ve been quiet for too long. Let me know if you want to talk.”
Tara stared at the message. She typed:
“I’m okay. I think I’m finally hearing myself again.”
Then deleted it. Rewrote:
“Let’s talk tomorrow. From Srinagar, maybe. I’ll call.”
She looked out the window again. The stars in Kargil didn’t shine. They blinked faintly, like eyes just beginning to open after a long sleep.
Houseboats and Hauntings in Srinagar
Tara had always imagined Srinagar from postcards—shikaras gliding on Dal Lake, floating markets bursting with color, snow frosting the Chinars. But when they crossed into the city, it greeted her not with spectacle but with stillness. It was late afternoon. Clouds hung low like breath held too long. The lake lay glassy and gray, the shikaras docked like sleeping birds.
She checked into a houseboat named Naaz-e-Kashmir, moored quietly at the edge of Nigeen Lake. The owner, Mr. Rahim, greeted her with warm kahwa and a short history lesson. “This boat is older than my marriage,” he smiled, pointing at carved walnut panels. “But like marriage, still floating.”
Her room smelled of cedarwood and time. Floral curtains swayed with the lake breeze. On the wall hung a framed black-and-white photo of a younger Rahim with his wife, now deceased. Tara stared at it longer than she meant to.
That evening, wrapped in a shawl, she sat on the wooden porch facing the water. There were no other guests. Only the creak of the boat, the ripple of oars from a passing shikara, and the soft lap of water against wood. She took out her notebook.
Day 6. Srinagar. I thought I’d feel peace here. But instead, I feel presence. This city doesn’t whisper. It waits. It watches. It remembers everything.
She remembered how her father once showed her an old photo album from his college days in Kashmir. It had been the first time she saw him young, smiling, arms slung over friends by the water. “My heart never left this place,” he had said. “Even when my body did.”
She had wanted to roll her eyes then. Now, she felt a deep ache under her ribs.
That night, she dreamt of water. Not drowning—but floating. Her father stood on a far-off pier, waving. When she reached him, he turned and walked away, not cruelly, just calmly. As if it was her turn to walk now.
The next morning, Tara borrowed a bicycle from Mr. Rahim and cycled along Boulevard Road. The city was waking—vendors arranging wares, children on their way to school, a woman in a pheran brushing snow off a shikara’s canopy. She stopped near Nishat Bagh and bought a handful of saffron roses from an old florist with weather-beaten hands.
“Offer them to the lake,” he said. “The lake always listens.”
She scattered them near the steps, each petal like a silent apology.
Later, she filmed a vlog—no makeup, windblown hair, voice low.
“There’s something about Srinagar that makes you quiet inside. Like it’s reading your diary without asking. But not in a bad way. It’s just… reminding you that you’re not the first one to grieve here. And you won’t be the last.”
She didn’t edit it. Just posted it raw.
Then she took a shikara to Char Chinar island. The oarsman, Altaf, was a lean man with melancholy eyes. He didn’t speak much, only nodded when she asked questions. Midway through the ride, he suddenly said, “This lake… she keeps the secrets of too many.”
Tara asked, “What kind of secrets?”
He smiled faintly. “The kind that don’t need telling.”
She took his portrait. He didn’t pose. Just looked into her lens like someone who had nothing to hide, and nothing left to lose.
That night, the photo went up on her blog. Caption:
“Altaf, guardian of forgotten stories. Srinagar doesn’t speak loudly—but it never forgets.”
An editor from a major international travel publication messaged her.
“Your writing lately feels like poetry with a bruise. Would you consider turning this journey into a memoir-style column?”
She stared at the message.
Yes, she thought. But not yet.
First, she had one more place to visit.
In her notebook, she wrote:
Tomorrow, Gulmarg. Not for the snow, but for the silence beneath it.
The water lapped softly against the boat as if it agreed.
Footprints in Gulmarg Snow
The road to Gulmarg was coiled with white. Snow lined the pine trunks like a dusting of ash, and the sky wore a sheet of gray so thick, Tara couldn’t tell where the trees ended and the clouds began. It was beautiful—but not in the photogenic, postcard way. It was the beauty of breath held, of a story paused before the final chapter.
She had left early, bundled in layers beneath her down jacket, camera packed snug in a wool wrap. Rigzin had taken a different route that day, helping a relative in Drass. Tara had chosen to go on alone, hiring a local guide and a four-wheel jeep from the city. Her new guide, Waseem, was a quiet man in his thirties with sharp eyes and a gentleness she hadn’t expected. They barely spoke on the drive, but she didn’t mind. Her thoughts were company enough.
When they arrived, Gulmarg was hushed under thick snowfall. Tourists, mostly local, wandered around in padded jackets, trying their best to navigate the powdery paths. Tara, however, walked further, away from the gondola crowds, past shuttered tea stalls and snow-topped benches. Waseem followed at a respectful distance.
She found herself in a clearing where the snow was undisturbed—no footsteps, no sled tracks, only silence. It was the kind of place where sound felt like intrusion.
She stood still for a moment, then dropped her bag and lay flat on the snow.
The cold seeped through her clothes, but she didn’t move. Eyes open, she watched flakes fall straight into her lashes. The sky, heavy and vast, hovered close.
She whispered, “I’m here, Baba.”
And in that moment, she didn’t cry. She just felt him.
Not as a memory, not as grief—but as quiet.
Later, she took out her notebook, fingers stiff with chill, and wrote:
Day 7. Gulmarg. I lay down in the snow today. Not to rest. Not to make snow angels. Just to listen. And I swear, for a few seconds, I heard everything I’d ever needed to hear.
When Waseem approached, she looked up and smiled. “Do you know a place we can get kahwa?”
He nodded. “My cousin runs a small tea stall near the woods. Not for tourists.”
They walked there in silence. The tea stall was barely a shack—wooden walls, a kettle steaming on coal. Inside, the air was thick with smoke and cardamom. A woman wrapped in three layers handed Tara a cup with a knowing glance.
Tara sipped slowly. The heat hit her chest and thawed something inside.
She looked around the tiny room—photographs of family nailed to the beams, newspaper clippings about old winters, a small radio playing an old Kashmiri song.
“This is the kind of place I never see in glossy travel magazines,” she said aloud.
Waseem replied quietly, “Because stories like this don’t sell packages.”
She took his portrait, then asked the woman’s permission and took hers too. They didn’t pose. They didn’t smile. They just let her see them.
On the walk back, snow began to fall harder. Tara looked at the horizon, blurred and beautiful. She didn’t feel the need to post anything that day. Instead, she opened her notebook again.
There are some stories you write only for yourself. Today, I found one.
Back at the inn, she sat by the fire. She flipped through her camera roll, not looking for the perfect shot, but for something else. A feeling. A truth.
And she found it—not in the landscapes or lake reflections—but in the faces. The quiet, weathered, real faces. The people who had shared their stories without words.
Altaf. Dolma. Zakir. Waseem. Even Rigzin.
She thought again of her father. His unchased dreams. His unspoken desire to return to this part of the world.
Maybe, she thought, that’s what she had been doing all along. Not documenting a journey—but completing his.
That night, she finally messaged Maya.
“I think I’m ready to come home. Not the city. Just… back to people.”
Maya replied within seconds.
“We never stopped waiting.”
Tara smiled. Outside, snow kept falling. Steady, soft, forgiving.
She didn’t post that night. Or take any more pictures.
Some memories, she realized, were best left like fresh snow.
Untouched. Unfiltered. True.
Trains, Tea, and the Long Way Home
Tara left Gulmarg with the smell of cedar still clinging to her clothes. Waseem helped her catch the morning jeep to Srinagar. From there, she booked a flight not to Delhi—but to Jammu, and then a train south. She wasn’t quite ready to return to noise. She wanted transition. She wanted time.
At Jammu Tawi station, the heat felt like a slap after so many days of high-altitude chill. She peeled off layers as the late spring sun pried into every crevice of the platform. Her boots felt heavy. Her backpack tugged at her shoulders. But she didn’t mind. Her camera was now a natural extension of her arm, and her notebook lived in her pocket like breath.
She booked a second-class AC sleeper to Jaipur—something about Rajasthan, she felt, was calling her. Maybe it was the contrast. The bright against the muted. The heat after the cold. Or maybe she just needed to be somewhere that smelled like spice and sandstone and stories that baked for centuries.
On the train, she sat by the window. Her co-passenger was a woman in her sixties, wrapped in a maroon saree with hair tied in a loose bun. She introduced herself as Mrs. Chopra. A retired schoolteacher. Traveling to visit her sister.
“You’re traveling alone?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Chopra nodded approvingly. “Brave girl. Or broken?”
Tara smiled. “Both, I think.”
They shared homemade mathri and pickles. Tara offered dried apricots from Kargil. By the time the train reached Udhampur, they were discussing Rumi, tea, and regrets.
“I always wanted to be a painter,” Mrs. Chopra said. “But I taught physics for 32 years. Stability, you know.”
“Did you miss it?” Tara asked.
“Every day,” she said, then laughed. “But I painted in my head.”
Tara took her photo by the window light. The wrinkles, the eyes, the quiet rebellion.
Captioned later: “Some women paint on canvas. Some paint in memory. Both leave colors behind.”
That night, the train rattled like an old lullaby. Tara lay awake on the top berth, notebook open on her chest.
Day 8. Somewhere between Jammu and Jaipur. There’s something tender about trains. They remind me that movement doesn’t always mean rushing. Sometimes it just means allowing time to stretch and breathe.
When she reached Jaipur, the heat hit harder. It was late afternoon. The sky burned orange, the walls pink, the air thick with dust and marigold.
She took a small room near Ajmer Gate—no frills, just a fan, a jug of water, and a view of rooftops tangled with clotheslines and kites.
She roamed the streets alone that evening. Not for content. Not for photos. Just to walk. Johari Bazaar buzzed with the scent of incense and fried snacks. Shopkeepers called out, auto drivers waved. A little girl handed her a marigold chain without asking for money. Tara wore it without asking why.
She stopped at a street-side chai stall. The man behind it had a hennaed beard and a radio playing old ghazals. She sat on a low stool and sipped.
He watched her for a while, then said, “You look like someone who left something behind.”
Tara nodded. “I did.”
“Good,” he said, “That’s how we make space for what’s coming.”
She smiled. “What if nothing comes?”
“Then you get to live lighter.”
She asked to take his photo. He agreed only if she gave him a copy.
She promised she would.
That night, back in her room, she finally began writing not just notes, but a story. One with structure. With beginning, middle, and truth. Not just her own, but borrowed fragments from every soul she’d met.
She titled it Windswept Roads.
Not a blog post. Not a travel feature.
A book.
She didn’t know if it would be published, or even finished. But it felt like the right thing to start. A way to weave everything she’d gathered—not just images or captions—but silences, voices, sorrows, and sky.
She wrote past midnight. The marigold garland lay drying beside her notebook.
Tomorrow she would take the train to Udaipur. She heard the lake there whispered different stories.
And Tara had learned how to listen.
Mirrors in Udaipur
Tara arrived in Udaipur beneath a lavender sky. The air here smelled different—less dust, more water and stone. The city stretched itself around Lake Pichola like an old storyteller resting beside its favorite tale. Palaces shimmered in the distance, and the hills looked like they had grown tired of standing guard for centuries.
She checked into a guesthouse tucked behind the City Palace. A narrow staircase led to a terrace painted in blue and white, where bougainvillea spilled like untamed hair. Her room was simple but had large windows that opened onto the lake. For a moment, she just stood there, letting the breeze wrap around her.
Later, she sat on the terrace with her camera and notebook but didn’t touch either. She watched the water instead. A shikara glided by carrying a newlywed couple. Their laughter bounced off the lake and disappeared into the walls of centuries.
A waiter brought her masala chai and said, “People come here thinking they’ll find peace. But Udaipur doesn’t give you peace. It shows you what’s missing.”
She looked up, surprised. “What do you think is missing for me?”
He smiled. “Not for me to say. The lake tells everyone differently.”
That night, she walked along the Ghats barefoot. The stone was still warm from the sun. A small crowd gathered for an aarti ceremony by the water. Tara watched from a distance. Bells rang. Lamps floated. Smoke curled into the night air like invisible verses.
She didn’t take a single picture.
She wrote instead.
Day 9. Udaipur. There’s something about water that makes you admit things. I’ve spent years capturing moments, editing truth into aesthetic. But here, where history floats and refuses to settle, I’m starting to realize: some memories are not meant to be documented. Only felt.
At dinner, she sat alone in a rooftop café. The city glowed around her. The lake mirrored the palaces like a lover who never stopped gazing back. She ordered laal maas, even though her mouth wasn’t craving heat. She just wanted the comfort of something bold.
A man at the next table asked if she was a writer. She blinked, then laughed. “I don’t know anymore. I used to say I was a travel blogger. Now I think I’m just… traveling through myself.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Aren’t we all?”
They didn’t exchange names.
Back at the guesthouse, she downloaded her photos. The screen lit up with reflections—mirrors of moments she had almost forgotten she’d taken. Children playing in Kargil, Dolma’s eyes in Padum, her own face half-lit on a houseboat window.
She selected one. Not the most beautiful, not the most dramatic. Just the truest.
A selfie she had taken in Rangdum, sitting beside her notebook, face windburnt, eyes tired but unafraid.
She posted it with one line:
“I came looking for stories. I found pieces of myself scattered across silence.”
The response was overwhelming.
A reader wrote:
“I followed you for places. Now I follow you for truth. Thank you for showing us grief doesn’t mean the end of the journey.”
Tara replied, for the first time in weeks:
“Maybe grief is the beginning of the real one.”
She closed her laptop, stood by the open window, and let the city’s breath in.
Tomorrow, she would leave for Pushkar.
A place of sand, devotion, and dusty prayers.
But tonight, she would rest in the city of mirrors.
And for once, she wouldn’t look for a reflection.
She would just be.
Dust and Devotion in Pushkar
Pushkar unfolded slowly, like an old melody hummed without haste. Tara arrived just before sunset, stepping off the bus into a town wrapped in ochre dust and the smell of incense. There was a camel tied near the bus stand, chewing with utter disinterest. A group of saffron-robed sadhus walked barefoot past tourists in linen pants and DSLR harnesses. Cows moved like royalty through alleys.
She’d booked a room in an old haveli near the Brahma Ghat. The walls were pink-streaked with time. Her room overlooked a courtyard filled with parrots and drying laundry. The caretaker, an elderly woman named Shanta Bai, welcomed her with a warmth Tara hadn’t realized she missed.
“You’re traveling alone?” the woman asked, pouring her water from a silver jug.
Tara smiled. “Yes. But sometimes I feel like I’m being followed.”
“By what?”
“By all the versions of me I left behind,” she said, only half-joking.
Pushkar wasn’t quiet, but its noise had a rhythm. Temple bells. Drums. The thump of bare feet on hot stone. The rustle of marigolds being strung together. Tara walked barefoot to the ghats as the evening aarti began. Fire danced on brass lamps, flames mirrored in the water below. She watched in silence as people prayed—some with faith, some with hope, and others with nothing but habit.
She didn’t pray. But she felt something loosen inside her, something knotted for months.
She took out her notebook.
Day 10. Pushkar. This town smells like devotion. Not the loud kind, not the kind that needs proof. The kind that just… exists. Like a thread between the known and the not-yet-known.
Later, while walking the market, she came across a man selling secondhand books on a wooden cart. The titles were a mishmash—spiritual guides, romance paperbacks, weathered cookbooks. One slim volume caught her eye: “Letters to the Self”. No author. No cover design. Just a plain book with rough edges.
She bought it for fifty rupees.
Back in her room, she flipped through the pages. Handwritten letters, anonymous, personal. One entry read:
“Dear Me,
You’ve spent so long running, you forgot what it feels like to sit beside your own shadow and call it friend.
Love,
The version of you that doesn’t need to be extraordinary.”
She stared at the words for a long time. Then closed the book.
The next morning, she visited the Brahma Temple. It was crowded, chaotic, filled with voices and urgency. But just outside, beside the steps, she met a little girl drawing rangoli with colored dust. The girl looked up and smiled. No words. Just a smile that said, I see you.
Tara asked to take her photo. The girl nodded once.
Click.
The dust swirled around them as a breeze swept through.
She posted it hours later with a caption:
“Sometimes, the brightest things are made of the simplest dust.”
Back in her haveli, Shanta Bai served her dal and bajra roti and asked about her work.
“I used to be a content creator,” Tara said. “Now I think I’m just… trying to be a real person again.”
The old woman chuckled. “You don’t become real by trying. You become real by being broken. And then choosing to remain open.”
Tara felt her eyes sting. “I’m tired of being strong.”
“Then be soft,” the woman said. “That’s harder anyway.”
That night, Tara sat by the ghat under the stars. She didn’t write. Didn’t photograph. Just closed her eyes and listened—to the water, to the quiet prayers, to herself.
She realized she was no longer afraid of the silence.
Tomorrow, she would begin her journey back to Delhi.
Not the same Delhi she had left.
Not the same Tara.
Return to the City That Forgot Her
The Delhi air struck Tara like memory—warm, dust-laced, impatient. Her cab from the airport crawled through familiar chaos: horns blaring, chai vendors shouting, a child tapping on the window at a red light. The skyline was fractured by cranes and cables. Metro lines sliced through the sky like unfinished thoughts. And yet, something in her chest softened.
She was back.
Not as the girl who had once fled to escape grief, deadlines, and the crushing weight of performance. But as someone who had walked with silence long enough to understand its language.
Her apartment smelled stale. The houseplants were dead. The fridge hummed with emptiness. And her reflection in the bathroom mirror startled her—not because she looked different, but because she looked alive in a way she hadn’t when she left. Her skin was tanned, her eyes darker, her expression softer. She almost didn’t recognize the woman in the glass.
She didn’t unpack. She sat on the floor beside her window, opened her notebook, and began to write—not a journal entry, not a caption, but the final chapter of a story she had been living.
Day 11. Delhi. The city didn’t change. But I did. I carried the mountains in my spine, the rivers in my pulse, and a thousand unnamed moments inside me like echoes. I used to look at this skyline and feel drowned. Today, I feel grounded.
The doorbell rang. It was Maya.
She stood holding coffee in one hand and a plant in the other.
“I figured you wouldn’t have food or oxygen,” she said, stepping in without ceremony.
They sat together in silence for a while.
Then Maya asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No,” Tara said. “But I think I stopped needing to.”
That night, she posted one last image—a blurred photo of the sky, taken from her train window near Jaipur. No faces. No landmarks. Just motion and light.
Caption:
“I used to think home was a place. Then I thought it was a person. Now I think home is a version of me I hadn’t met yet. I think I’ve found her.”
Her inbox flooded again. Offers, interviews, readers asking for more.
She closed her laptop and let it all sit.
She wasn’t done telling stories.
But for the first time, she didn’t feel like she owed them to anyone.
Not to brands. Not to followers. Not even to grief.
Only to herself.
She pulled out the draft of Windswept Roads. It was a mess. Incomplete. Beautiful. Just like her journey.
She turned to the first page and wrote the dedication:
“For my father—who never reached Ladakh, but somehow brought me there anyway.”
Outside, Delhi roared.
Inside, Tara exhaled.
She was home.
What We Carry Forward
Weeks passed. Delhi grew hotter. The ceiling fan hummed overhead, stirring warm air and loose pages. Tara sat at her desk, surrounded by drafts—handwritten notes, printed paragraphs, polaroids clipped to the wall. Her email inbox pinged with offers. Her followers crossed a hundred thousand. Publishers were interested. Readers were waiting.
But she wasn’t writing for them anymore.
She was writing because she needed to remember.
Each chapter of her manuscript carried the smell of a place—Kargil’s dust, Srinagar’s cedar, Pushkar’s marigolds. The words didn’t try to impress. They just told the truth as she had felt it, with all its blurs and bruises.
One morning, she visited her childhood home in CR Park. It was being renovated, the garden gone, the swing dismantled. She walked through the shell of rooms, dusty with memory. In the corner of the old study, she found a broken trunk.
Inside it: maps, travel brochures from the ‘80s, postcards never sent, and a letter from her father, addressed but never mailed.
“Dear Tara,
You’ll read this one day, maybe when I’m not around. I hope by then you’ll have seen what I couldn’t—deserts, lakes, lives I missed chasing deadlines. I hope you learn early that movement is not escape. It’s discovery. Keep moving, my girl. Not to forget. But to remember better.”
Her hands trembled.
She didn’t cry.
She folded the letter and placed it in her notebook, under the last page.
Back in her apartment, she wrote the epilogue of Windswept Roads in a single sitting:
“This is not a book about places. This is a book about return. To yourself. To what matters. To the stillness under the noise. I went looking for closure. I found openings instead. I went looking for my father. I found myself.”
She sent the manuscript off to her agent without hesitation.
Then, she shut her laptop and walked out the door.
Downstairs, the street shimmered in summer heat. A balloon vendor passed, and a chai stall played Kishore Kumar on an old radio.
Tara turned toward the metro.
Not because she had somewhere urgent to be.
But because the road was calling again.
And this time, she wasn’t running from grief.
She was walking with it—like a friend.
Not to escape.
But to begin again.
THE END
