For centuries a trip to the Himalayas was considered a dream for only a few privileged. Today it is possible for every one of you, whether you be 17 or 70, to take a Himalayan holiday. With your family: the entire brood. All this is possible because trekking is easy here, with more facilities and people to help you than elsewhere. And if you insist on an expedition, you can always leave the family in the midst of wondrous valleys. The way that offers trekkers the ultimate experience, is too ethereal to describe. Each footstep covers a thousand centuries. It is like stepping on a different planet – a different time. In fact, a different world. No one stepping the Rishis’ trails has been unaffected by the majesty amidst which one believes in God – and legends of Jesus’s visit.
Look upon the Himalayan vastness and discover what the Rishis did for these sights, which once belonged to their eyes alone, are not ordinary sights: emerald lakes amidst diamond crystal peaks, felt-green meadows, stitched with pines, iced-white frothy streams, moss. The glitter of a peak touched with the morning sun, and then, suddenly, the infinite peace and charm of a meadow strewn with intense-tinted gentians, daisies, buttercups and wild primulas. Or the jewelled flash of a kingfisher wing piercing clear mountain air. And the moon a plate of burnished silver ‘so close you could stretch out your arm and seize her in your hand’. And blue and purple rocks painted in a yellow sky. A rainbow circling a mid-day sun in a cloudless sky… Rocks rising sheer to nearly 2134 m. Huge mountains of solid ice and vast grassy downs could rest a Jumbo!
In this champagne sparkle of fresh mountain air, Himalayan trekkers breathe deep into the resinous pine forests and forget the noise, crowd and tension of their cities…
The sounds, too, float timelessness along the Himalayas. Sublime, strange temple bells on frequencies that belong to the ancients, pierce a billion-year-old silence. A flute echoes the cow-dust hour. And the shush of air currents ruffles pine needles into musical tiers of splendour… and then dies down. So you can listen to the silence. The Himalayas let you hear the cosmic silence. To soul-wash your being – your entire spirit!
There is, in the Himalayas, a strange sense of spiritual joy and peace. Magic, people believe, was created over billions of years by the Rishis, whose vibrations and meditation invoked eternal bliss and blessings of gods, on the terrain. Anyone who is there, even an agnostic renegade offspring, sips the nectar of this eternal bliss amidst the mountains.
So whether you’re a bird-watcher, photographer, wild-flower-lover, wild-animal follower, flora and fauna faddist, or just a beauty-loving family man, come to this – your Garden of Eden.
