Day 676: Mom's Yatra!

26 September, 2011

I probably should have written about this earlier, but over the past two weeks a good deal of entertainment in my life has come from my Mom and her long pilgrimage to the famous temples in the Himalayas.

A couple of months ago, my mom got in to her head that she doesn't want anything more than to go on a pilgrimage to the north of India, particularly to those remote ones on the Himalayan belt such as Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, Yamunotri etc. This desire of hers came as a surprise to me and my dad because my mom usually doesn't like to take such risky trips (many of these places have treacherous terrains) and more importantly, she can't stand cold and most of these places easily go down to less than 10 degree celsius. But she had made up her mind and that was that. She booked herself with a group consisting mainly of senior citizens, which made her feel really cool from what I gather, because she was to be the youngest one!

So yes, two weeks ago she packed her bags up and very excitedly took the train to Delhi to kickstart her pilgrimage. Since then, on a daily basis, I have been receiving very fascinating stories from her - stories of all the temples she visited, of how she had to ride a pony to get to one of the temples and how it was the most terrifying experience ever, of how narrow the roads were that it was super scary to sit at the window on the bus because all you can see is a bottomless drop right below, how they witnessed a road completely cave in due to landslides and a distant earthquake thereby blocking the access to one of the temples, how they had to walk steep inclines for several kms to get to some spots, the ridiculously cold water that makes even brushing teeth a painful process etc. etc.

But more than all the content of the stories, she has such a wide-eyed wonder-struck way of narrating them. Like, I can totally feel the excitement completely, even over the phone! And I find that incredibly engaging and nice!

Today when she called, she was not only excited about her experiences but I could also sense a lot of well deserved sense of accomplishment! She is coming to the end of her pilgrimage, which basically means that she is on safe ground now instead of all those dangerous places, and she has moved on from saying how horrifying everything was to a I-can't-believe-I-did-it space! She went on and on and on about all her experiences again and gushed over how she did it all by herself! She sounded more surprised herself about it, than anyone else would be!

And I found it all incredibly cute! Somewhere in the back of my mind I had felt bad that she was not part of the trek that my dad and I took last year (details are here) even though that was due to the fact that she probably couldn't have walked for 90 kms over mountainous terrain, but this trip of hers more than made up for it! Now it's my dad's and my turn to listen, not without a tinge of jealousy, the tales of mom's successful yatra!

324 more to go.