“Are you about to sleep?”
“I won’t.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I can’t sleep on trips.”
“You haven’t slept for five days?”
“And five nights.”

On December 15th 2018, I left for a trip to the absolute unknown.
In August 2016, I met a school senior I had never talked to in school before and vibed immediately.
In July 2018, he created an underground traveling community – trips where you don’t know where in this democracy you are going.
Somewhere in the meetings between August 2016 and July 2018, every time I met him, I knew he couldn’t sit quiet and still would make the least noise. Somewhere between that time, I decided to follow where he ends up.

On December 15th 2018, I left for a trip to the absolute unknown. Well not absolute it just sounds more invigorating with unknown (and I just used invigorating). I knew we were going to the mountains in December, which now when I think of, 365 days and nights wiser, seems like a childish thing to do. But, somehow, that was the point. The build-up to December 2018 was such that I needed to do everything that had seemed arbitrarily impractical up till then. I knew that in the bigger picture my first trip with strangers, with no luxuries and minimum budget, could change things for me. And I needed change. Or rather, to be more explicitly me, I needed the process. I wanted to be hit by something larger than life and more importantly, I wanted to see it happen.

I packed like I would need that last shirt from my cupboard and I walked like a walking enthusiast would – all at once and then none for some. Everything – from the bus that got us there to the snow that arrived a day early – had me asking questions. Mayank – a nineteen-year-old – often called out as “too mature for his age” was asking stupid, erratic questions. You could be convinced of the idea that “you do not know where you are going” but not that “to live is to not know”. The trip resembled a life. It started and I was an infant. A new world I knew nothing of. I was curious because I wanted to ‘live’ longer. I asked of anything and everything. But then just as I started getting tired, I grew.

Contrary to popular belief, you do not grow just because you have known more or seen more. You grow constantly is a belief, just until its a myth – just until a tragedy strikes. Everyone has that one event in their lives which made them see their environment at its worst. I believe that is when you grow. When you know what is on the other side – when you are not scared to flip the coin. The trek that ensued on the night of 16th December was that tragedy. Eight hours – from the darker 5 to 1 – with a heavy bag, snow on the sides, -5C temperature, seven strangers constantly changing pace, hunger and absolute wilderness. The last any of us saw apart from each other, was kilometers back. It was so quiet, my mind stopped playing songs. It was so dark, I did not realize my eyes were closing until the lids hit the skin. Everything was cold. Nothing was a mess. The sky was as blue as it had been in my dreams, Red, and the stars were..there.

When I was five or seven or three, and alive and well were the full seven members in my family, power cuts were common. Often, we would go sleep on the rooftop. Now, I was never one of those kids who loved rains or flowers or dogs or mountains. I loved safety. Anything wild would cause tremors to my soul. I valued my family just enough to be scared from a night on the rooftop – for the Lord knows what could strike or hit or capture. My family would sleep like they normally would; I couldn’t. I would often stare up and find some stars staring back. I would often sleep while looking at them.

Now fourteen or twelve or sixteen years later, I saw them again. The same set of stars, finding me alone – again. At one in the night at a place I couldn’t name – every step dodgier than the previous, snow normalizing the meaning of land to me, I knew I remained the only woke person from my family. I looked at the stars not like I wouldn’t see them again for decades, but with a smile, for I knew they value their disappearance. I knew they missed me.

My vulnerabilities were reduced to a point that I had removed all layers of me that I had added since I was born. Now, it was just me, and that was it. I was so tired, I stopped thinking of what could happen. I didn’t care. My brain took me to Elio Pearlman, to my sister’s wedding, to Stamford Bridge and to people I cared about. I thought about them a lot – for the only time like a virgin mind. Unfucked.

I stopped asking questions. The infant had grown. The rest of the trip was a hangover of what the night trek gave me. I could go on about the fact that we didn’t eat for twelve more hours, I shivered through the night, that the next morning was one of the most beautiful of my life, that we trekked further and I started talking to people. I did that, and a lot more. I did more than I could ever put on paper or on Google Docs. But those were just four more days where I eternalized my hangover.

The next morning – I woke up and stepped outside the tent to find sunlight the most God-like thing in the history of fucked mankind. I walked to a lake, where I was told I would find phone signals. As I walked, I smiled at the fact that for kilometers I would not find another human. How stupid we eight would look from the up and how my life up till now was based all in a small corner of the world. I was wrong. At the lake, I met Anshul – a nine-year-old kid who was trying to pierce the frozen lake with a stick. We talked. He remains the only person to have talked to the most me – me. Soon, I would find out that he was the son of the man – Govind Bhaiya – who was here to help us. We would spend two nights at their home. Anshul – and his brother Rahul – thought One Plus Three could get them Talking Tom 2. Little did they know about Idea.

I remember each of the seven like comrades from a war won. I remember their little secrets they could tell just strangers. I remember Govind Bhaiya’s kitchen – the warmest place on earth. I remember the three girls of the group – spending an entire day on art. I remember how beautiful everything looked. I remember the bus journey that got me home. Oh, and I remember Mandy.

I have been on more trips since then. I went to Mumbai thrice – all alone. As a twenty-year-old, these feel.. good. Good – yes, can we keep it that simple? I have traveled with Bin Naqshe Kadam twice more as well. I met more people than I ever did. I vibed a lot more. I wrote a lot more. I told people about this trip and that trek. And I have always maintained, I had it coming. It wasn’t a frustrated student escaping a life. It was a nineteen-year-old boy, who saw enough in his life and believed enough in the universe, that he knew he would be somewhere he would never be again before the year ends. I don’t believe it was just the strangers, or Rubhen, or the physical conditions. They led me to those points of unmasked, unabashed moments of truth – but I know something would have led me there eventually.

You see, I don’t write this one year later because the December wind makes me nostalgic of lands which couldn’t be straight for more than a foot, or of people, I have reason to believe, still live in that same house, still cooking those three meals a day, still troubling their shoulders with weights exceeding their ambitions. I write because I know that one of these celebratory boring days in that household, Rahul and Anshul will sleep to the same December wind and think of those eight. The happy few, the lucky few.

It was 20th December 2018. Someone had just told me she couldn’t sleep the entire trip. I wanted to know the time. I checked my phone. It was 4:21 AM. We were two hours from Delhi.

Talking Tom 2 had just finished downloading.