Blessed to be born in the Mountains!!
Hi, I am Albana Nadeem and I am From the North. That's my brief introduction if you are reading my blogs very first time and if you know me then you should know that I am born and brought up in a very tiny-miny valley of Dharchula, Uttrakhand. This town area is situated in the banks of River Kali descending straight from Kalapaani Glacier near Mount Kailash aka the Holy Om Parvat. SO basically I am a true Hillbilly who moved out at the age of 17 like any other youngster to make a living by leaving the mountains life behind forever. That's basically my story.
Well, 2020 hit us hard. Global Pandemic, mass destruction, Ughh feels like something is determined to ruin our 2020. I know this pandemic we all faced quarantine & several nationwide lockdowns but amid this lockdown, we are somehow back to our native lands, started living full-time ith our families, re-adjusting our fast life with their life and matching with them in a daily basis. It's hard for me to re-adjust at first but as we all have some privileges in this era and our lockdown is something we can say a time for inner learning & to spend with our families. These mini-blog series to share with your my quarantine tales this summer of 2020
It was a hot summer day in the valley and we decided to have fun in our natural swimming pools.
Fultari is a place nearby Dharchula where located this beautiful water stream aka "Gadhera" straight from some mountain source from above and get merged with our main river kali.
Locals here usually block the stream with big boulders creating a place to swim, enjoy and have picnics in the hot summery days. These small ponds are a haven for beginners and to be noted there are some big deep ponds for the divers and pro-swimmers. I am in-between these two and often found myself in those small to mid-size ponds as swimming is as fun as dead tiring in the end :D
One fine day along with our cousins we went to the spot, and why it is special because being born here I have never visited any such place on my own. Never went out without parents, always used our personal car to be here & there and missed a lot of places in-between. The fear of parents and the mindset here cost me a lot in my childhood and with time as I gained independence financially & socially, I can visit these gems once I was restricted to go. I feel sad that every girl child had faced this kind of non-reluctant restrictions in their childhood where there is a chance for them to learn major life skills but they were bonded at home, fulfilling their house duties and living like a bird inside the cage of " acchi ladkiya bahar nahi jaati". These words are haunting and now I feel the weight of it. Well, let's move on!!
We lost our track and there is no mobile phone network in this area, we were separate into two groups and both were in the different location, no way to contact each other and I am the eldest one with no clue of the track to the ponds. LOL, we roamed for an hour and finally got to meet rest of our teammates :D, had a little cousin-fights and "Tu Tu Mai Mai" and at last, we sorted it with Lays & Coke!
Bathed till I got a tan west to die for, but my mom scolded me for being reckless about the colour :/ same old topic which never bothered me at least after college :D. Full enjoyment at no cost.
We had only bananas with us after we were returning, our brother took 3 rounds to drop us near our house as we had no vehicle with us to get back but everything was super fun, the bike circles to reach home, the planning of lunch as we all were super tired from the water & starving to death, the fantasy about what had mother made for lunch and our watery mouth afterwards which helped us to cover the rest of the distance to home quickly.
What I have learned from this quarantine is, I do not require a lot of things to have fun. Neither I always have to make it to abroad to enjoy the surrounding, I have plenty of beauty around me I just need a good pair of eyes to observe it and with mindfulness to enjoy every bit of my life!! well, it applies to everyone in any situation, not literally but we can try to be at least.
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