Have you ever felt like your head’s under 6 feet water and you are slowly running out of breath? Whenever I feel the water rising, I try to look up at the blue sky, and slowly swim to the shore.
At the beginning of my career, I nosedived an important interview which could have opened the doors to a permanent position at Morgan Stanley. This turned into a major setback, giving me sleepless nights. Frustrated, I decided to start swimming to the shore and took some time off to travel to Northeast India. But as Murphy’s Law prevailed, all the northeastern states were dueling with torrential rainfall and floods. Yet somehow, this solidified my resolve to briefly escape the gloom of the city life. As my favored destination battled the wrath of the rain gods, I decided to run off to the driest place in India. And ended up in this beautiful city of lakes, Udaipur. Without giving much thought or even research, I booked train tickets from Mumbai to Udaipur and back. The train time was about 16 hours on one side.
The planning
Well, most people get their itinerary sorted and then book the tickets accordingly, but I did the reverse of that. I booked the tickets and the started thinking about the itinerary. I wanted to try something different so thought of a road trip. My initial itinerary was:
- Day 1: Reach Udaipur. Check-in to Zostel. Hire a bike and explore the city
- Day 2: Ride to Jaisalmer. Spend the night
- Day 3: Roam around the city. Leave for Pushkar
- Day 4: Reach Pushkar. Roam around the city.
- Day 5: Leave for Udaipur. Reach Udaipur before train leaves for Mumbai
Reaching each of these places takes a minimum of 10 hours, and now if Google Maps show you 10 hours, then that shall be the ultimate truth, isn’t it? And that’s where my naïve heart was wrong. As the voice of reason prevailed, I finally did my due diligence and found that it’s not possible to ride for that long without stopping, so got a reality check there. Also, even if I execute this, I won’t be able to explore the beautiful places I am visiting and that will be a shame. Hence, I decided to first reach Udaipur and then take it from there.
As far as packing is concerned, I packed a small backpack and decided to leave behind my DSLR as the weather forecast showed heavy rains all along the trip.
The journey
The 16-hour long journey was refreshing and filled me with exhilaration. It took me on a reverie of long drawn out thoughts about the present, the future and everything that fell in between. The train ride was inundated with gushes of heavy rains and scenes of the rain-washed western countryside. Halfway through, I left my seat and walked over to the coach entrance to stand by the open door. Water splashed across my face and I felt the cool wind ruffle through my hair. The feeling was that of pure and utter calmness. I spent a couple of hours there, wondering what life could be ahead of me after the trip ends. Will I have to relocate to my hometown and look for another job there, the thought was confounding.
View from the train
As my thoughts took me through every possible scenario, I realized I might not have the answers to these questions yet, but I will surely find them. The realization, once again, strengthened my belief in the saying “The road has all the answers”. It really does. I have tried it and it works. You see the whole world of possibilities in front of you, laid out, and you can think openly. That’s what I like about it. Whenever you think your head’s underwater, just take out some time and take a trip.
Upon reaching Udaipur, I took an auto-rickshaw a.k.a. tuk-tuk, to reach the city center, but the network was bad so google maps merrily abandoned me. I had to take the old school way of stopping and asking people for directions every few kilometers. I soon realized that locals were not familiar with Zostel, my abode for the next five days, which made finding the place an even tougher task. As I scampered my way through and reached the vicinity, it started raining again. I hurried to find temporary shelter and found so in front of a local shop. As I waited for the rain to slow down, I saw what the rain-drenched city had to offer. A whole street with local shops selling a plethora of antiques, shawls, and other fashion wear. A lot of tourists walking around in raincoats enjoying the rain while I stood under the shelter without any rain cover. I couldn’t do much but wait for the rain to slow down. Once it did, I started looking for my destination again. A few mins later I found the place and checked-in.
Home for next five days
Zostel – Udaipur is a charming little place. The place has a very warm and inviting vibe. It had a common playing room in the basement with a casual and cute setting: wall hangings and paintings, different types of pillows, seating space on the floor with a mattress, a small coffee table in the middle and loads of board games and card games to keep the guests occupied. And as if to add to the touch, a pool table at the side. Other than this there was also a cafe on the terrace to accommodate roughly 30 people. Attached to the cafe was another small entertainment room, it housed a couple of couches, some bean bags, a television, games like carom and to bring out the hidden artist in you, an acoustic guitar kept on one side of the room.
Hostel Decor
I had booked a bed in an eight-bed dorm room. The guy at the reception showed me the room and as I surveyed the room, I decided to pick up the upper bunk. There was just one more individual in the room other than me, a sweet young woman, roughly the same age as I am. We greeted each other and chatted for a while, discussing what we did for a living and what brought us to Udaipur. I found that she was interning with Zostel and had been staying there, all alone, for about a month at that point. I am sure she loved her own company because if I were in her place, I would have just lost my mind. Just the mere thought of having just myself and my thoughts for company felt pretty dire to me.