McLeodganj, Dalhousie and...

In September 2001, Amit, Dipali, Rekha, Archana, Ashu, Priya, Lippika and obviously myself had gone for an outing to Mussorie. The trip was pure enjoyment. Right from the start of train journey to return to Delhi.

The photographs of the trip still take us back to those nostalgic days.

Its been almost 5 years to the trip. However, the magic still remains. A lot has changed since then. Amit, Dipali, Rekha, Archana, Ashu, Priya got married in the past 5 years. Archana even left the organization. But new people also joined the group.

So, when we decided to re-live the magic, it was a new group - Amit, Alpana (Amit's wife), Sambit, Lippika, Shweta and myself were the group of musketeers this time. We also had little Aayush to pamper.

Such trips tie the people together. One gets to know the friends in-out through such trips. Our relationships deepened over the 4-5 days that we spent in Himachal.

We went on adventure treks - down to the river and up to the point where the river entered the valley. We walked into the woods - just us - and captured the natural beauty of the dense forest. The clear blue skies, the remanents of powerful water currents, the tall conifers and the beautiful butterflies. The soft-mosses and the ferns. All giving hope that flowers can bloom even on rocks. That how difficult the life may seem, happiness exists... All you need to do is to find it.

We also saw the degraded mountains and some that had recently been stripped of their beauty by the land-slides. We also realized that the mountains that still had the trees had survived the onslaught of nature.

Both Dalhousie and Dharamsala (McLeodganj) are breathtakingly beautiful. Our hotel at Dalhousie gave us the view of snow-covered higher reaches of Himalayas. The visit to mini-Switzerland of India - Khajiaar - was equally exciting.

What was equal fun was the shrieking of Lippika whenever there was a sharp turn or the way Aayush ogled at Shweta. This one-year old just loves Shweta - at least from the looks of it... All smiles as soon as Shweta turns to see her :-)...

There were some lows too... Alpana was not in the best of health when we travelled down from Dalhousie (on the return)... Shweta was not well on the first day in McLeodGanj...

But the highs definitely outnumbered - the breathtaking views were accompanied with a real good news - of Sambit's selection into IIM Bangalore. Despite high work pressures (he was spending more than 12 hours in office those days), he had the determination to go ahead and give the CAT. That he cleared the GD and the interview with almost no preperation was a very pleasant surprise and an absolutely fabulous news for all of us. May he be successful in his career and may he cherish the memories of times that we spent together - not just in Dalhousie and Dharamsala but also over the past 2 and a half years at Delhi :-)

Life brings with it new friends and it takes the ones that we have to far off places, but that is the way we all grow as individuals... Life is good :-).