memories of journeys, magic moments of life, thoughts and dreams, anarchy and love!
When I read the book “Nachtzug nach Lissabon”, I got the idea of taking that train one day…but never thought it would become real that soon.
Now I’m in exactly the same train which Mundus took back then in the book, when he suddenly left his life in Switzerland to start a life-changing trip…For me, it’s a long planned trip, but also I hope to find the answer to a question which I am thinking about all the time since a while…so let’s see where this trip will lead to!
– love, travellers!-
Right now, weather here in Germany is the complete opposite of typical weather in Rajasthan; it’s cold, rainy, the sky is grey and everywhere people are going crazy bc of the storm which will hit us in few hours…but somehow I’m not that concerned. However, maybe bc of these uncomfy, rough vibes I’m missing the tropical vibes of India; the heat, the sunshine, the palm trees, the unbelievable green of the forest and the warm orange everywhere in Rajasthan…and of course the amazing fruit markets, which we found absolutely everywhere in India, selling all the fruits you can imagine…Of course super cheap and – depending on the season – also very fresh, especially the mangos…so we ended up having several mangos each day…ohhh now I’m missing these days even more…
When I went for that hike, I walked through a dark, grey landscape, not able to see anything bc of all the fog. I had no idea that already after a few kilometers walking up the mountains, there wouldn’t be any more fog….and so I ended up on a sunny mountain top above the clouds. Well…I had to head back to the cloudy landscape afterwards…but now I know, that there’s sun above the clouds – and I know how to get there. It doesn’t mean, I’ll always be able to reach the sunny mountain top..neither it means, all my problems are solved, when I’m up there…but it’s so important to know that there’s so much more than what we see in our daily routine, what we call “normal” in western society, that we sometimes just don’t know how beautiful and crazy life can be, as long as we’re not leaving our home and start to follow unknown paths, facing challenges and experiencing adventures, loosing the path sometimes…but finally arriving at the sunny top of the mountain…and as we look down, our life back then seems so small and unimportant, so boring and without any adventures, without any possibilities to reach something or to loose something, it seems like we’ve not been alive at all before. Right now I’m back home, and enjoying the safety of having a job and studying, of having a place to live and of having the same people around me each day…but missing that sunny mountain top badly…and actually I’m not sure, if I can keep going like this, living in this capitalist system, as if everything in the world was fine, or if I have to leave once again, to return to the sunny mountain top – and this time forever.
My lovely dog and me, camping in the forest at the 1th of August last summer. It’s a place near my home, deep in the woods and with a small stone circle to make a campfire, only reached by very few hikers. Also these days, in winter, I’m hiking up there often and planning to camp there again, but also to go on more and longer backpack-tours in nature this year, maybe also in other countries…
Kasol is a small hippiesque village in Himachal Pradesh (Northern India), placed next to a river and surrounded by mountains, forest, and rocks. It’s full of small jewellery shops, restaurants and cafés and attracting hundreds of Hippies from all around the world each day; it’s a beautiful, multicultural place and great to meet up with other backpackers. There used to be many outdoor parties in the forest around but due to some incidents there are no more parties; nowadays Kasol is famous for it’s nature and as a starting point for trekking tours, which can be quite adventurous. Definitely adventurous is the journey to Kasol; from the next bigger village it takes around 1,5 hours in an usually crowded, old bus, on a small, wavy and curvy road (the only!) next to a highslope and a hundred of meters deep valley.
Indian shops and supermarkets are quite different than ours. This shopkeeper was selling stuff on the street in front of his shop which is placed in the castle of Jaisalmer.
This is me, few weeks ago. I am 20 now, studying Social Work in a small town in Germany, which I surprisingly love, but missing travelling so much, that I’ll be posting memories from my journeys all the time. However, now I’m back home for 3 months for the practical part of my studies…and already missing everyone from university so much…but excited aswell how everything will go on, as nothing seems safe to me right now. But I like that. I like the feeling of not having any safe plans for the future.
Path through the “castle”, which is actually a small city inside of huge walls, separating the houses inside of the other parts of Jaisalmer. As the people in Jaisalmer told us, the people in the castle are living there illegally; they occupied the castle when it got abandoned long ago…and until now, they’re living there, earning their money with small shops, restaurants and through offering tours to tourists.
That picture I took while we drove back after exploring some villages around Pushkar (Rajasthan). There were no other tourists at all, and I really felt like on a different planet, being stared at by the few people who were outside even it was around 40°C in the shadow. However, the landscape out there’s amazing, desert-like, but still some plants, very few lakes, grass, and endless roads,just sometimes getting crossed by goats and cows.
A lovely street dog and me, in Kasol, India, few weeks ago.
Sometimes I still wonder, how I ended up spending 4 months in India…as I had planned only two months, feb and march, mostly to do a yoga teacher course…India itself didn’t interest me that much, back then.
But from the first day on, it completly overwhelmed me with all the places full of beautiful, pure, chaotic life.
I still remember how thick the tropical air was when I left the airport, and this strange, different smell, the sounds of this – for me – new piece of earth…
I guess this was when I realized, that it would be damn different than my journeys before.
And so it was.
I travelled around, together with a lovely friend from home, explored, learned and mostly learned how less I knew because I were always staying in safe, clean and grey europe.
And I learned, that all my expectations how the people would be here were clearly influenced by stupid german media, western media.
So, forget all the western stories about this country and go and explore by yourself!;)
About how I came back to India…
I couldn’t get enough in these two months, feb and march, I couldn’t get enough of the nature, the mountains, the jungle, the sea, the fruitshops, the markets and rikscharides, the sunsets and coconuts, yogalessons and meetings with other travellers, culture and food, and all these people living here, and especially one of them, so that’s why I am here again.