Enter: Sangla Valley. After a considerable climb up the mountainside from the camp at the edge of the Baspa River through an alpine forest, a friend and I emerged at the liquefying extremity of a massive glacial entity.
The spot accorded the most magnificent vistas of the valley below and after the customary camerawork frenzy, we settled down to a long spell of solitude. Gazing around, I marveled at the overwhelming respect that the magnitude and magnanimity of nature demands from us. Also, at the awe and fortitude it invokes in us once we understand its modus operandi. Regrettably, city life ill-prepares you for these insights.
Confident of my own resilience amidst the elements, I decided to first skinny dip under the frosty melt that had been beckoning seductively from the moment I got there; followed by an equally decadent and languid sunbath, stretched out on a large, comfortably warm boulder. My only audience, an astonished friend, and indifferent canines.
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu, travel enthusiast and the author of Adrift: A junket junkie in Europe is the youngest of four siblings born into an aristocratic family of Punjab. Dogged in her resistance to conform, and with parental pressure easing sufficiently over the years, she had plenty of freedom of choice. And she chose travel.
She was born in Shimla, and spent her formative years at their home, Windsor Terrace, in Kasumpti while schooling at Convent of Jesus & Mary, Chelsea. The irrepressible wanderlust in her found her changing vocations midstream and she joined Singapore International Airlines to give wing to her passion. She has travelled extensively in Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, South Africa and SE Asia; simultaneously exploring the charms within India.
When she is not travelling, she is writing about it. Over the past decade or so, she has created an impressive writing repertoire for herself: as a columnist with Hindustan Times, as a book reviewer for The Tribune and as a contributor to travel magazines in India and overseas. Her work-in-progress, the documenting of colonial heritage along the Old Hindustan-Tibet Road, is an outcome of her long-standing romance with the Himalayas.
