Day 1: July 9, 2019

Someone once said -- not every wanderer is aimless... It had stayed with me over the years and I've romanticised it and fantasized about it for a long time. It doesn't ring true in my ears today when I whisper it to myself though. Probably because I'm not a wanderer in the true romantic sense of the word, or probably because I'm quite aimless. Still I'm off. To my adventure. I might be aimless nor quite the image of a wanderer, but my adventure is starting and I'm ready to embrace it.

No matter how many times I do it, it never grows old -- the rush that thrills through my body as the plane rolls to the start of the runway, the lights that mark it in the night, then the actual moment when the plane accelerates and in the blink of an eye it's airborne. Sometimes I just sit dazed at the absolute wonder of it all, and sometimes the exhilaration sends chills through me and the hairs of my skin prickles. The very next scene calms everything though -- the sight below from the great height like the birds must view us from above. There's something humbling and reassuring about the thought that from that very ground I had risen and would once again return to the earth.

The day had been frantic full of events. Flight was late to start from Pune which suited me well. The only time I had been to the Delhi airport had been to catch a connecting flight to Kolkata. This time I was looking forward to claim my baggage and go out in the streets. This was not my first time in the country's capital, but considering what lay ahead of me, each and every experience in store promised to be novel.

Start with the extremely long walk from entering the airport terminal to the baggage claim -- it seemed never ending. Next was an encounter with Delhi Metro, which had separate entities for airport metro and city metro. The former took almost an hour, the latter almost an hour and half. And so I found myself at the place from where my bus to Manali would leave later in the afternoon. I was rag tired from lack of sleep, perspiring profusely in the hot clammy Delhi weather and would have given anything for a shower, some food and rest, but to say I had been enjoying myself would be too much of an understatement -- my adrenaline was pumping.

Finding a hostel/dorm was imperative, but when I reached the address my destination eluded me and touts seemed to sense fresh meat and surrounded me like so many feline predators purring at the scent of blood. And then there was deliverance. All that I needed were found, well almost. I had a bed in a dorm in the hostel I wanted to stay in, I had my shower and my breakfast, but tired as I was the adrenaline refused to let its grip of me go and till the last hour of my stay I couldn't sleep. Freshened by the power nap, I charged to the boarding point of my bus to Manali and it was perfect. Perched comfortably in my seat and drinking in the view outside the giant bus windows, the next stage of my journey had begun. Manali, here I come.