A Voyager’s Love Affair: Mountains, Oceans and Tranquil Bookshop

Ruchira seeks escapes from daily life, including mountains and ocean, wildlife tourism, and a bookstore, exclusively for Different Truths, offering a serene environment.

There are certain spells in your day-to-day life when you wish to take a detour from your monotonous dreary routine, let your hair down and chill out. And each of us does it in his or her way thus ending up with an exhilarating experience. I have prided myself on being an enthusiastic avid traveller since my childhood and youth.

Now I am rather fastidious when it comes to choosing destinations. Weekend resorts and getaway packages, however attractive they may be out because often the total costs are prohibitive. Second on the rung happens to be wildlife and nature tourism. Granted, they encompass a few days and nights in an arboreal ambience far from the madding crowd. But you can never be sure whether the august inmates of the jungle will allow you to catch a glimpse of them. They have mood swings, too, not unlike we humans.

 I recall how a few years ago while trying to sell me a Kenya tour package, a glib-talking travel agent kept highlighting the “mass migration of wild buffaloes” (or antelopes perhaps, I disremember) besides the spectacular ‘great kill’ wherein the larger carnivores capture and devour their praise after a bloody fight. Let me confess such gory activities don’t interest me since I am rather faint-hearted. Therefore, I am left with fewer options, mountains, and beaches among them. Both suit me to-a-tee.

Mountains and hills fascinate me a good deal since their ambience and topography are vastly different from the plains. Far away from heat, sweat and grime, stray animals, traffic jams – that’s a pretty long list anyway – the air of tranquility that prevails up there is indeed breathtaking.

The sylvan and alpine characteristics merging into each other seem to denote the importance of patience, fortitude, and steadfastness in our lives. (My personal views entirely). Then you can catch glimpses of some famous peaks and some mesmerizing sunrises (the one from Darjeeling’s Tiger Hill for instance. I missed it though) you feel paradise is near:

“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
 
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied…”

These lines from John Masefield’s poem “Sea Fever” continue to haunt me ever since I read it, long years ago. To me, the sea (read ocean) has always been irresistibly powerful, enchanting enigmatic and ageless. 

Lord Byron’s line comes to mind, “Time writes wrinkles on thy brow.” Over the years, I have had ample opportunities to go down to the sea. 

Observing its wild, restless, tempestuous nature, I always had this uncanny feeling that it aptly reflected my inner being. The motley sunsets I beheld – be it at Kovalam Juhu or Kanyakumari- are etched in my mind forever. On a few other occasions, when, standing on alien shores I had looked across the swirling waters towards what I presumed to be my motherland, a the feeling of awe and fear gripped me: it was as if a furious gigantic creature was separating us! 

In a nutshell, to me, the “Sea” is an enthralling experience.

My last, but possibly the best comfort zone happens to be a bookstore! As a rule, I am not fond of shopping, the sole exception being shopping for books. The ambience of the bookshop interiors is so colourful yet tranquil; you miss out on the din and bustle accompanying sale and purchase of products; constant chatter, vigorous haggling, punctuated by exclamations – mostly attributed to the females, cackling, squealing of kids – are conspicuous by their absence.

I love the fresh smell of new books displayed on the shelves all around. For me books are not merely pages bound together; rather they encase and carefully preserve slices of their authors’ lives, the welter of their emotions, dreams, and passions.

Surely, it’s a blessing for the proverbial bookworms that many hi-fi bookstores nowadays include built-in cafes where visitors may leisurely browse one title after another over a steaming cup of tea or coffee!

Picture design by Anumita Roy