You’re a constant evolution. You are a continual unfolding. You haven’t met every part of yourself yet, you haven’t unearthed every Desire. There is more to you, and there is more to life – but to know this, you first have to do the most subversive thing, which is to leap without knowing where, exactly, you will land.

I landed in Kashmir, as they say “Gar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast” meaning “if there is heaven on earth it is here, it is here, it is here” and it indeed is.

After failing to get internship in any major city of India, I finally lifted my phone, gathered the courage and dialed the number, it was of a hotel in Kashmir and they said yes, all of my conditions were met and I recieved my offer letter by the evening. And just like that I landed in Kashmir on 30th April 2018 for the very first time in my life. Everybody called my parents crazy to send their daughter to Kashmir(as it is highly infamed by media) but they believed in me and my choices. If it wasn’t for them and their support I would never become who I’m today. So here I was in Srinagar, first time alone, in an unknown city with fear in my heart and majorly disappointed because I thought I’m going to Kashmir… mountains, pine trees, colurful flowers, f rivers flowing, but I was stuck in a traffic jam, with buildings on either sides, horns honking, a busy city to sum it all. From one city to another, I thought to myself where have I come. Everytime anybody asked me how do you like Kashmir my reaction would be “yeh to sheher hai, vo movie wala kashmir kaha hai” (this is a city, where is the kashmir they show in the movies) and everybody would tell me “movie wala kashmir to pahalgam, sonamarg me hai” ( the kashmir you see in movies is in pahalgam and sonamarg) and I couldn’t wait to go and see that kashmir.

After exactly 11 days of being in kashmir, I overheard this group of 4 men, who’d come to help us from different Lalit properties of India, whom I’d never talked to before, making plan to go to gulmarg the very next day. I immediately without thinking anything went to them and introduced myself and asked if I could join them and they agreed. Unable to sleep all night, thinking if they would even ask me in the morning to come with them and if they will — I’ll finally be seeing the Kashmir I’m here for. And will it be as pretty as it is in my mind ? Next morning there was a knock on my window, I was still sleeping and was awake in a second and they told me “get ready, we’re leaving in 30 mins”. I got ready and we left the premises, walked down to the main road and in front of us was the majestic Dal Lake, my jaw dropped for a second I’d never seen something so beautiful in my whole life, I still remember, clear blue sky, cotton like clouds, mountains on the sides, and the mighty Dal Lake with shikaras floating, and I knew I’ve come to the right place. Without spending much time on the lake, we took the taxi and started our journey towards gulmarg, scared to be with total strangers, in a totally unknown place but extremely excited to see what was to come.

The picturesque route for Gulmarg starts from Tangmarg. As we started from Tangmarg, it was all cloudy, extremely cold and heavenly beautiful. Majestic pine trees, mountain roads, hardly any vehicles, one with nature. The taxi driver pulls the break and we’ve finally reached our destination. It was mid may and the temperature was 2 degrees, it was about to rain and I wasn’t ready for this, I came in a jeans and a t-shirt. I grabbed my phone and video called my mom to show the astounding beauty of this place, it was all cloudy with zero visibility but it was still so serene. Suddenly one of my co-traveller comes and tells me see the mountains covered in snow (which is phase of gulmarg) and I was thinking to myself is this guy mad, is he seriously suggesting that there are mountains behind these clouds and that too snow covered, in mid may? I ignored him and continued to chat with my mom and when I lifted my head again, there were these huge snow covered peaks far away which I could now see and I was speechless for a minute does such beauty seriously exist? Am I dreaming? The only thought I had in my mind in that very moment was if only I could somehow go there and stand on the top of that mountain, how insane would that be ? We started walking to where ever the road was going, and after walking for sometime the concrete road ended and there was a way towards the jungle, which we took and started to climb uphill. I being fat, having no habit of walking or exercising then, was having a difficult time to climb. Three of our mates went ahead of us and one guy stayed with me to accompany me and to help me climb. The way through the jungle was filled with beautiful sceneries, small water streams, huge trees, clouds who were so down, they would sometimes pass through us. Finally I reached my limit, I couldn’t push myself any further. I asked my fellow mate to carry on without me and I’ll meet him on his way back, but he refused to do so. It started raining heavily by then and a horseman with his horse was coming downhill and he asked us if we wanna hop on and take a ride on the horseback to the top, after some convincing we agreed to go with him, he gave us firhan(local kashmiri outfit) because I didn’t had any warm clothes and weather was extremely cold. And we started our journey again with hope to reach the top, after some time a very bad hail storm came and we were unable to proceed any further, so we stopped at a tea stall, had tea got little warmed up. I thought that’s it we need to return from here as soon as we get a window, but somehow the weather rather got cleared, everything was visible and we started again towards our destination (god works in mysterious ways).

We finally reached the top and it was insanely beautiful, something I’ve never witnessed before, these big mountains towards my back and this beautiful beautiful valley in front of my eyes and in that moment I knew that this, this is what I wanna do! This is what makes me truly & immensely happy! This is what brings me peace!

So when someone asks me why is kashmir so special to you, I’ve this big smile on my face. Along with so many other very special things Kashmir gave me, it gave me myself.

There is a saying “when you visit Kashmir you never fully return back, a part of you always remains there” and if you wanna know it for yourself, pack your bags and just go.

~Aabha soni