Certain places talk to you through the way they are. The cities in their own strange way wind your ego. The seas stablize your core. The sound of the ways go much deeper than your skin and bones.
If you've been living in a city especially Delhi, my hometown, you tend to feel the social practices and norms getting heavier by the day. But if you stay near the coast the sound of the waves suddenly cancels out the importance of our existance. Reminding, with every wave of the breeze and the sea itself that there's much more to things than the rat race we've been in.
Mountains are very similar in that context and definitely one of my favorites. There are multiple layers to which it is destressing. The moment you enter the mountains, the people completely change. They are much sweeter, caring, and humble. It seems like there's a inverse relationship between height of the place and the ego of the people.
The pine trees, the himachali chai, actual goats grazing natural grass, rivers Singing lullabies there's so much to go there for. Mountains for me destress at different levels and dimensions simultaneously.
Their grandness when realized makes us feel so tiny and irrelevant. The good kind of irrelevant. The type of
Irrelevant that let's us drop our stories behind and just be absorbed by the scenic masterpiece the nature has created. Birds wake you up with happily. The sun feels like it's happy for you and triggers gratefullness. The formation of the clouds and sunset in the same frame as the mountains is a drug in itself. The oxygen is widely abundant.
We all know one can get high off of oxygen. Trancidental meditation is all about defusing the right amount of oxygen to the brain. With the level of pollution in delhi, five breaths equal one taken in the hills. No wonder you'd find all Yogis there. They've known this for centuries that a higher altitude is scientifically more beneficial for their yog and their meditative state. Any place with a lot of greenery is ideal for the Yogi but the hills have a special pull.
I'm not a Yogi or a Traveller. I've studied in Shimla for 5 years and spent 3 years in manipal, Karnataka for my college which is very close to a beach. I've been living in Delhi only in the past 2 years plus the first 12 years of my life and I have to say, delhi as a city is one of the most stressful cities to stay in.
I really hope things get better here, and hope even more to finally settle down in the hills.
