The echoes of the mountains
TIRED OF CORPORATE DRUDGERY, AUTHOR SOHINI SEN DECIDED TO TRAVEL TO THE HIMALAYAS TO NOT JUST EXPLORE THE MOUNTAINS BUT ALSO HERSELF
Ever wondered what it would be like to leave everything and explore the unknown lands? To be able to travel to places you have been dreaming of since your childhood? Famous writer Mark Twain once said, “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime.” And so, to not just explore the mountains, but also herself, author Sohini Sen dragged herself out of her regular job, and decided to travel to the Himalayas. Her latest book Zanskar to Ziro: No Stilettos in the Himalayas allows the readers a peep into the adventurous and thrilling world surrounding Asia’s longest mountain range.
“For me, every journey outdoors has meant a self-discovery. It meant travelling down the labyrinthine maze of my mind — piled high with the debris of social norms, the dos and don’ts from my childhood and the never-ending pursuit of goals. There, in those secret, silent corridors, I have finally learned to listen to my soul,” says Sohini, while talking about her travels.
But travelling was not always this easy for Sohini, in fact, as a kid she rarely travelled. She reveals that the world of words was her refuge back then. “I was an extremely sick child, who spent a lot of her childhood in bed. My family rarely travelled. You could say I was the female version of the boy Amal in Rabindranath Tagore’s Post Office. So, books were both my window to the world and my magic carpet,” she says.
Travelling didn’t just change Sohini’s perspective of life, but gave it a new meaning. She confesses, “When I did start travelling to the Himalayas, I was in my 40s, and completely sucked into the corporate drudgery of an IT company. The snow-covered pristine mountains changed my outlook of life and set things in perspective.” After travelling 10,000 kilometres through six Indian states and two neighbouring countries (from Jammu and Kashmir in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east, Nepal and Bhutan), she says that she is still under the magical spell of the mountains.
So, what prompted Sohini to write the book? She quips, “For someone who has, for most of her life, thrived like a parasite on other people’s experiences and writing, it would have been a sin not to pay back in kind. Thus, this book — to share the stillness of the mountains, and the chaos of the quaint village festivals;
the oral narra-