Since it was a mid-year break from the office, my cousin and I decided to visit my village which is only 4 hour's journey in the car in the hills. I live in Dehradun, the capital of Uttarakhand state in northern India. My village "Chaitur" is 130 km from here.
In my place, it rains every day and this is not a good time to travel, however after confirming with my father, who lives in the village that there was no rain and we found it safe to travel. My cousin suggested traveling by motorbike. I do not feel comfortable on the bike, no offense to bike lovers, but my fear of the road is too high that I do not travel especially on the bike.
We started our journey sharp at 1 pm and after crossing Rishikesh, which took us one hour. Rishikesh is a religious city, with foothills beside the Ganga River. Slowly we stuck in the jam, and the rain started. For the first half an hour we thought the delay was due to rain. However, people coming from opposite direction informed us that there was a landslide and there was no chance that it will open for the next two days.
This was the first rainy monsoon in this area and totally unexpected, we thought we could turn the car and cancel the plan, but then we were also discussed as this is a national highway it can not be closed for two days. Within that one hour, there were 5 or 6 police and forest department cars to check the situation. landslide was only 1 km from our car. My cousin started walking towards it and called me as I stayed in the car. He told me that JCB was caught in the landslide. The fortunate part was that no one was sitting inside the JCB and there was no injury.
We decided to wait to clear the road, during this whole thing we waited 6 hours sitting in a car and finally road was clear to drive. It was slow for the first hour due to a landslide. Finally, we reached home at midnight. and our 4 hours travel became 11 hours journey.
As It was dark few people from the village came till the road to pick us up with a torch, we did not have a road to the village.
My village is near Ganga river, on a very small hill surrounded by big hills. I spent my 7 to 8 years of childhood time here and learned a lot about farming.
I spend my week here with a lot of food, talk, and cherishing my memories.
