This remote village in India only has 83 people and 15 households

Among the many fallouts of two years of Covid confinement was a sudden rise in the number of people transiting airports and crisscrossing the world to get the ennui of the pandemic out of their system. It was christened ‘revenge tourism’. Travel plans overflowed with destinations of every kind and all the saved-up money went into getaways, many of them randomly fixed at short notice. The only intention was to blow fresh air into their Covid-worn lungs.

People I know rattled off familiar names of places from the far east to the American coasts. They wanted to see places and knock off items from exotic bucket-lists. I too longed to break the monotony that had set in the pandemic years, but not in the manner that most people in the world did. I didn’t want to see the big cities and bring home urban memories. I wanted to do something that wouldn’t be just snazzy Insta treats. I wanted the real results – a boost to my psyche, a shift in perspectives, a genuine new path to get out of the morass of death, doom and destruction that the world had sunk into.

As remote as it gets

I looked out for options to do an offbeat tour to some place the world hadn’t heard about much and found a little destination no one I knew had ever visited. Pokhri, a town tucked in the folds of the Himalayas, at an altitude of 5,900 feet above the sea level, in the Chamoli district of Uttarakand in India. It was as remote as I could realistically get from the noise of the world and be immersed in birdsongs and beautiful mountain views. It wasn’t a tourist spot per se. It wasn’t a place that people located on Trip Advisor. It was a place that only those with a soul will seek and find.

Spurred by an instinct to escape to a hideaway that will not have many of the tourist trappings, I booked a homestay cottage, Birdsong and Beyond, in the Guniyala village of Pokhri. As per villageinfo.in, Guniyala has an estimated population of only 83 people with 15 households. Such anonymity and isolation may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it seemed perfectly tailor-made for me, although it was my first outing of the kind, and I had no clue what to expect from such seclusion from the mainstream.

A beautiful journey

The place is 210 kms from its nearest airport in Dehradun. Although there are helicopter services that can take us faster to Gauchar, a helipad that is 45 minutes away from Guniyala by road, I arranged a cab from Dehradun. My journey would last an estimated six hours, winding through the hills, passing by rivers, crossing many a significant point of interest. An hour into my ride from Jolly Grant airport, I was greeted by the grace of the Ganges in Rishikesh. A pitstop here would have given my impending tour an added impetus, but the thought having 210 kms to cover by road made me shelve the idea.

The next point that I wanted to register in my tourist diary was Devrayag, where the clear, light green Bhagirathi, coming from Gangotri and the muddy brown Alaknanda coming from glaciers beyond Badrinath, merged like two souls in love to give birth to what flowed further down as Ganges. The Sangam of the two rivers symbolised a holy communion. It was solemn moment that I absorbed both into my consciousness and camera for posterity. Pictures may be useful reminders of experiences, but it is what the eyes absorb in the moment that remain etched in the soul.

The sun had nearly set at that point and Guniyala village was still a long way off. Steering up the Kedarnath highway towards a destination about which neither me nor my driver had much clue about, we passed Srinagar and Rudrapayag. Had it been a day's drive, Alaknanda would have glistened throughout the journey, but a full moon that shone on it was enough to compensate on that long, lonely drive.

wknd@khaleejtimes.com