Me,My friend and My luggage tag

by dharini shanmugasundaram (India)

A leap into the unknown Nepal

“Get that man’s phone number,I will talk some sense into him” yelled my friend’s father at her through phone.The man in question was my father who has agreed for our trip to Nepal.If you start wondering why do two adult girls planning for a trip has to ask permission,well what can I say we are Indians. Being brought up in a family where every relative lived within 15 mile radius,you don’t get to travel often.Funnily,thats what I ended up wanting.Nepal was my next big step as a traveller and nothing could hinder me from my mission of making my first foreign trip.Not even the irate father of my friend. So,on a fine day in the month of October my trip started.Atleast it was fine for sometime. When we were half way down on our way to airport, dark clouds started looming above our heads.”oh God!not now please!I will break 20 coconuts maybe even 50 coconuts and do poojas for you” I bargained .After making myheart go overdrive with a little bout of rain,the lazy clouds finaly moved away. We reached Chennai airport at 3.00 pm.Three Iranian men were standing before us in our checkin line.Their passports were battered,bruised and worn out.I looked at my passport longingly and the blank pages smiled back at me.Someday my passport will be just like that I vowed to myself silently.By the time we finished our checkin it was 3.30 pm.The flight to delhi was at 4.00 pm. Considering the low budget of our trip we had decided to reach Nepal through road from delhi .We reached delhi at 6.40 pm and the train to Gorakpur was at 8pm.With our broken hindi we managed to find the shuttle bus to airport metro.My imaginations ran wild ,faster than the metro I was travelling with the possibilities of missing our train. Upon reaching Newdelhi metro at7.40 pm we ran the steps to 8th platform;The three of us together hand in hand,me,my luggage tag and my friend,tackling the fear of missing our train and the crowd on our way. The train reached Gorakhpur at 11 Am the next day, 2 hours behind the scheduled time.”This looks just like India” my friend exclaimed on getting down.I explained my happy go lucky friend that we aren’t yet at Kathmandu .We manouvered our way between the thronging taxiwalas and reached the busstop.The bus to the Indian border town of sonouli was a small 30 seater bus with worn out paint.There were empty seats at the back but the path was filled with hen cages and vegetable bags.With food parcels on our hand we did quite a gymnastics to reach our seats. When we reached sonouli we were late behind our plan by 4 hours .The next bus to Kathmandu was only at 8’o pm. It became clear that we couldn’t reach Kathmandu by night as per our plans.My fingers grazed again at my luggage tag for support. Feeling foolish of drawing strength from an inanimate object my hands withdrew immediately. The bus to Kathmandu started at 8.30 pm. As my friend got motion sickness,we moved to driver’s cabin infront to get some fresh air.Sitting on a small bed near the driver’s seat, we listened to the silence of night, broken occasionally by the roaring sound of a speeding motorcycle.Lulled by the silence,my friend dozed off after sometime. Wrapped in a cocoon of content,I gazed at the silhouttes of the mountains covered in the dark blanket of night and the never ending road stretching before me.I have travelled from the far tip of south India ,2400km to be precise on my own I realized and felt my heart swell with happiness. I couldn’t sleep a single minute that night.The cleaner and I didn’t have a common language but we connected.we talked about his family,our countries and life in general. Maybe as Paul coelho says there is a universal language which every being in this universe understands . After travelling 40 hours on road continuosly ,we finally reached Kathmandu at 5.00 AM.At the hotel, the receptionist took one look at our faces and sympathesized “oh,you guys have come by road”. Not that simple I mumbled grasping my luggage tag.