I have always had a theory that people who live close to mountains and hills are much more humane than those who don’t. I feel they are shaped by a mountain, by her largeness and largesse, by her ability to treat with the sky and earth with ease; by her generosity in turning clouds into rivers that feed millions; by her richness, her deciduousness; and by her ability to stare at everything around her, eyeless, endless. I have always had a theory that all good things are born near mountains. Who would have thought that the Chenab, one of the five famous rivers of Punjab, starts off as ice on top of Baralacha, then melts into two streams, one flowing east and one flowing west, and then turning and twisting and calculating to meet again at Tandi to form the Chandrabhaga River, which then enters Punjab to become the Chenab. Humanity needs something to rise and rise and meet the clouds halfway to bring down the rivers they carry.
You cannot see a mountain and not know, in your bones, that she is alive. That she is watching you. A mountain is the personification of ambiguity and therefore allows us each a different interpretation of her form and purpose. And when you stare at a mountain looming over you, you unconsciously project the entirety of your self – your thoughts, your ideas, your characteristics, your deeds; everything that defines you – you project it all on the enormous mountain face. And without knowing, you look back at yourself and begin a long overdue introspection. Mountains watch us as we approach them. They can look at us, and looking thus, they can stare into the very center of our souls, instantly knowing the deeds of the past and your present morality. That’s why I feel that one may visit a temple-town and not come back changed by the pilgrimage, but one cannot visit the sea or a mountain and come back unaffected. It is the vastness of these beings, you see. The vastness changes us. They give us an indication of how a life of immensity, of an expansive spirit of generosity, can be lead.
Mountains elevate us. They allow us to climb their bodies and look down upon the more clarified view of the landscape beneath. They allow us to gain a perspective of the land, of lower altitudes, of lower attitudes. Climbing a mountain is symbolic; the idea is to climb to the peaks of yourself. Mountains challenge us. They ask of us but these questions - how high can you go? How much can you see? How far? They say to us as we climb them slowly, that if there is but one purpose to life, then it must be in the attempt of discovering the lay of the land by climbing to a higher elevation.
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Magnetic Hill
Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of the living.
Miriam Beard
Day 9
Elevation: 11,000 ft.
Distance from Leh: 30 km.
The Anatomy of Journey Page 26
