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What I Talk About When I Talk About Going On a Holiday
A pause offers us a new opportunity to set the pace of life
We travel, initially to lose ourselves; and we travel next, to find ourselves ~ Pico Iyer
The pitter-patter of rain woke me up. The room was circular, unfamiliar. What time was it? My faithful phone, which had been struggling to find a signal since we had arrived at this little paradise in the mountains of Uttarakhand, India, told me it was 4:20. It would be dark outside, and wet. I snuggled back under the warm covers.
An hour later, bright streaks of dawn light sneaked in through the window that offered a direct view of the Himalayas. On the previous day, I had seen the tops of Trishul, Nanda Devi and other Himalayan peaks in the far distance. I hugged my cold arms around my chest, slid the curtain across the glass pane, and stood transfixed.
From the steep drop that began at the edge of the property outside my window and all the way across the wide valley, frothy white clouds churned upwards in continuous waves. The nearest mountain range, its surface dotted with dark green pine trees, was visible in the distance.
The view kept changing as the fog danced and galloped, thinned and disappeared as fresh new waves jumped upwards to take their place.