A Coun-trees
A country of trees ..
Wah Lodge at Kandbari,Palampur offers a rare and elusive mix of grounding and centering to the overstimulated energies of the mind, body, and soul. Its spiritual appeal lies in offering the luxury of austere living. The spartan vibe immediately unwinds you, leading to an inordinate feeling of spaciousness, as if inviting you to open yourself fully — not only in mind but in body. As if calling upon you to dry your inner parts, expose them to trees, to nature, to mountains, to shafts of sun… and revive them, rejuvenate them, remove all the mossness and grossness that comes with living an overscheduled , overworked, hamsterised ( sic) life. It sharpens your senses first and then rounds them- making you whole – ready to start afresh –it really shows you the joy of finding your glimmers- and all the time reassuringly whispering -.’ Go for it, we are here.”
It was a homestay, but became a home — a hammock, as if its one end is tied to a mountain peak and the other to the root of a tall pine tree, as if orienting us to the very nature of life itself. The aspiration to reach the peak, and the grounding into the roots. Mundane was meticulous and spiritual was sensual-
Come to that, The spiritual narrative is obsessed with mind over body. But I invite you to upend this and see how the body can be a medium to relax the mind, for after all, it is the body which breathes, feels, gets the experience of the senses. I think the body is how we experience the tactility of life. We can use our body to calm our mind.
And I felt it even more as I stood outside the idyllic ,book-lit, sun-lit homestay — a kind of rural lighthouse to the terrestrial milkyway that jungle boldly and beautifully faces.
As if there is an unwritten , unsaid agreement between the lodge and logs to lean in to each other borrowing spaces – in the true spirit of shared neighbourhood.
And it is a cert, that we felt like trees- and if we did, then isnt that what we went seeking too?
Trees were a poetree-the deodar and cedar, the pine – as if they were the tall vertical roads between sky and earth --- a physical channel to transport the fragrance of mitti to sky and the light of sky to earth—perennially, preternaturally.
I was seeing trunks of trees innumerable, infinite , imperious, impervious, standing tall in their own right, as if scores of elephants are standing alongside me to witness the spectacle that nature can make. A parade,a kind of parade which is now performing a show stopping act to show the grace of stillness, grandstanding in its full glory, performing . And this I see — a spectacle, a showstopper of countless elephants!
The pachyderms that there are… as if scores of elephants are standing, dramatizing. “Come,” “I will take you to the sky.”
I see trees, I think elephants -------
after all, when it comes to nature…
I truly believe we only know the tip of the iceberg.
The magic is extant — the jungle still holds intrigue and simplicity. What if the trees become elephants when we sleep?
And the lodge, as if it is sprinkled with the elixir made of itr from nature’s own kitchen. The value of a tussock standing with equal gumption as trees… it was as close as one can get to the smell of the mountains. Not just the sight, but the smell.
Sitting in, one gets to hundreds of stems of trees standing firmly rooted. The mountains have made gentle segues into the hearts of people, reflected in their mountainous spirit and sense of being rooted and witnessing things go.
We were cradled and pampered with incredibly authentic Himachali Dham. The well-appointed, well-dressed team of Jyoti bhaiya, Sonia di, Manoj ji was at our beck and call with their entire heart.
If we do not learn to look at sun, and moon and trees, we will remain in the illusion of being the most important person in our life. And that is dangerous. Oh, we are too obsessed with concrete. While we seek control, nature follows the path of least -resistance—we take pride in culture, civilisation but in that civilization, we are forgetting root word -civil—
And somewhere in wah lodge at kandibari -civil,organic, humanity and trees are in a treaty- witnessed by mountains and sundowned by rivers and tea gardens.
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