An Outlet - Part 9

19 December, 2023.

It got vvvv emotional last night. But thankfully I wasn't drunk out of my mind. Vera on the other hand had lost control. We reflected back on some painful moments that we faced this year, some more recent ones as well from which we were yet to recover. Things got out of hand when Vera started sobbingly longing for her dad who has long passed away.

After we got Vera to sleep, I started looking out for someone I could talk to (other than the ones I was with). Luckily, Mia was awake and we had a good conversation of about 40 mins. Felt nice!

Today we woke up quite late. Vera wasn't in good shape so she decided to skip today's sight seeing.

We freshened up and left for Landour on our rented scooter. It was a good 20 min ride and the journey was amazeeee. The view from the top hits different. Mussoorie/Landour seems like one of those places where the journey is better than the destination.

That doesn't mean the destination was any bad. Landour is even more on a height and at one point, the temperature suddenly dropped a couple degrees. And we found ourselves facing the snowy peaks! The view was sooooo gooood!

We were short on money today so we were done with our share of fancy cafes. But Yale and I visited 2 of them just to take pictures of the view. Hehehehe. To be fair, the prices for one of them really went through the roof.

We initally settled for a decent bowl of Maggi. But then got tempted to try desserts at a really aesthetic looking bakery. The treats were okayish but the view compensated for it.

We couldn't leave Vera alone for that long and had to get her back some food so started our journey back to the dorms. We made a conscious choice to eat out of a slightly dilapidated looking settlement because:

a. We didn't have much money left, remember?

b. At the back of our minds, we knew that at such locations, small places like these could also promise to deliver good food

And this definitely did! The cheap ass thukpa we had there was soooo gooood! I even packed one for Vera even though we had ordered idli for her earlier.

We came back to the dorms and spent some time there. Vera looked better than she did in the morning so that's a good sign. Yale and I went towards the common area to look at the view and played TT for a bit. The two of us were still in exploration mode and didn't want to spend the rest of our time at the dorms. So we decided to head out to one of the peaks. Vera and Silas wanted to rest for some more time so it was just the 2 of us.

Again, the view all along the way to the peak blew me away. It was almost sunset by the time we reached the peak. The peak housed a monk settlement along with a monastery. We took in the surroundings, visited the monastery there (Yale had been longing to visit one during the trip), played around with both the big and small prayer wheels and took a bunch of pictures/videos there. It felt very peaceful there.

We decided to head back once it started getting a little dark. The ride back was soooo coldddd but we were sufficiently covered so it didn't feel that bad. Vera and Silas were fast asleep when we got back. So we woke them up, got refreshed and went back to the market place that we had visited yesterday.

I got Alex a big figurine (he might come back home during Jan for a couple of daysss!) and then we headed to a popular Tibetan/Asian restaurant. Oh, we did stop by a jalebi place in the middle.

Usually, restaurants modify their dishes to suit majority of Indians' palette but not this place. The other three didn't enjoy the food but I had a blast eating my Thai soup, vv spicy dumplings and thenthuk. Definitely my type of food.

We went back to the dorms, handed over our scooters and are currently chilling at our balcony. I am not sure why have we decided to leave tomorrow when we could've saved a day (and dorm money for the extra night) by traveling at night. Or we could've planned to do some more sight seeing during the day and leave tomorrow evening/night. I don't think that's happening tho.

So let's just enjoy the final night of the trip.