On Cloud 9

As a kid, whenever I used to watch the cloudy sky, I wondered how would it feel to be on the clouds. They appeared so much fluffy and thanks to my imagination, I imagined myself bouncing up and down and sliding from one cloud to the other.

The fact that I can jump on the clouds remained with me even when I saw cloud layer below our flight. The only change was that as a grown-up I was now sure that getting near the clouds was achievable. But jumping out of the window to bounce on the cloud was not, until and unless I go for sky-diving :D.

Thankfully, I got a chance to get my facts corrected and I feel blessed to witness that eternal beauty which I cannot get out of my mind.

So this summer I traveled to Chopta, an offbeat destination in Uttrakhand, which has the highest abode of Lord Shiva in the form of Tungnath temple.

 As usual I was sleeping in the car because I wanted to preserve my energy for the place where we were actually headed for(I get tired easily, so have to work in energy saver mode :P). Journey had been long, slow songs were playing, everyone was quite, therefore a perfect setup to sleep. I don't remember for how long I had been sleeping, but woke up with the sudden hustle bustle in the cab. Everyone was in awe of something, but what?

I tried to look outside the window. It was a struggle going from half opened eyes to the moment where I don't want to blink them anymore. There was a layer of clouds running beside me. My heart throbbed with excitement, because this time I had the option to get down of the car and see how it looks like, how it feels. My cab driver was also amazed and we noticed he was looking off the road, which scared us as hell. So we all had to bring our focus back to the road, where we saw that we had a cloud in our way, which means we'll have to cross it. My excitement doubled, as what would it be like, passing through the cloud. (PS: I was sleeping while that happened on the flight). So we were getting closer to the cloud, it got a little foggy for a while and then clear again. Bam! Where is the cloud, did we just cross that? This was my reaction when I looked at the rear window, leaving the cloud behind. My childhood dream was just shattered, but a magic was created in the moment. I had just crossed the clouds in "waking" state. How many people actually get to witness that!

We got down after a while to get a better view. This is what we saw.

I remember describing the feeling to my Dad, though it looked like fog, but I felt as fresh as a leaf in the morning dew. The clouds did not just touch my skin, they touched my soul. I was surely on cloud 9.