Aditi was done. Done with meetings that could have been emails. Done with deadlines that never really ended. Done with the corporate world’s constant pressure to keep optimizing herself just to stay relevant.
She sat quietly on her bed, staring at the wall of her room for ten straight minutes. No music. No scrolling. Just silence and exhaustion.
Then suddenly, almost impulsively, she picked up her phone and searched for trekking groups for a weekend trip.
One random Instagram page appeared on her screen. She clicked on it without thinking much. There it was a weekend trek to Chandrashila.
She had never even heard the name before.
Aditi googled a little about it. Snow. Mountains. A temple called Tungnath Temple. Sunrise views. People calling it magical. Within the next twenty minutes, the tickets were booked.
Only after booking them did the anxiety kick in.
Thirty random strangers. A two-day trip. Mountains she had never seen before. But somehow, the plan was already made now.
The day arrived.
Aditi boarded a bus from Delhi late in the evening. When she reached the boarding point, people were already talking, laughing, adjusting backpacks, sharing snacks, introducing themselves like they had known each other forever.
She quietly took the window seat and plugged in her earphones without playing anything.
Still, during the journey, she ended up talking to a few people. Tiny conversations. Names, jobs, hometowns, “Is this your first trek?” type of conversations. Aditi was surprisingly good at small talk when needed. Not because she loved talking but because she knew how to make people feel comfortable.
By the next morning, they had reached the base village. The mountains stood quietly in the background like giants watching everyone arrive. And suddenly, the city felt very far away.
Trekking day arrived.
The group gathered early in the morning. The weather had become unpredictable recently, and everyone had been warned about black ice on the route because of fresh snowfall and rain.
Some experienced trekkers advised the group to rent spikes for their shoes. Aditi looked at her beginner-level trekking shoes and immediately rented a pair out of caution.
The trek toward Tungnath Temple began.
The pathway was made of stone trails laid in a zig-zag pattern across the mountains. On one side were deep valleys, on the other were forests dusted with snow. Cold mountain air hit her face sharply every time the wind blew.
For the first hour, Aditi walked with full energy. Everything felt surreal.
The mountains looked painted. The silence sounded different there. Cleaner somehow. But as they climbed higher, things started changing.
The elevation increased. The oxygen levels dropped. Breathing became heavier. Her legs slowly began hurting. Snow started appearing on the sides of the path.
And the climb became steeper.
Still, with Shiva’s name constantly running in her head, she kept walking.
Step by step. Breath by breath.
Finally, after struggling through the last stretch, she reached Tungnath Temple, one of the highest Shiva temples in the world.
The temple stood silently in the middle of snow-covered mountains as if it had existed before time itself.
Aditi folded her hands.
And for a moment, everything inside her became still.
All the stress. All the overthinking. All the noise she carried from the city. Gone.
She sat there for a while after darshan, eating something warm with the group. Everyone was exhausted. That was when the trek leaders informed them about the final climb to Chandrashila Summit.
There was no proper path anymore. Only ice. Half the group immediately decided not to continue.
Aditi looked at the route ahead and honestly felt relieved hearing people give up. Her legs were already trembling from exhaustion.
“I think this is enough,” she thought to herself. “I can’t do more.”
But a few fellow trekkers looked at her and said,
“You’ve already come this far. We’ll help you. Don’t quit now.”
Aditi stood there quietly for a few seconds. Then she looked once toward the summit. “Okay,” she said softly. “Let’s do this.”
And my god, the final climb was brutal.
The black ice made every single step dangerous. They had to first plant the trekking stick firmly into the ice and then carefully move one foot ahead. One wrong step could make someone slip.
The spikes under their shoes scratched against the frozen surface with every movement.
No one was talking much anymore.
Everyone was just focused on surviving the climb.
But the weather stayed kind. The sky was perfectly clear.
And after what felt like forever, they finally reached the summit.
Chandrashila Summit.
Aditi stood there silently.
There were ranges of mountains big, huge, surreal stretching endlessly in every direction. Snow-covered peaks stood so tall and still that they almost didn’t feel real. Clouds floated below parts of the valley while freezing winds brushed against her face.
And suddenly, all her problems felt incredibly small.
Not happy. Not sad. Just quiet.
And somewhere between the ice, the exhaustion, the fear, the strangers who became companions, and the mountains that made her feel small in the most beautiful way possible…
Aditi experienced life in a way she had never imagined.
Say yes to the art you’ve always craved, the trip you’ve always postponed, the people you lost along the way, and pluck as many flowers as you can before life slips away.
Sakshi Sinha 