Travelosic Junction
4th July 2019, I still remember the date and the moment I came to Manali. The purpose of my journey was not only to travel from one place to another, dessert to mountains, actually I was running from a typical 9 to 5 job and chaos in my life even though that was my first mountain trip, but that moment I had no idea how this visit will change my whole life, that it will change “Me” yes today I am sharing the best six months of life, yes I am going to talk about “I will always remember that place” kind of thing The Travelosic Junction my hostel, another home far from home it was the first place I crashed at after entering in Manali lets go.
The Hostel
Walking from the Volvo bus stand, I took a left after crossing the old Manali bridge, and a couple of minutes later, I found the place next to the Manu guest house, a three-floor building with a small cafeteria, a hut, and a TT table. A big mountain and a waterfall were clearly visible from the front. Just above every room’s door, different quotes were written. I still remember the first one, “Magar meri dulhan to aazadi hai” it was a very absurd situation for me to understand what actually the place was. The chilling area was all about fun, and I mean it. Blue fairy lights highlighted the phrases written on every corner of the walls with a neon marker that was so trippy and easy to hallucinate.here is something out of the line I slept in that hut for twenty days, and what I did there is also out of line, so I went to the rooftop, and for the next two hrs, I was there sitting alone looking at the snow-covered top of the mountain, an open rooftop which has a 360-degree view is a blessing when you are in Manali.
The Utopia
The place doesn’t matter when you are around completely unique fellows. Somehow, you would learn to be yourself and don’t care about what other people think. There were six people with different stories. First was NASA, the owner, and my cousin as well, a college dropout living his life high in the mountains. NASA and Amit Bhai were friends. Another guy, Amit, a CA with dreadlocks, is a kind of hippy person from the group. Deep the volunteer, a short guy from Assam, an excellent tattoo artist, Deka, will say yes to almost everything. After all, that is why he was there.
The person hiding behind the latter ‘s’ is Rishabh, and his code name is saafi, a Graphic designer from Agra. Everyone knows Pablo Escobar, but we got ballu Bhai, the Pablo choco bar always pretends to be cool with his annoying actions, consistently high at something. Still, he was happy and didn’t care about the people he was annoying.
The six months
After two weeks of sitting here doing nothing phase, I became a volunteer with minimal responsibility. Four people were working as volunteers, including me, and all were daydreamers. Life was so smooth, as all we did was get up, smoke three chillums, and ask each other what the new shit we were going to do today except play four-player TT with four balls or try to walk on a slackline without any support. Our days were full of discussions about how to grow the business, and the nights were overloaded with music, old monk, and smoke, basically fun. To be honest, we got something that missing part of our life, freedom. I quit my job to be there, and now I was cleaning the rooms, but it was worthwhile. We used to do cafe hopping on the weekends, which included big house parties with local wine lugadi ( rice beer ) and santra. Sometimes we poked deep while he was doing a tattoo, and even I got my first tattoo done by him. We were looking for a home, and the only thing that excited us was fun, so what we wanted is our hostel should be full of people, even if we got paid less than usual prices for rooms (Hundred bucks for the dorm bed). Everything was so perfect, according to my convenience, nobody was there to complain when I got up in the afternoon. What I realized is things could work like that also, being careless, sleeping in the daytime, and not sleeping at night, it’s hard to explain what kind of life I was living, but one thing I know for sure is that I did what my heart told me to do.
Conclusion
Even a book wouldn’t be enough to describe each good moment I had in that place, but it could be a good recap for all of us, I know that every one of them is busy with their lives, but they still belong to that place. The place indeed taught me how to live life, but the people showed me how to live every moment of life. Moreover, the hostel belongs to other people; they changed the name to Ostello, but for me, it will always be The Travelosic Junction.
