Waking up early in the morning, I already had an eerie feeling. Watching magnificent hills, mountains and clouds below me from a house’s compound in the morning was a complete astonishment but yet a beautiful memory. I was embracing the memory of amazing feat and ‘extra-ordinary’ experience was viewing the hills and mountains early in the morning. Having conquered the hills I was seeing even at far distance to reach the place where I was standing brought a wry smile in my face. I was standing too far away from my home in a small village named ‘Neupanewada’ in Sipkhana of Raskot belt of Kalikot- the least developed part of the country- as I presumed before.
The community where I lived was the best group of people I have ever interacted with; a small group of people occupying a small piece of a high hill, being isolated even from other residences of Kalikot. They live like a happy and satisfied joint family. Even in the complete isolation, they are satisfied because though they live in separate houses they live like a family. ‘Satisfaction in the isolation’ is hard to imagine but it does exists somewhere in Kalikot. The art of solitude is in the whole community but all people are close-knitted emotionally. Maybe, that’s why one can feel peace and satisfaction even in the cool air that blows there.
Gigantic hills and greenery all around, small paths leading to even higher parts of the hills that stretch beyond one’s vision, small pastures that are rarely seen where animals graze, places showered by rocks, the small creeks and streams which provide cold and relieving water, the sweet smell of mud, and the cool air that always blew my hair, and those ‘red gardens’ where apples shower, will remain forever in my heart and memory. How can a place be so beautiful?
Whilst in my two days stay, the people came to have a chat with me early in the mornings, asked and deliberately listened to my experience both evenings, told their glorious migration history to Kalikot, fed me ‘red-rice’ grown in their fields, calorie rich ghee, curd and milk, and took me to the most wonderful places I have ever been in my whole life. In these times, I always wondered how people can be so humble to a mere visitor like me.
Contrary to my expectation of visiting a physically impaired place with miserable life-style of people, I ended up visiting a place which was ‘a paradise within’.
By: Nawaz KC
