High In The Sky — Bir Billing. Mountains have their own charm that…
By: Meenal Gupta
Tags: Nature Photography, Travelling, Nature Writing, Nature, Travel

Mountains have their own charm that makes you leave everything behind and follow their calling!

Getting a group of people to agree to accompany us on a trip is the second most difficult task to do, deciding the destination remains the first!

After months of planning and discussions, I along with my two buddies, have done the second one while the struggle for the first one was still on. So, finally, Abbie came up with this destination we could not say No to. ‘Bir Billing’ it was! It had an adventurous sport there (which was Chiku’s demand) and mountains (which was an important factor for me) and Abbie wanted to make this trip possible anyhow, so she was less demanding here!

We got leaves from our work, packed our bags along with some essential stuff to make our trip trippy. We booked a Volvo to reach our destination and it took us around 14–15 hours to reach the place. We reached Bir in the morning. It was peaceful, calm, and cold because it had rained there just a day before. We were way too hungry and started looking for our GoStop hostel.

It was 10 minutes walk from the bus stop, so we choose to walk. The path was narrow and had houses on both sides along with few monasteries in between. It was early morning, children were going to school and were passing innocent and curious smiles to us. Things were simple and beautiful. Almost all the houses had those Tibetan flags and that made it look bright and colorful. The clouds were way whiter and the sky was defining the sky blue color.

While admiring the beauty of the place, we saw a small restaurant which was cleaning and arranging there place, we asked them if they had something ready to eat. The people were nice and they stopped their work and asked us to wait as they can make momos for us. We waited and after satisfying our hunger, we started to walk again.

Finally, we found our hostel. It was a two-floor building painted in white with cute windows and doors. As we entered, we met a person at the reception and he took us to our room. The common room had many indoor games, huge windows through which we could see a lot of greenery. We got our room and from our room’s balcony, we could see the mountains and paragliders flying high in the sky. The air was different. It was more than warm and less than cold. It was just the perfect one to make you love your decision of visiting the place.

We didn’t feel like sleeping as we were so excited and happy, so we sat in the balcony till afternoon and had our drinks there only. We didn’t eat much as we had some other interesting plans.

It was afternoon but the Sun was nowhere to be seen. We called our cab driver who would drop us at our next destination and got ready for the adventure. He brought a jeep and drove us to the destination. We drove through the mountains and it was slippery as it was a bit snowy there. The ride was full of turns and twists, but the driver was too confident that there was no change in his speed throughout our ride.

And we were on the top of a mountain, ready to jump. Not jump like a jump but yes, fully equipped jump, it was our paragliding spot! It was colder there along with a feeling of fear but we didn’t want to miss the fun. We got our paragliders and the instructions we needed to keep in mind.

The jump was the most difficult part but everything felt worthy once I saw the view down there. It was breath-taking! The best part is you have enough time to admire your surroundings, it took us around 30 minutes to reach the ground. It was crazy, to see the beauty of the land from different levels. It was a constant struggle between the insane view and a butterfly feeling in the tummy. We were waving, shouting, screaming, and calling each other while we were in the sky. That feeling is beyond words!

Once, we were on the ground again, we missed the sky. Why walk, when we can fly, was our common question. But jumping again from a height of 2400m made us choose walking. While walking through this small and adorable village of Himachal, we found many small shops, simple people, and some fancy restaurants. It’s not a popular place yet but that’s what makes it even more peaceful and beautiful. Fewer people, lesser drama!

We were exploring the village till evening and went to our hostel room after we had done enough sight-seeing. Everything was so mesmerizing. It was a full moon night along with plenty of stars. The night was even more appealing. We were up late, enjoying every bit of the moment we could.

The next day, we had plans of going for a bicycle trek to visit the Nyingyang Monastery which was around 10–12km away from our hostel. We rented cycles and were on our way to explore the mountains. It felt like a small trek but the twists and turns along with that steepness made it a bit tiring. But, thanks to our adrenaline rush we didn’t feel anything but excitement.

Finally, after hours of cycling, we reached the monastery. When we entered, the positive and divine vibes could be felt all at once. We saw few monks dancing, a few were praying and small kids were learning from their masters. The monastery was charming and pleasing. We sat there and saw them dancing, the music was soothing to the ears. We all were spell-bound with the soulfulness of the place. After spending a few hours there, we had our lunch at a small open café that was there outside the monastery, where we could see the mountains on one side, monasteries on the other.

We had to get back to our room now as we had to take a bus in the evening to return to our usual life. We cycled back and picked our luggage, waved bye to the ‘Paragliding Capital Of India’. It was difficult to leave the beauty and return to our city.

I don’t know if my words have done justice to the beauty of the place but I am super obsessed with Bir till date. Sometimes, all we need to do is take out some time from our lives and explore more about life. And when we explore, we find that life is simple and beautiful, we make it complex and choose to suffer.