4th of June, 2023.
Hitchhiking in India: Sarchu
Who was to show up and save me? The same young angel who saved me before, when I was first leaving Karu towards Pangong Tso. This time, he drives me to Upshi, where he says he will help me to catch a lift to Manali. We stop in a shop where he must drop some things. He offers to buy me some food but I tell him I don’t feel like eating anything. He has some food; I meet his parents (they show up out of nowhere); and then he takes me to a police barricade. There talking with a young officer, he tells him my story and ask him to arrange me a lift towards Manali. The police officer says it will be difficult because of the time. It is quite late, but it is not my fault that nobody picked me up until now.
In a matter of a few minutes, the officer gets me a lift in a truck. Sometimes I feel I made a mistake on accepting. Perhaps if I had waited for a car, it would’ve been better but who knows?
The roads are terrible, so what normally already is a slow journey for a truck, in this road conditions, becomes an indescribable long trip. Plus, the cold. Of course there is no air conditioning in the truck, and I don’t really get it why is so freaking cold this way. In order to keep warm, I take my sleeping bag out of my backpack and stuck myself inside. And I am still cold.
Today is the third day which I have barely eating something. I must have lost a lot of weight already. I am basically living out of water.
The truck driver is called Premsin. He is a nice but quiet man. He shows me photos of his family on his phone and tells me he is very proud of his children because they are very smart and study hard. We arrive at the small village / pass called Sarchu after 11 p.m. The queue of trucks by the road makes us stop some good hundreds of metres before the entrance of the village. Premsin offers to sleep in his friend’s truck and say I can sleep alone in his. I don’t know what came over me but I kindly refuse and ask him to walk with me instead to the village.
Sarchu is almost dead at this time. I can’t see much apart from a few lights here and there. It is super quiet. And it is freezing cold.
We stop by one shop which is open. I don’t even know what actually is it, but as soon as I see a young lady and her mother, I tell Premsin I will be alright, so he can go back to his truck.
At first, the women seem not so keen to help me or let me stay. But I think that, after a while they realize that, travelling by hitchhiking, in a truck, I really must be in need of help, so they let me stay. Their place is basically a tea house but also accommodation. In this case, meaning cotton mattresses around the clay stove, at the centre of the tea house. They are about to close and there are no “guests”. They both lie down somewhere in the tea house too. With my sleeping bag and another blanket, I still feel slightly cold, but I survive.
It was a crazy and long day, preceded by some crazy and tough days, preceded by the toughest travelling days of my entire journey since 2017. In this small tea house, in between Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, miles away from everything, late night, I feel like the most peculiar person on Earth.
10 Years Around the World 