Riding Into A Himalayan Sunset, Phone-Less And Free

Riding into a Himalayan sunset, phone-less and free

- Bhanu Prakash Chandra

Shangri-La might just be an imaginary place in writer James Hilton’s book, Lost Horizon (1933). Then again, maybe not. In this uncertainty lies my hope. Every time I get a chance to travel to the Himalayas, the hope of finding Shangri-La is rekindled. This time, I am heading to Lo Manthang, a walled city in Nepal’s Upper Mustang, to take part in Royal Enfield’s Himalayan Adventure motorcycle ride. Not many tourists have experienced the desolate yet dreamy world of Lo Manthang. The roads that lead you there wind through a breath-taking high-altitude Himalayan vista. To experience it, you have to be free from the distractions of the world below. That is why I decided to stay away from my mobile phone for two weeks. Would I be able to do it in this age when life without mobile connectivity may be an existential crisis waiting to happen?

This is not the first time I am going incommunicado. I had stayed away from my iPhone for 10 days during a Vipassana meditation course in 2012. But the words OTP and OTT were non-existent in those days. Now, the situation is different. Your mobile number is your identity, your brain is stored on your phone’s cloud, and if you do not constantly update your status on social media, you might as well have disappeared off the face of the earth.