Nine days, almost no plan, and a stranger's plate of rajma chawal on top of a mountain — the accidental trip that became the whole idea.
I want to tell you about a plate of rajma chawal.
It was piping hot. One plate, two of us. On top of a mountain in Kinnaur, thirty-six hours since our last real meal. A stranger called out to us from below the valley — didn’t know us, didn’t know we were hungry, called out anyway. That one plate changed the shape of the entire trip. This is the story of how I accidentally discovered slow travel, and how it became HawaaPaani before HawaaPaani had a name.
It started with almost no planning, which is how the best ones usually do. A friend and I decided — let’s go. Booked a bus from Delhi to Himachal, figured we’d sort the rest once we landed. We didn’t sort anything. Every hotel in Shimla was full, peak season, not a single room. So we did what you do with no plan and no bed: got on a state roadways bus and kept going, all the way to Narkanda. Woke up the next morning with nine empty days ahead and no idea what to do with them.
That first day, we climbed to Hatu Peak — one of the highest motorable points around, a temple at the top, and a valley of white and grey clouds sinking below us like we were standing above the weather itself. I said five more minutes, more times than I can count. Then someone called out from below: didi, didi. We hesitated — Delhi doesn’t teach you to trust strangers — but it was a temple, and something about the moment felt safe. They were cooking for the temple, had extra, handed us a plate of rajma chawal and kept asking if we wanted more. I remember thinking that was the warmest I’d felt in years. Not just the food. The people.
From there it kept happening. Kalpa, where we did nothing but watch the Inner Kailash range change colour for two days straight. Chitkul — the last village before Tibet — where we woke up to snow on the car in June and just stood there laughing. Sangla, where we stumbled into a once-a-year puja at the Bure Devta temple on the exact day it happened, and sat making prasad with women who’d never met us. Parvati Valley at the end, just the river and the sound of finally exhaling.
Nine days. Almost no plan. A taxi driver we found by accident. Snow in June. A stranger’s rajma chawal on a mountain. I went to Kinnaur thinking I was taking a break. I came back understanding, without being able to name it yet, that the best travel isn’t the travel you arrange — it’s the travel that arranges itself around you, if you slow down enough to let it.
That’s the whole idea behind this page. Not the Instagram account. Not the channel. The idea.
— Suparna
P.S. — the long-form version of this one’s on video too, if you’d rather hear it than read it.