Radhika
I didn’t think my relationship with the outdoors needed to change.
I had travelled enough to feel like I understood it. I liked being in the mountains, I liked walking, I liked the quiet that comes when you leave cities behind for a few days. So when I went on my first trip with Odyssey, I honestly thought it would just be another nice weekend outside. Good views, good walk, come back feeling refreshed. That was all I expected from it.
It was the Nag Tibba trek.
The beginning felt familiar. We reached, adjusted our backpacks, started walking through the forest. The air was cold in that nice winter way where your hands feel numb for a while and then slowly warm up as you move. The trail was beautiful and calm and I remember thinking, okay, this is going to be good.
What I didn’t realise at that point was that the difference wouldn’t come from the place. It would come from how the whole experience felt.
A few hours into the walk, we reached a place where we could have camped for the night. We stood there for a bit, looking around. It was fine, but nobody felt excited about stopping there. So we just kept walking. Not because there was a better plan, but because it felt like the day wasn’t over yet.
Our campsite for the evening
And somehow that small decision changed the entire mood of the trip for me.
When we finally found the place where we camped, it didn’t feel like we had arrived somewhere fixed. It felt like we had discovered it together. The tents went up, bags opened, jackets came off, and suddenly there was no rush left in the day. Lunch stretched into conversations, conversations turned into silence, and people just existed around camp in their own ways.
I remember wandering into a patch of forest near the tents and climbing a tree, something I hadn’t done in years. I didn’t think about it. I just did it. I sat there for a while, looking at the trees, feeling oddly happy for no reason at all. It felt simple. Almost like being a child again, where you don’t need a reason to do something other than it feels nice.
The sunset from our campsite was worth every extra step we took.
Evening came slowly. The cold settled in properly and we sat around a fire, warming our hands and talking about random things. I don’t remember the exact conversations, but I remember how it felt to sit there. Cold air, warm fire, hot chocolate in hand, and that quiet comfort of being somewhere far away from everything familiar.
Nothing can beat the feeling of enjoying a warm cup of hot chocolate by a campfire.
The next morning we woke up around three to walk to the summit. The sky was completely clear. I remember looking up more than looking at the trail. The moon was bright enough to light the snow and everything felt still in a way that’s hard to describe unless you’ve walked at that hour.
I walked slowly. Sometimes with people, sometimes alone. Sometimes stopping just because the sky looked too beautiful to ignore. There wasn’t a sense of needing to reach quickly. It felt more like the walk itself was the reason we were there.
When we reached the top and the sun started rising, I didn’t feel the need to say anything. I just stood there, watching the light change, feeling warm again after the cold climb. It was one of those moments where time feels stretched, like nobody is thinking about what comes next.
Sunrise from the summit
The team at summit
The walk back down felt easy, almost lazy. We took our time, reached camp, ate, laughed about the night before. At some point someone lay down in the snow and made a penguin, and everyone just joined in. It was silly and fun and completely unplanned.
And that’s probably what stayed with me the most.
When I think about that weekend now, I don’t think about the summit first. I think about climbing that tree. About sitting quietly by the fire. About walking under the moon. About how relaxed everything felt without anyone trying to make the experience into something bigger than it was.
It felt honest.
I realised later that what made it special wasn’t that anything extraordinary happened. It was that I felt completely comfortable being myself outdoors. I didn’t feel like I had to keep up, react a certain way, or experience things correctly. I could just be there, and that was enough.
Since then, the outdoors has felt different to me. Slower. Softer. Less about reaching somewhere and more about how you feel while you’re there.
And I think that’s why this trip stayed with me.
If you’ve read till here, thank you for staying with my little story.
Maybe one day we’ll end up walking the same trail together. Who knows.
