Each of the seven posts in this series includes a song at the beginning. These songs have their roots in the culture of Rajasthan and are intended to instill in you the same feeling I experienced during this trip. Tip: Use picture-in-picture mode to let the video play in the background while you read the post.
It was 23rd November 2018—the unofficial last date of my first corporate job.
I’d planned to take two weeks of leave during my notice period—though technically not allowed—before an official release from the firm. Kudos to my manager for making it happen (he was on his notice period as well!).
Having seen my colleagues cancel non-refundable flight tickets at the last minute—for leaves approved over six months ago—this small feat seemed like a victory in itself.
That evening, my plan was to go out with two of my friends. But just like any other day at any other consulting firm, our plan kept on getting postponed further and further as the three of us juggled between urgent and extremely urgent work.
A consultant and his deliverable are like Tom & Jerry—the former keeps finding creative ways to catch the latter, the latter keeps finding ways to escape from the former.
Fortunately, our persistence that night paid off.
We left around 10:30 pm for our mandatory farewell celebration, and at just after midnight, I bid my teammates goodbye for one last time. I knew I was going to miss them—as well as the daily routine of getting ready and going to the office. But letting go and moving on was a lesson that I still had to learn over and over.
The next morning, I woke up with a feeling of weird emptiness. There was a new problem now—I hadn’t really planned what to do with the leave, given that the chances for it happening were pretty bleak.
I was certainly not going to stay at home.
“What about my long-awaited dream of backpacking alone with a one-way ticket in hand?” I asked myself.
“Why not!” my heart replied.
So the next two days went by with me researching a long list of options—varying anywhere from Kerala to North-east within India, and from Bangkok to Europe outside of it. Money did not seem like an issue… at least at the moment…
After conducting a thorough research, I shortlisted two destinations: one within India and one abroad.
For outside the country, the choice was pretty simple—Thailand.
But something inside me was calling to go to the destination I’d chosen within India—Rajasthan.
Rajasthan had been on my travel list for a while and being a Marwadi it was virtually my own turf (even though I hadn’t visited any other places in last 25 years apart from Jaipur and my native village).
And so it was decided. When Monday morning arrived, I put in the request for my final corporate flight ticket, my last fly-back from the client location.
At 4 pm in the evening, an email from Jet Airways arrived in my inbox. I was scheduled to depart Kolkata at daybreak the next morning.
*****
It took precisely an hour to pack my rucksack.
By the time I was done, the clock was ticking at thirty minutes past midnight.
Everything was set. Shit.
It was this realization that triggered my customary “tug in the gut”—a weird feeling of a contorting stomach—that arrives before every solo trip and sends me into a spiral of self-doubt.
Within moments, the excitement of going on a solo trip transformed into hysteria and fear right before my eyes.
Was it a good decision to quit my job? Is this trip really worth it? Is any of this really worth it? Should I actually go alone? Should I spend so much money without having any source of income? What if something happens to me?
My head was bombarded with questions one after another. My heart began to race. A tingling sensation ran through my body as my legs went numb.
I lay down on the bed and took myself through a montage of past experiences. I recalled all those journeys that I had taken alone and all those incidences when things could have gone wrong but they didn’t, because I had handled them responsibly.
I took out my journal and started writing down my thoughts. As a coder, my first instinct was to list the worst-case scenario and build the solution from there.
“In the worst case, I’ll cut my trip short and return without any regrets,” I said to myself.
That was the framework.
I finally convinced my brain to stop triggering the evolutionary-instinctive reflex of anxiety and nervousness in anticipation of imminent danger.
At that moment, I’d fooled my brain for sure. But in reality, I had no idea how this trip was going to turn out. Only time could tell (and it sure did, sooner than you’d expect).
I tried to get a few hours of sleep before leaving early morning.
My long-awaited dream of departing with a one-way ticket in hand and no fixed itinerary in mind was going to be realized in less than 6 hours.
*****
This story is part of my solo trip series—Backpacking Rajasthan.
Check out the entire series here.
