After spending a year avoiding air-travel and exploring my motivations behind why I love to travel, I put together a vision for slow and eco-travel, rooted in our migratory history. In essence, the vision was to prioritize sustainable forms of travel such as rail and motorbike while being more strategic about my travels, looking at them as a migration, necessary for my survival and growth.
Around this time, I had also just quit my job and had been deliberating moving back home. So when a friend of mine did exactly that, I decided to make a quick bike ride. The idea was to spend some time with him in a small town called Khopoli, hidden beneath the Sahyadri mountains by the Patalganga river. I looked at it this as an excellent opportunity to get a feel for the folk/rural life, before my own move back to rural India.
It wasn’t a lot of time, but this time slowing things down with my friends comforted and reassured me. It left me with the wisdom that when it comes to me, there are small joys in the folk/rural life that the bright lights of the city cannot offer. It also made me realize that no matter where life leads us, what (and/or those) our heart holds dear, will find us.