Quaint hilly villages tucked in the Himalayas are rife with haunting lore. Soumya tells us about one such encounter in an Uttarakhand village. An exclusive for Different Truths.

Recently, we spent an idyllic vacation staying in a lonely ramshackle hilltop cottage in the middle of forests in a remote corner of Uttarakhand.

Every night we had a bonfire, and people from the nearby village, which had only 25 families, would drop in for a chat, while we had the local wine, and stories of the forest and the supernatural were related. Under the stars, no light other than the fire, complete silence except for the crackling fire, it was magical.

The stories were all in first person, as everyone appeared to have had personal interactions with the spirit world and spoke about it in a matter-of-fact manner. In that atmosphere it was all very real and believable.

As per folklore, all hilltops are the abode of fairies, and though they don’t harm people, they play pranks. Our host shared stories of pranks being played on him when he first moved here. The fairies had to be propitiated before he could use it as a homestay.

Another advice was to never give lifts to strangers on lonely roads as they are inevitably ghosts. Of course, on practical considerations too its dangerous, people being far more dangerous than ghosts.

In the bright morning light such stories seemed like fairy tales, as they quite literally were, and we luxuriated having breakfast in the bright sun on the meadow with crisp clear air and a panoramic view of snow peaks in a giant semicircle.

Like all good things, our vacation came to an end, and we had to return to the hot polluted plains of North India.

We were advised to take a rarely used shortcut to save an hour and enjoy a very scenic drive. Armed with detailed directions and the Google maps we left after breakfast.

We did come across a well-dressed gentleman asking for lift in the middle of nowhere and ignored him.

After about an hour, during which we saw no other people or vehicles, when the map showed that our point of meeting the regular route was 7 kms away, it suddenly showed that we were 24 kms away and going in the wrong direction. We assumed that we must have missed a turn somewhere and turned around with difficulty. After returning a few kms, the map guided us to take a narrow road, which we did and again got 7 kms remaining. We happily proceeded, but after a km or so, it ended on a cliff face.

Stunned, we turned back with great difficulty and returned to the earlier road and started going back the way we came.

The map again insisted that we are going the wrong way and guiding us back to the narrow path. Ignoring it we started going back the way we came, nervous now about reaching the plains in time to catch our train.

We suddenly spotted a villager walking along the road and stopped to ask him directions. He looked surprised and asked us why we were going in the opposite direction. We asked him if he would show us the way, but we couldn’t follow his directions.  So we asked him if we could drop him there. He said that he wasn’t going there but would show us the way, and got into the car with his scythe and rope.

We turned around again and went back in the original direction.

By now we had lost an hour going around in circles. Guided by this good Samaritan, we ignored the Google map and the little side road and continued downhill. Our guide was mystified by the voice of the Google lady giving directions, and said how would this angrez know the way?

We told him that she didn’t and is telling us to go the other way.

Anyway, after a while he told us to stop and got off. We were protesting that he was supposed to guide us, but he pointed out that he had promised to show us our destination, not take us there.

He accordingly pointed out a few houses deep in the valley and said that that’s your destination, just follow roads that take you towards it, keeping to roads going downhill.

He then took a footpath and started walking down.

We followed his advice and within fifteen minutes reached the main road, and suddenly the Google map stopped saying 28kms to destination and said that your destination is here.

From then on, we followed well-travelled roads and reached the plains in time.

We assumed that it was some glitch in the Google maps, but sometimes I wonder, was it a prank of the fairies?

Picture design by Anumita Roy, Different Truths

Soumya Mukherjee

Soumya Mukherjee is an alumnus of St Stephens College and Delhi School of Economics. He earns his daily bread by working for a PSU Insurance company, and lectures for peanuts. His other passions, family, friends, films, travel, food, trekking, wildlife, music, theater, and occasionally, writing. He has been published in many national newspapers of repute. He has published his first novel, Memories, a novella, hopefully, the first of his many books. He blogs as well.

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