I remember my first visit to the United States over a decade ago. Landing from my small, bustling hometown of Meerut, India, I was instantly awestruck. The silence, the systematic flow of traffic, the lack of honking—it was a world engineered for flawless human convenience. Everything was neat, clean, and in order . For nearly a year, I was hypnotized. I praised this country for its efficiency, its cleanliness, and, notably, its lack of stray animals . Where were the dogs, the cows, the insects that are a normal part of life back home? The US, I thought, was truly a superior model of civilization. My clothes never even collected dust; it seemed the entire landscape was sterilized. But as the years passed, the hypnosis began to fade. I started asking a darker question: What is the price of this perfect order? The Cost of the Empty Road My initial praise for the US was based on what I didn't see: no stray animals, no swarming insects, no dust. I realized this absence wasn't a s...
Google is an amazing thing. It tells us things which we cannot know otherwise. My latest conquest of mine is a result of curiosity developed in me by Google baba. I was finally able to arrive at Kutlehar Fort near Una, Himachal Pradesh. This fort is better known or more famous as Solasingi Fort. But why it took me seven years to reach this place is in itself an interesting story. Please hold on with me. Somewhere in 2017, when I was working in an immigration company WWICS, and while on a break and at my wife accomodation at Shri Anandpur Sahib, I was searching happishly for a place that is near to our location and makes for an interesting historic place. Our location in this situation was Shri Keshgarh Sahib, Shri Anandpur Sahib. I fingered the historic places near me in the google chrome search on my mobile phone and it showed me a place called Kutlehar Fort somewhere around 40 - 50 kms from where I was. At that time we only had a motorcycle, Bajaj Platina and we could make a round tr...