The first time I went back to India after I moved to America was life changing for me. Now, I am not usually the guy who has many life changing moments, I just go with the flow, but what happened three years ago I will never forget.
I was going on a pilgrimage to pray to one of my many Gods because I was diagnosed with epilepsy. There are two ways to get to his temple. One way is driving up a certain curvy road. The other way is climbing up a holy bunch of steps through 7 mountains. The temple where he was at was quite deep in a the mountains.
I went on this trip with my family right after I became motion sick after a horrible train ride. I didn’t sleep all night in that horrible train. We got off on our stop and I took some medicine and ate like a king. Then it was time to go up the mountains. Now most of my family was going to drive up there but a few cousins and my dad were going to walk. My whole family wanted me to ride up with them, but one person. My dad wanted me to walk. Now this was right after I was puking up my guts and he still wanted me to walk. My family was questioning my dad like crazy. I wanted to ride too but my dad wanted me to walk so bad. So I chose to walk.
Now I am a gamer. So before I took my first step I thought to myself, “I’ll pretend this is a game. Every mountain I pass will be a check point. And if I can beat this game, I can beat any obstacle in my life.” I personally thought it was a genius of a thought for me. Turns out I was dead wrong. I thought it was the worst decision of my life and I was going to die. I kept on thinking to myself how much of an idiot I was agreeing to walk. This was after I walked up 400+ steps. Yea, someone took time out of their lives to number each step.
My father told me the first hundred or so steps are the hardest because the first mountain is the steepest to climb. He said the steps will get easier to walk up on as we go deeper. He was right about that part thank god. So I kept walking and walking, thinking to myself, “it’s just a game, it’s just a game…”
Sometimes in a game you die and restart. That was my bladder during this walk. We were walking through mountains so bathrooms didn’t come by that often. And since its India it’s usually like a billion degrees Celsius meaning you needed to drink plenty of water meaning, well, you get the idea. Another added bonus was we were walking barefoot. We were in the presence of God and in my culture it is good to wear sandals or shoes in the presence of God. Sticks and stones literally almost broke my body.
After eight long hours of climbing we made it to the top. We took our 3550 step and reached another small town that was the home to the God we were visiting. My father knew I could do it and I did it. So I asked him after we crossed “the finish line,” “Why did you make me walk?” He said, “Because we were in the presence of god and nothing would happen to me.” He was right.
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