DEOTARA B takes a solo journey from Pokhara to Muktinath, and once the excitement and apprehension wears off, realises that the journey is not a holiday but a quiet return for her. A journey through wind, stone and thinning comforts, into a Himalayan silence that strips travel of performance and turns movement into remembering.

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My home Sikkim is a place where mountains don’t just sit on the horizon; they quietly shape the way you think. They decide how fast you move, how long you pause, how lightly you speak. So, heading alone to Muktinath in Nepal’s Mustang district didn’t feel like entering unfamiliar ground. It felt like stepping back into a silence I’d known my whole life.

The shift was jarring, though. One afternoon I was just another tourist, idling along the lakesides of Pokhara after fulfilling my soft itinerary. The next, the silhouette of the Annapurnas started feeling like a quiet reprimand.

I wasn’t there to just lounge and drink expensive coffee. The mountains were calling, and being from where I’m from, I had to take the call. I would go to Muktinath. The change begins beyond Pokhara as you watch the color drain out of the world. As you enter the Kali Gandaki valley, the trees thin, the space opens up, and that noon wind hits you like a restless ghost.

It’s predictable, sure, but it’s still aggressive. It reminds you that nature has its own appointments and that we are merely guests in its schedule. With every stretch of road, the landscape begins to offer less. I noticed my needs doing the same. Meals became simpler, warm dal, plain rice, a bowl of soup eaten slowly in roadside teahouses.

Eating was no longer about choice, only about warmth and enough. From Pokhara, passing through Beni along the Gandaki stretch, I reached Tatopani, a 'resort town' in the most rugged sense of the word.

It is a small, humid pocket of reprieve, where the earth bleeds warmth in the form of natural hot springs. As I submerged myself in the sulfurous heat of the springs, for a moment, the 'reprimand' of the peaks felt a little softer. It was a brief reconciliation with the comforts I was preparing to leave behind- a final, warm embrace of the lower valleys before the world turned entirely to stone, dust and wind. Past Tatopani, the road is just a relentless climb. You enter the Rain Shadow of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges. The land is stark—skeletal, really—but beautiful in a way that hurts your eyes. Then, like a mirage, Marpha appears.

Marpha is the 'Apple Capital' of Mustang, and it’s surprisingly orderly. White-washed houses, flat roofs piled with firewood, narrow alleys paved with slate. It was different from the villages back home.

The sight of heavy-laden apple orchards after the wild, rustic road, was like a quiet miracle. I remember the first bite of a Marpha apple-cold, tart, and crisp- a flavor that felt as clean as the mountain air itself. Marpha is all white walls, blue skies, and that heavy, fermented smell of apple brandy coming from the cellars. But even here, you can’t escape the internet. I found myself in 'Jerry Galli'—the narrow alley made famous by the Nepali movie Jerry.

It was a bit surreal. There I was, squeezed between Gen-Zs trying to find the perfect angle for their reels and travellers composing their stories. I’ll admit, I didn't resist. I took a few selfies.

But as I was scrolling through them, I saw it: a weather-worn sign pointing to a brutal set of stone stairs. 'Way to Dhaulagiri Base Camp'. While I was worried about my lighting, those stairs were climbing straight into the crags. It was a reality check. In the Himalayas, there’s always a higher trail, a steeper path, and a more silent peak mocking your progress.

I didn't take that turn; my journey lay elsewhere. But the sight of those stairs stayed with me as I left Marpha. A reminder that in the Himalayas, we are always walking on the doorstep of something much larger than ourselves. By Jomsom, the air is sharp enough to cut.

The wind doesn't just blow; like clockwork, it funnels through the gorge with this high-pitched “om” that gets inside your head. I looked like a mess—layers of wool instead of style, a scarf wrapped tightly around my face to keep the silver dust out of my lungs.

I chose the road over the flight. The Jomsom airstrip is legendary for all the wrong reasons. Known for its treacherous landings, all thanks to the very temperamental sky, the clockwork wind here is not just an atmospheric detail but a predator that shuts down flight schedules by noon.

While a 20-minute flight from Pokhara sounds nice, it skips the "becoming". I wanted to earn the arrival. I wanted to feel the bumps and the dust. As I left Jomsom, comfort replaced intention while villages appeared and disappeared again, like passing thoughts.

Just a few miles north of Jomsom, I hit Kagbeni. It doesn't feel like a village; it feels like a fortress that's been frozen midbreath. There’s a literal heaviness in the air here. It’s no wonder they filmed Kagbeni here— that retelling of The Monkey’s Paw. The movie caught what the locals have always known: up here in the high-altitude desert, the line between the living and the spirit world is paper-thin.

Walking through the narrow alleys, I felt the 'Kheni'—those primitive, mudstone statues—guarding the entrances. They have these hollow eyes that seem to watch you pass, adding to the eerie, cinematic stillness of the place. The stone houses huddle together, shoulder-toshoulder, as if they’re trying to hide from the wind.

At one corner, I came across a massive Mastiff, its coat thick with dust, sprawling across the stone path. I called out to it, a habit from back home, but it didn't even twitch an ear. It just stayed there, a living part of the fortress, as indifferent to my presence as the mountains themselves. I found a restaurant overlooking the Kali Gandaki and ordered Su-chya. It’s an acquired taste—Tibetan butter tea, salty and thick. It’s not "refreshing"; it’s fuel. It warms you from the bone outward.

There were no menus, just whatever was bubbling in the back. I ate every spoonful in silence, trying to gather my nerves before the final climb to the ‘Place of Liberation.’ I felt like I was standing on a threshold, looking into another century.

Muktinath arrives without announcement.

Stone, wind, prayer flags, water. Sitting high in the Himalayas in the Dhawalagiri Zone at over 12,000 feet, the temple does not rise or dominate; it waits. Looking back from the complex, the Dhaulagiri massif stands as a massive white wall against the impossible blue, a reminder that the steep stairs I had seen in Marpha were merely the foothills of this higher clarity. Also called Mukti Nathar or Mukti Narayana, the shrine is sacred to both

Hindus and Buddhists whom they worship as an abode of Hindu deity Vishnu and Buddhist deity Avalokitesvara, respectively.

Pilgrims bathe beneath the 108 brass spouts shaped like bulls' heads. These waters are believed to cleanse one's sins and guide along the path to moksha. The water is cold, direct and rhythmic. It interrupts thought, strips the mind of its chatter.

I watched the pilgrims sprint through the 108 brass spouts—the water is glacial, a total shock to the system. They say it washes away sins and leads to moksha. I didn't run. I moved slowly. I wanted the cold to bite. I wasn’t there to be "cleaned"; I just wanted to be still enough to finally hear myself think.

No one seemed eager to arrive at a feeling. Travelling alone, I felt unnoticed, and that felt right. The place did not question presence. It did not ask for belief. Everyone appeared absorbed in something inward. That shared inwardness created a quiet sense of safety.

The mystery deepens inside the Jwala Mai Temple. A blue flame burns steadily while water continues to flow below. Neither tries to explain itself. The balance feels deliberate, almost ancient. Sacred spaces, I have learned, do not demand attention. They allow you to settle.

In this union of flame and frost, the silence didn't feel like absence anymore. It felt like home. As I began the descent back towards the valley, I did not carry souvenirs or certainty. I carried this calm. As if the journey from valley to wind-swept plateau had slowed something that did not need fixing, only space. I walked away thinking about how every stream begins- quietly, without a name, flowing out of something unknown. Like water, I know I will be led again, from time to time, to places like this. Places that feel less like destinations and more like reminders. Reminders of where we belong, and of a beginning that existed long before we learned to call it life.