Stepping into the Unknown

Finally, I started my long journey towards the “unknown.” I say unknown because I have no idea what’s waiting down the line, and that not-knowing is exactly what drives me crazy enough to go.

The night before leaving for Ooty, the fear kicked in right on schedule, like it always does, and brought its usual questions along with it.

Why am I doing this?

Why am I leaving?

Am I making the right decision?

Am I going to regret this choice?

None of these are easy to answer, mostly because I have no idea what the future holds. I still don’t have answers to them, even after finishing the trip successfully. Turns out completing the trip was not, in fact, a prerequisite for self-knowledge.

Fortunately, I have the best friends, who backed me even though they didn’t want me to take this trip, what with the weather being terrible at the time.

It’s easier to stick with what we’re comfortable with, even if we don’t like it, hoping it’ll get better on its own. It’s much harder to take the unknown path than to keep walking the one you’re already on.

I was scared, on top of everything, because this was my first solo trip anywhere, it was raining heavily across Tamil Nadu, and there’s a lifelong pattern of mine where if I plan something for too long, I end up dropping it. So naturally I asked myself: am I going to drop this one too? A very supportive question to ask yourself the night before a solo trip.

So I made up my mind: whatever happens, I’m going. Which sounds decisive and simple, right up until you actually have to do it.

Once I actually started the journey, the fear turned into curiosity, and I began to feel genuinely excited about it.

The trip to Ooty turned out to be the best experience I’d had. I lost my way in the forest, found my own way back, and deeply regretted my decision to camp there overnight, quite possibly the maddest decision I have ever made. I might not have woken up the next morning if I’d stuck with that plan. I ended up packing everything in a hurry at 8 p.m., in the middle of the forest, and walking out to find a lodge nearby. It was freezing, I was in no way equipped for it, running low on money, my legs were wrecked from about 20 km of steep walking over two days, and a local cheerfully mentioned there might be a cheetah roaming the forest at night. As motivation to walk faster, it worked.

The second day went much better: I made three new friends who joined me for sightseeing around the area. Thank you, guys.

At this point I realized it was never really about making the right choice or the wrong one. It was just about taking that step into the unknown and letting the fear go.

That voice in my head lost its power after that. All I had to do was keep walking forward.

So when you hear that voice trying to talk you out of a brave decision, have the courage to take the step anyway.

There is no safer way to be unhappy than choosing to live a safe life.

And two days after finishing that first trip, my mind was already planning the next one. 😉

Ten years later

It all started right there, on that ridiculous, freezing, possibly-cheetah-adjacent hillside. I started asking more questions. I got more curious. And somewhere in there I stopped being afraid of that first step, which in hindsight was a mistake, because the fear was doing a very important job.

Instead I started jumping straight into problems like a lunatic with unshakable confidence, which is a generous way of describing “no plan, but a lot of energy.” A basic mountaineering course. A trekking company I started knowing nothing about. Falling in love. Calling it quits on the company. And then, about five years back, picking up scuba diving from absolute scratch, still not entirely sure it was the right decision at the time, in the grand tradition of everything else on this list.

If I’d quit that day in Ooty, packed up and gone home when the voice in my head was at its loudest, I think about how different my life would look now, and honestly it’s hard to imagine it at all. Turns out the trip I almost didn’t survive is the one that taught me how to survive everything after it.

That night, camped illegally and unwisely in a forest with rumored wildlife, I had no idea I was rehearsing for a decade of doing exactly the same thing on purpose.

— Yoki