The Strangers Who Made It Personal

 

There is something about long rides that brings clarity. Something about the wind cutting through my helmet, the unpredictable roads, the constant shift in landscapes. But out of everything that happened during my ride from Kanyakumari to Northeast, the thing that stuck with me the most… was the kids.

I met them on mountain stretches, in tea stalls, on winding roads where language did not matter. Tiny humans with eyes wide open to the world, holding no judgment and no doubt. Some just smiled shyly, a few waved from a distance, some ran straight into my arms like we had known each other for years and some just stared curiously at the black jacketed stranger with messy hair and dusty boots. I did not know their names. I did not ask for them either. But they all gave me something.

There is a purity to that. A kind of acceptance that adults lose somewhere along the way. You ride through places where your skin, your gear, your language makes you the outsider. But then comes a child who walks up with muddy fingers and offers you a biscuit. Or just stares at you like you are something out of a cartoon. And somehow, all the distance disappears.

We talk so much about travel changing us. But no route, no landmark, no breathtaking view has stayed with me the way these small faces did. They are the reason I remember this ride the way I do. 

I could have crossed ten more borders. Ridden thousands of extra kilometres. But I don’t think I would find anything more pure than the laugh of a kid Who does not care where you are from, what you ride or how far you have come. Who just sees you. And smiles.

Peace.