‘It’s a calling’ – Tom Kennedy
I get asked this question very often- why on earth did I decide to section-hike the Appalachian Trail for two months when everything is going just fine in my life and I’m in the middle of getting my undergraduate degree?
Well theres the catch – when is everything ever just fine?
Last November, my best friend (also my roommate) and I watched watched ‘WILD’, a Reese Witherspoon movie based on a true story of a woman who hiked the entire Pacific Crest Trail in the US west coast after she lost her mother.
That was it.
I mean it wasn’t. Yes, I was born and bought up in Dubai, but I never did fit in. Cities with glittery lights did touch me, but never as deep as the nature. The nature is so powerful and it had always called me, as if it held my freedom in it’s palms and tempted me through each breath of my life to come and taste it – my own freedom called.
Being 20 and having traveled across the globe to come to the US and study amongst the most beautiful valleys that could every be – The Shenandoah, I realized that maybe after all, things do happen for a reason. Like Rumi once wisely said ‘What you seek is seeking you’.
This isn’t the reason though; but what this is, is a path that might lead me to find out why I am here- my being.
So after watching Wild, this strong urge to hike the Appalachian Trail got triggered within my roommate and I. We made a pact to do it this year in the summer. We both were as serious and clueless at the same time as we could’ve possibly been. For me, the journey began then itself- November 2016. Since then, I have grown tremendously as a human being. The path of soul searching isn’t something you’d have to deter yourself from your present situation to go on, I have learnt- it is an ever-manifesting thought process that simply depends on how strongly you desire it.
I very passionately desire soul searching, and hence, I will be hiking the trail.
I have been doing a lot physically and mentally to prepare myself for it and I will keep writing about it as I go, for it is the journey that I am focusing on and not the destination.
*All the pictures in this post are original and subject to claimed but not legal copyrights. The camera used to capture these pictures is Canon EOS 50D. For more information, contact me via email or leave your comments in the section below. Please feel free to provide feedback or just share your thoughts! 
until next time,
Arushi Sachan
Trot With Arushi 
Leave a comment