Beaches or mountains?

I grew up in a simple middle-class family in Mumbai. We didn’t live lavishly, but we never struggled either. Travel was a luxury that came around once every three or four years. That changed when I started earning and decided to go to Kashmir in 2023.

Before that, family trips meant monuments across North India, or the peaks of the Sahyadris in Maharashtra, where almost every hill station has the same Suicide Point and Tiger Point. So I’d seen mountains. I knew what it felt like to stand on top of one.

Or so I thought, until I saw the Himalayas.

My first encounter was at Doodhpatri, and I still remember how it made me feel. I couldn’t believe something could be so tall, so intimidating and so beautiful all at once. Over the next few days I went to Gulmarg and Pahalgam. It was March, and I was in awe the entire time. I had never seen trees that tall, terrain like that, roads like that. It felt like something my heart had been longing for without knowing it.

I came back after a week, but a part of me stayed behind. It sounds cheesy, but I mean it. That trip settled the old question for me: beaches or mountains.

This year, I went deeper, to Gurez Valley.

At the top of Razdan Pass, 11,672 feet up, all I felt was gratitude that I got to witness something like this. The peaks stretched all around me, and it hit me how massive this planet is and how easily we take it for granted. All this time, while I sat in my room scrolling through my days, this was just here. Quietly existing. Waiting.

And I couldn’t stop asking myself: what is it about these mountains that makes me want to sell everything and stay?

Is it their sheer size, making me feel so small that every bit of ego in my heart breaks?

Is it the rivers that flow for thousands of kilometres, sustaining more lives than I can count?

Or is it how constant they feel, compared to everything in my life that isn’t?

And yet Allah says:

“And you see the mountains, thinking them firmly fixed, while they will pass like clouds — the design of Allah, Who perfected everything.”
— Surah An-Naml, 27:88

Even the most permanent thing I’ve ever seen will one day drift away like a cloud. Maybe that’s the perspective I keep going back for. If they aren’t forever, then neither are my worries, my ego, or this life.

Whatever it is, I’m more in awe every time I see them. And every time I have to leave, there’s a void in my heart. I always want to stay a little longer.

So, am I a beach person or a mountain person?

I’ve known the answer since Doodhpatri. Mountains. Always.