You are not a bad mother for wanting three days of silence. I am writing that sentence for myself, eight months late.
My son turned three in March. In those three years I had not slept a full night, finished a full cup of tea, or heard a full minute of nothing. When my husband said go, my mother is coming, I cried and then packed in eleven minutes before anyone could change their mind, including me.
The homestay in Gushaini hangs its veranda over the Tirthan. The first evening I sat there braced, the way you brace when the baby monitor is too quiet. The river ran green and loud and completely indifferent to me. Nobody needed me. It was terrifying for one hour and then it was holy.
Here is what a river does that a white noise machine cannot: it changes its mind. It rushes and hesitates and rushes again. It has moods. By the second morning I could hear them, and my host, an old fishing guide, told me the river runs quieter in the early dark because the snowmelt slows at night. The Tirthan breathes on a schedule, like everyone I love.
I walked the bank path, ate rajma that someone else cooked, and sat by one pool so long a dipper stopped noticing me. I thought about my son maybe four hundred times, which for me is rest.
On the last night I recorded ten minutes of the river on my phone. Not for him. For me, for the 3 a.m. feeds-turned-nightmares months, for Gurgaon traffic, for whenever I forget that somewhere water is doing all the talking so I don't have to.
The valley is gentle to soft travellers: short flat walks, warm kitchens, no summit asking to be conquered. If your life is currently owned by someone small, this river will hold you for three days and hand you back stronger.
I came home and my son had learned to say "mumma phone." I showed him the river instead. We listen to it together now, one minute at a time.
