Only recently, we went to celebrate my parents’ anniversary in Dharamshala, returning to the ridges after 11 years. You know, witnessing mountains up close and staying as near to adventure as possible. As someone who has always been drawn to the mountains, this trip felt like a return to familiar territory.

The night we arrived was no less than an adventure itself, when Himachal Pradesh clocked a 4.9-magnitude earthquake while we were chatting in our hotel room. It was a sudden jolt that lasted four or five seconds, but so violent that it shook us to our core.

I immediately shouted, “Dad!”, a little confused, wondering if it was just me, or if he had done something that shook the whole bed. Then it occurred to me that we had all felt it.

We came out immediately, well, at least we tried. Not knowing what to do in an earthquake up to that point, we followed suit as everyone from the hotel descended the stairs and made their way onto the road. My parents took the lift without my knowledge. As we moved farther away to an open area to avoid any unpleasant surprises from falling debris, I realised they were still standing right underneath the building, looking up.

We stayed there for a while, wondering what had actually happened. My mom, convinced that it was a rock from the mountain above, an idea I dismissed immediately coz we weren’t under the aegis of any mountain. A tile had, however, fallen from the adjacent building and shattered on the ground. It felt as if someone had played a prank and thrown something from our roof.  Was it the monkeys? Our minds raced, deducing random possibilities.

It was only later, when I started Googling, that I realised it wasn’t just us who had experienced it, but the entire state. So we concluded that it was definitely an earthquake.

It was very much unlike the earthquake I had experienced in Vadodara back in 2001. The latter was a gradual tremor that lasted for a while. I remember watching my school building shake along with its windows, the motion resembling a sinuous snake slithering, harmless, like a monkey shaking a branch.

But the latest one felt like a ghost in the room. It felt as if something supernatural had suddenly hijacked our room and shaken it to its very core. Like someone jolting you awake from a dream. It seemed as though our hotel room was perched on a bridge and a really heavy truck had just thundered across, quaking our very foundation.

After ascertaining what it was, we returned to our rooms, even as others remained outside. We were too tired from our seven- or eight-hour cab journey to care and slept like babies that night. But those were a fearful few seconds that affected us mentally, at least for the time being.

Another day awaited, another adventure hid in the womb of the mountain, as we hopped into another ride the next day to cover as much ground as our exhausted bodies would permit.