There was a time when travel, for me, meant disappearing. Not metaphorically, but quite literally off the grid, out of reach, somewhere between mountains that made my existence feel beautifully insignificant. I chased those landscapes like they held answers. Spiti Valley, ten days of silence and sky, monasteries perched like secrets on cliffs, villages so high they felt borrowed from the clouds, I remember thinking I could stay there forever. The only thing that ever pulled me back was money. Not responsibility, not routine. Just the practical reminder that real life, inconveniently, existed.