We stopped at Banbasa to stretch our limbs.All of us were tired of sitting in a car for almost 8 hours.The car could only accommodate 5 persons with comfort but my family decided to get out of their comfort zones and there we were 7 people sitting in one car.We were headed to Munsiari to spend a week in a place where there was peace and serenity of the mountains far from a metropolitan city such as Delhi.

We made a brief stop at Banbasa because it was a special place,my mother was born there.My grandfather was posted in this small town when he served in the Indian army.My mother’s uncle and some cousins also lived there. My grandfather was constantly updated about our location over the phone.He was thrilled to know we were at Banbasa. It.It brought back happy sweet memories to him of a house,a shop and many other places and people.

The only landmark that marked this place was a dam called the Sharda Bairage. My.My grandfather told us about this dam that was a bridge connecting India Nepal.The dam was imposing.It was beautifully constructed.The sound of the water below was magnificent.It was extremely loud and we were in awe at the power water seem to have.

The place was very crowded.Hundreds of bag packers from Nepal had come trekking there.Some of them were coming to India and some were leaving back to home.My cousins and I were really exited about the whole India Nepal connection. Just by crossing a bridge we could reach the other country.

We decided to cross the bridge and travel from India to Nepal.Just as we crossed half the dam ,all of our phones rang.Six of us there had cell phoned and all of us received the same text message at about the same time.It was from our telephone service provider.It read “WELCOME TO NEPAL.WE HOPE YOU HAVE A PLEASANT STAY. INTERNATIONAL ROAMING WOULD BE CHARGED FROM NOW.CALL RATES RS 30 PER MINUTE AND RS 25 WOULD BE CHARGED FOR EACH TEXT.THANK YOU.”The text message thrilled us all.

Though we never crossed the dam .we were thrilled to just read that text.If not officially then technically we had reached Nepal!We felt even more thrilled when we started to walk back to India.As we all were “officially foreign returned!”