This isn’t really a memory about Ladakh.
It’s a memory about the people who quietly kept me alive while I was there.
In 2020, I was living through one of the darkest periods of my life. Depression, anxiety, PTSD, endless nightmares, sleepless nights, medication… I often felt like I was existing rather than living.
My father and my sister couldn’t bear to watch me disappear into myself any longer.
So, during the uncertainty of the pandemic, when the borders had only just begun opening again, they decided we would travel to Leh Ladakh.
Looking back, I know the trip wasn’t really about the mountains.
It was about hope.
Someone from my past also came along—a person who had once been both a friend and someone I deeply loved, but who had hurt me in ways that couldn’t simply be undone. I wasn’t angry anymore. I was simply exhausted. There wasn’t enough strength left inside me to fight, explain, or even cry.
But throughout that journey, my sister never once let go of my hand.
She reminded me to take my medicines. She made sure I ate. She watched over me in all the small ways that only someone who truly loves you can.
My father, without fully knowing everything that was happening inside me, spent the entire trip trying to make me smile. Every joke, every stop along the road, every little effort came from one simple wish—to see his daughter come back to life.
Whenever I stood quietly before those endless mountains, there was a silence inside me that frightened me.
I didn’t understand it then.
Today, I think it was the beginning of something.
Not healing.
But the possibility of healing.
When I look back at that journey now, I don’t remember the roads or the destinations as much as I remember two people who refused to let me walk through my darkness alone.
Without my father and my sister…
I’m not sure I would have found the strength to keep walking.
