The Hill That Sings Back

I asked for one thing: “Let me feel You ‘God’ around me.” The mountains took it personally.

They call it Dainkund, the Lake of the Witches. Locals say the wind that moves through its deodar, pine and oak is the leftover whispering of witches, humming old songs into the trees.

I didn’t know that yet. I only knew that I had asked, and that I was being answered.

“Nature never rushes, yet everything within it blooms.”

5:00 AM, Dalhousie. The valley was still holding its breath.

No one on the trail. No voices, no footsteps but mine. The path began so gently that I almost laughed. Just a simple trek, I thought.

The forest had other plans.

The trees began to reveal themselves slowly, the way a host steps forward to welcome you, with their best manners and their finest green.

And what greens. I had thought I knew the colour. Okay, it’s just green, I told myself, and then the light moved and showed me a dozen shades I had no names for, each one softer than the last.

“The earth speaks in colours to those who walk slowly enough to listen.”

Then the flowers came, small and unbothered. Dandelions, beautiful dandelions, scattered along the path like little suns that had forgotten to rise.

Butterflies drifted between them, carefree, as if they had never been taught to hurry. And the bees! I had always thought only butterflies wore colours, but here even the bees shimmered in shades I had never seen on them. The whole valley hummed, a living, singing, mystical forest.

“Where the wild things are gentle, the heart learns to be gentle too.”

And then I understood the name.

The wind came down through the deodars and the pines, and the hill began to hum. It was a soft, endless melody, the Singing Hill doing exactly what it was named for. Witches or no witches, it felt less like a haunting and more like a lullaby.

Higher up, the world opened into a full circle: deep valleys folding into each other, the Pir Panjal on one side, the Dhauladhar on the other, and on clear days, the rivers glittering far away on the plains like threads of light.

“I did not climb the mountain to find the view. I climbed to find the quiet it hides inside me.”Some people travel to see places. I think some places are sent to see us.

I asked to feel God around me, and He didn’t answer in words. He answered in green, in wings, in wind that hums.

“To love nature is simply to remember where we came from.”

When did a place last answer a prayer you hadn’t finished saying?