I Lost My Bag at Baralacha La Pass During a Solo Trip

So I had a situation on my last day in Manali when I lost my back pack and it had items, valuable items that almost ruined my entire trip. The sudden shock was overwhelming.

I had no means to go back and find it because it was late and the place was secluded and at a very high altitude, which is not to be visited at night. So I had to let it go.

I spent the last day and night of my trip over-contemplating and beating myself up around what had happened.

It was less about the stress that I had to go through to buy everything that was in that back pack again – which is difficult to find now, but more about the fact that I allowed a mistake like that to happen and what it said about me and my abilities. That was not something I was going to take lightly.

It became a certificate for me to give myself as a solo traveler that I allowed something like that to happen to me. And probably that – I’m incapable of doing things on my own or taking care of myself.

It was never about the tangible things in the backpack. Even though it will be a pain in the ass to find those replacements as much of that has been discontinued.

Getting sick and hospitalized in my first solo trip to Udaipur and then losing my valuables in my second solo, seemed like a bad omen to me.

I was not going to forgive myself quickly. Because how could I be this reckless?

The idea that I have to ensure that everything is perfect did not permit me to make human mistakes. And I scrutinized myself for it through the night.

It honestly felt like a child being separated from his/her toy.

My poor little backpack, shivering in the dark wilderness of the cold deserted land.
My poor little companion left alone in a no-man’s-land.

But as the night passed by and the new sun rose, I gave myself some time to reflect upon the fact that my mistakes do not make me who I am. It wasn’t really about the backpack, it was about the fact that I was overanalyzing everything to the point that I could not allow myself to make a mistake. I was aiming to perfect everything in the trip to the point that I wanted to make sure that there were no mistakes in my plans, in the itinerary, in my assessment of the weather situation or the road conditions, in the bookings that I was making, in the restaurants that I was picking, in the reviews that I was checking, in the aggregates that I was creating.

I certified and branded myself over what happened instead of trying to learn from it and letting it go.

It set me back.

My usual role of checking things and making sure that nothing was left behind, became, maybe, secondary. And the attention for that was kind of divided into other things.

But I have found a greater truth during my journey back home – that all of this doesn’t mean that this is going to be the inevitable final truth of how things are going to be should I decide to travel more.

Both of those two episodes have allowed me to reflect deeper into myself. And that is going to be my takeaway from it. I want to be able to fall and pick myself back up again right now than having to do it at a later stage when I may not have as much strength to do it as I do now.

Being able to make a mistake right now is a privilege.

To some people it may seem like much of a fuss over a small backpack. But to someone obsessing over perfection, this implied a character certificate. And that is exactly the notion I’m trying to fight.

The reason why I’m sharing this here is because I want to wear this like a badge instead of being ashamed about it. Because that’s how it felt initially….that I failed at doing something I was aiming to perfect.

That’s my takeaway from what was potentially going to turn this chapter into a bad one, but I’m deciding to hold on to the good parts and allow myself to separate myself from the mistakes I make.

Because every bit of it is adding into who I will be, only if I allow myself.

📍 Baralacha La Pass