I Quit My Job to Live in the Mountains and Here's How It Turned Out

A cozy wooden cottage, under the big blue sky, the one with a clear snow mountain view, with a fireplace to keep you warm, the wild winds rustling and birds you can't even name singing all around— has been a fairytale hummed in the heart of every traveller at one point in time or the other. We've all been there, dreamt that!

My fairytale is a year and a half old now and for those who have followed this magical journey know that:

How I quit my job

How I moved to the mountains

Moving on, here is my one year review of moving to the mountains:

Things I did to keep the fairytale alive:

When I moved to the mountains, I had a few freelance projects to help me pay the bills. But let's face it, freelance projects may not always be your best buds in the uncharted territory of mountain adventures. Contrary to the popular notion, it doesn't take much to live the mountain dream. For instance, when I was in need of extra funds, my friend and I started making herbal soaps and thus started our little own start up. As random as that sounds, you need to think of skills that can help you survive. There are many folks who play music, make DIY crafts, manage hostels and so on.

When things started feeling more secure I started my own homestay and then my fairytale also became a chapter in several other travellers stories. And their stories became the walls of our homestay. Beautiful!

How does it feel?

Once you settle in, the newness of your neighbourhood mountains also settles in. They are no longer the long distance lover but your everyday married companions. Now you don't have to catch a bus to catch a glimpse of them. Now you just have to remove the curtains and there it is, always.

In a way, that also means lustre of mountains also merges with your everydayness. But then there are moments of epiphanies when you suddenly wake up to realise, oh—my—God we live here and it is such a blessing.

From the outside it looks like a glamorous idea, you know, moving to mountains, living your fairytale but concluding this on the basis of a few visit— no matter how convincing it sounds, I'd still suggest that you move in for a few weeks or months, if possible. See how that goes. See if you can live the slow village life. The life in which the sun decides the mood of the entire village. The life in which snow is a carnival.

To be honest, when the trending word, quarantine knocked our door, we realised that we have been quarantined since a long time. This is of course not true to everyone. But we anyway stored groceries, visited the market for urgent work, and lived on a lonely hilltop with the mountains being our only neighbours.

All in all, this one year has helped me grow a lot as a person. Mountains are beautiful but sometimes surviving the mountains is difficult. Sometimes, you don't want to climb a mountain to just get groceries, that's when you realise that mountains make you strong. Sometimes, you feel lonely, but that's when you realise that you are your won companion. Sometimes, you miss city friends, friends you shared so many amazing office gossips with, that's when you realise that few people will always be close to your heart, no matter the distance. So yes, the mountains have been great teachers.

But the village life is fun for some and not the same for all. So I suggest that you should first enter a transition phase in which you can decide which life suits you better. Good luck, folks!