Vasuki Tal: The Serpent's Eye in the Himalayas

By
R. Shibram

1
Prologue: The Whisper Before the Climb

2
The first time I heard of Vasuki Tal, it wasn't from a book, a map, or a travel documentary. It
came as a whisper—soft, almost accidental—drifting through the smoke of a fire on a frigid
night in Kedarnath. A weathered sadhu had been speaking in low tones to someone beside me,
his voice barely audible beneath the crackle of burning wood and the soft chants of pilgrims. But
I caught a phrase.

“...beyond the god’s temple, where even the air dares not breathe freely, the serpent still guards
his master's eye.”

I remember turning toward him. “Vasuki?” I asked, uncertain.

The sadhu paused, eyes gleaming beneath his saffron hood. He studied me like someone trying
to see through my skin and down into my soul. Then he said only this:

“Not every lake reflects the sky. Some show you what you are not ready to see.”

He smiled—though it felt more like a warning than a welcome—and vanished into the night,
swallowed by the smoke and shadows of Kedarnath. I didn’t sleep well that night. The name
Vasuki Tal began to haunt me.

It wasn’t unfamiliar. I’d come across it in passing while studying glacial lakes in Uttarakhand.
High up in the Himalayas, they said. Near Kedarnath, around 4,978 meters. A place trekkers
seldom visit—not for lack of beauty, but because of its reputation. The weather turns without
warning. Avalanches are frequent. Some who go don’t return. But it wasn’t danger that stirred
something in me. It was that whisper—“the serpent still guards his master’s eye.”

I spent the next morning asking around. Most locals dismissed the place with casual reverence.
“It’s not for everyone,” one man told me, shaking his head. “Too far, too high.” Another leaned
closer and said, “The gods still visit there. Best not disturb them.” A shopkeeper’s son told me
his uncle once went and saw strange lights beneath the ice.

I couldn’t explain it, but something about the lake began calling me. Not loudly. Not urgently.
Just persistently. Like a thought you can’t shake, or a song you don’t remember hearing, but that
hums just beneath your conscious mind.

In the days that followed, I tried to ignore it. I walked through Kedarnath like any other traveler
—visited the temple, took photographs, listened to the bells and chants rising like incense into
the thin air. But nothing grounded me. I felt like I was already halfway gone, like the trail had
begun beneath my feet before I even stepped onto it.

And so, one morning, I packed light. Just the essentials. Journal. Camera. A small offering for
the gods—just in case. I didn’t tell anyone exactly where I was going. When I left Kedarnath, the
sun was still hiding behind the peaks, and the mountains stood like silent guardians, wrapped in
mist and mystery.

The path wasn’t marked. There were no signs. Just stories.

3
As I climbed, I kept hearing the sadhu’s words. “Some lakes show you what you are not ready to
see.”

What had he meant? What could water reflect that a man wouldn’t want to witness?

I had trekked many places before—valleys deep in Himachal, desert shrines in Rajasthan, even
to the base of Everest once. But this felt different. Like I was stepping out of time. Like I was
entering a place where gods still walked, where the veil between the world we know and the
world we forget had grown thin.

Even the air seemed to hum. It wasn’t just wind—it was something else. Something older.

I didn’t yet know the stories in full. I didn’t know of Vasuki—the serpent king from whom the
lake takes its name—coiled beneath the surface, still guarding the sacred space where gods bathe
in secret. I didn’t know of the legends that speak of flickering lights in the water, of voices that
echo without a source. I didn’t know about the footprints that vanish mid-trail.

But something in me already believed it all.

They say there are places in the world that don’t just exist on a map—they live inside you.
Waiting. Watching. Calling.

For me, Vasuki Tal wasn’t just a destination. It was a summoning.

And I had answered.

4
Chapter 1: The Journey Begins

5
I left Kedarnath before sunrise, while the sky still yawned in shades of cobalt and ash. The
pilgrims were just beginning to stir in their tents, the air sharp with the scent of burnt ghee and
early-morning dew. Behind me, the Kedarnath temple stood silent but sovereign, glowing faintly
under the veil of stars—as if the mountain itself exhaled light through its spires.

There was no grand sendoff. No fanfare. Just my boots crunching over frost-laced rock, and the
quiet murmur of my breath—steady, reverent, and uncertain.

The trail to Vasuki Tal wasn’t exactly a trail. It was more a suggestion—carved occasionally by
wandering hooves, half-buried stones, or the odd flag flapping in the wind from previous
pilgrims who had dared to venture this far. There were no guideposts. Just instinct, a crumpled
map someone had sketched for me, and the ever-present pull of something that felt less like
curiosity and more like obligation.

The first hour passed in near silence. The mountain slept, but not deeply. Every few steps, the
landscape would groan—a distant rumble of snow shifting above me, the crack of glacial skin
reshaping itself beneath the weight of time. The Himalayas weren’t dead. They breathed. They
watched.

I reminded myself this wasn’t just any mountain. This was the Garhwal Himalayas, the heart of
ancient myth and the spine of the gods. Every inch of this terrain had been walked, sung, or
mourned over by centuries of pilgrims, sages, and seekers. Somewhere ahead lay Vasuki Tal—a
glacial lake nearly 5,000 meters above sea level. A lake so remote, even seasoned trekkers
thought twice before venturing there.

But what drew me wasn’t just the altitude or the challenge. It was the sense that something
ancient still waited by its shores. Something untouched. Unfinished.

About two hours in, I paused near a rocky bend where the trail narrowed into a windswept ledge.
To my left, a drop so sheer it could swallow a lifetime. To my right, nothing but snow-speckled
rock and wind-blasted silence.

I sat, pulling out a piece of dried fruit and a flask of ginger tea. My fingers were already
stiffening from the cold, and the taste of the tea was a comfort I hadn’t realized I needed. As I
sipped, I noticed a line of faded red cloth tied to a stick wedged in the rocks ahead—a marker,
left by someone who had come before me. A whisper from the past: this way.

Further up the trail, the landscape began to shift. Pines thinned and gave way to stubbled
meadows—once green, now frostbitten and brittle. The silence deepened. I didn’t hear birds
anymore. Only the wind, rising and falling like a tired breath.

Around midmorning, I stumbled upon a small shrine built into a natural rock alcove. It was crude
—just a stack of stones with a smear of vermillion on the front and an offering bowl that held a
few coins, dried marigolds, and a single white feather. Someone had taken the time to leave this.
It felt like a checkpoint, not of distance but of devotion.

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I added a coin from my pocket, murmured a small thank you—though I didn’t know to whom—
and continued on.

As the day wore on, the climb began to take its toll. The air thinned perceptibly. Each breath felt
like it had to claw its way down into my lungs. The sky brightened into that surreal, almost
metallic blue you only see at high altitude—so clear it hurt the eyes.

It was here, among these cloudless heights, that the mountain began to test me.

It started with the wind. Not a storm—not yet. Just a sudden, sharp gust that slammed into my
chest as I rounded a ridge. Then came the fatigue—deep and slow, like molasses filling my
limbs. I’d been at higher altitudes before, but something about this place was heavier. Like the
very air carried memory, and it wanted to press those memories into me.

Still, I pushed on. Not because I was brave—but because I couldn’t turn back. Something was
waiting.

Near midday, I encountered the only other person I would see on this trail.

He looked like part of the mountain itself—skin browned and cracked by sun and time, beard
like wind-tangled wool. He wore a simple woolen shawl and held a stick carved with strange
symbols. I found him sitting cross-legged beside a stone outcrop, his eyes closed, humming a
deep, guttural tone that vibrated in my chest before I even got close.

I hesitated, not wanting to disturb him, but his eyes opened the moment I stepped near.

“You go to the lake,” he said—not as a question, but as a certainty.

“I am,” I replied. “Vasuki Tal.”

He studied me for a long time, then nodded slowly. “Not everyone hears the call.”

I swallowed. “What do you mean?”

He motioned for me to sit. I did. We shared silence for a moment before he spoke again.

“They say Vasuki—the great serpent—still coils beneath the lake’s ice. Guarding something. Or
waiting. No one really knows.”

I leaned forward. “Have you seen it?”

He smiled faintly. “I have felt it.”

Then he reached into a pouch and handed me a smooth, dark stone no larger than a coin. “Take
this. If you see the lake’s eye open, place this in the water. And walk away. Do not ask
questions.”

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Before I could speak again, he had closed his eyes and resumed his humming. The conversation
was over.

I placed the stone in my pocket and stood.

The final stretch that day was the hardest. The terrain grew crueler—jagged inclines, unstable
scree, and ice hiding beneath layers of deceptive snow. My breath came ragged. My legs moved
out of will more than strength. But still, I climbed.

Just before sunset, I reached a small, flat outcrop overlooking a narrow gorge. From there, I
could see the mountains folding inward on themselves—vast, cold, unmoving. Somewhere
beyond that next curve, I knew the lake waited.

I set up camp there, grateful for a dry patch and a stone wall that offered some shelter from the
wind. My small stove wheezed and hissed as it cooked rice and lentils, the warmth a miracle
against the creeping cold.

That night, I didn’t dream. Or if I did, I didn’t remember. But I woke up twice, convinced I’d
heard something.

A whisper. Faint, like wind through pine needles.

Or perhaps a voice rising from the deep.

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Chapter 2: “Where the Serpent Sleeps”

9
The next morning arrived slowly, like the sun was unsure if it wanted to rise at all. Everything
outside my tent was rimmed in frost—my boots, the stones, even the edges of my journal pages.
The cold didn’t feel like weather anymore; it felt like an intention.

I packed quickly, my breath fogging in front of me like ghostly smoke signals. The trail—if I
could still call it that—sloped upward in a series of winding switchbacks. Each step now
demanded more than strength; it required purpose. The air was thinner, drier, as if the mountain
was rationing oxygen to only those who deserved it.

By mid-morning, I crested a small ridge and found myself in what can only be described as a
silent amphitheater. The mountains curved around me in a protective arc, and the wind dropped
suddenly. The stillness was unnerving.

And then I saw it: a pile of stones, painted in faded red, with a snake carved crudely into the face
of the central rock. Vasuki.

It wasn’t the snake's form that caught me—it was its eyes. Whoever had carved it, long ago, had
etched the pupils as two small hollows, so deep and precise that they seemed to watch me as I
approached.

There was a small brass bell hanging above the carving, green with age. I rang it once.

The sound echoed strangely, as if it bounced off something beneath the earth before returning to
my ears.

That was when I met Lakshman, the shepherd.

He appeared from behind a rock, with two goats trailing behind him and a walking stick that had
seen better days. He looked surprised to see me, then wary. Not many people passed through
here.

“You’re going to the lake?” he asked, eyeing my gear.

“Yes,” I said. “Vasuki Tal.”

He nodded slowly, then gestured toward the stone marker. “Do you know who that is?”

“Vasuki,” I replied. “The serpent king. Lord Shiva’s companion.”

His eyes lit up, a little surprised. “Not many outsiders know that. Most come for the adventure.
The trek. The view. But the lake is not just a place. It is… a memory.”

I didn’t understand then what he meant. Not really. But I listened.

Lakshman told me the stories passed down to him—not written in books, but whispered over
fires and during long nights in the high meadows.

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They say Vasuki, the king of all serpents, once coiled himself around Mount Mandara during the
Samudra Manthan, the churning of the cosmic ocean. Gods and demons alike used him as a rope
to churn the sea, hoping to extract amrita—the nectar of immortality.

When the ocean released poison instead, Lord Shiva drank it to save creation. As the poison
settled in his throat, turning it blue, Vasuki’s body scorched and twisted, burning with the energy
of gods and demons alike.

To cool his pain and rest his eternal body, Vasuki curled beneath a hidden lake in the Himalayas.
That lake became Vasuki Tal.

Lakshman leaned in then, his voice dropping. “But the stories don’t stop there. Some say the lake
is a mirror—one that shows you not your face, but your fear.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“They say people who go to the lake see visions. Hear voices. Some say they meet themselves—
only... not as they are. As they could be. Or once were.”

He looked away, as if choosing his words.

“My grandfather went once. He saw his dead brother sitting at the edge of the water, smiling.
They spoke for hours, he said. But when he returned, he never laughed again.”

There was something in his voice that chilled me deeper than the cold.

“Others claim,” he went on, “that the lake speaks in dreams. Calls people. Like a whisper in the
wind.”

My heart thudded.

“You’ve heard it, haven’t you?” he asked, as if confirming something he already knew.

I nodded slowly. “In Kedarnath. A sadhu mentioned it. Since then… I can’t stop thinking about
it.”

Lakshman smiled sadly. “Then the lake has already seen you. You can still turn back, you
know.”

I wanted to say I couldn’t. That I didn’t have a choice. But I didn’t want to sound like a madman.

So I said nothing.

He pointed to a narrow cut in the rock face beyond the shrine. “That way. But be careful.
Weather changes fast. And not all storms come from the sky.”

11
Before I left, I asked if he’d been there.

He shook his head. “I tend the living. I have no business waking what sleeps beneath that ice.”

The terrain beyond Lakshman’s camp turned feral. Loose rocks, steep ascents, and patches of
snow that swallowed my ankles. The wind returned with a vengeance, howling like it had
something to say and no tongue to say it with.

But I kept walking. Fueled not by adrenaline, but by something deeper. Something I couldn’t
name.

By late afternoon, the world had narrowed into colorless forms—grey rock, white snow, and an
endless sky that seemed too close. I felt like I was walking not through a landscape, but through
a memory someone else had forgotten.

That night, I camped near a frozen stream that crackled beneath its surface like bones settling. I
couldn’t sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it—the serpent, coiled beneath crystal water, eyes glowing
like twin moons, unmoving but aware. Watching me.

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Chapter 3: "Breathless Heights"

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The morning came as it always did—silent, pale, and cold enough to make my bones feel
borrowed.

By now, my breath came in short, sharp bursts. I’d grown used to the rhythm of exhaustion: ten
steps, stop. Twelve steps, stop. The landscape punished every effort. Rocks turned to loose shale.
The incline never relented. I was now over 15,000 feet, and the very air seemed to resist my
lungs.

Every hour I climbed, something peeled away from me—comfort, certainty, even memory. It
was as if the mountain demanded offerings of the self before revealing its secrets.

By midday, I reached a stretch known locally—if it was known at all—as the “Spine of the Sky.”

A razor-thin ridge, barely wide enough for my boots, stretched ahead of me like a bony finger
pointing toward the heavens. On either side, the land fell away in sheer cliffs. I couldn’t see the
bottom, only mist. The wind screamed across the ridge like a warning, trying to tear me off the
earth.

I crouched, crawling at points, gripping ice-dusted stone with shaking hands. My backpack
suddenly felt a hundred kilos heavier. But I didn't stop. I couldn’t. Every part of my mind was
begging me to turn back, but something deeper—older—kept me moving forward.

Halfway across the ridge, I made the mistake of looking down. The abyss yawned back at me,
and for a brief moment, I saw something move within it. A flicker of scale, maybe. A shadow
coiling like smoke beneath the ice far below.

My hand slipped.

For one terrifying moment, I dangled on the edge—fingers clawed into the rock, legs kicking. A
loose stone tumbled off the ledge and vanished. I never heard it hit the ground.

I don’t know how I pulled myself back up. Adrenaline, perhaps. Or fear. Or maybe it wasn’t me
at all. Maybe the mountain wasn’t finished with me yet.

On the other side of the ridge, the terrain opened up into a high alpine basin, blanketed in snow
and silence. The light was strange here—bluer than normal, almost metallic, as if the sky was
reflecting something it couldn’t describe.

The silence was total. No birds. No wind. Not even the crunch of snow underfoot. I was moving,
but it felt like I had stepped into a dream, or a memory not my own.

And then I began to hear… things.

Not voices, exactly. More like echoes—snippets of sentences, phrases without speakers, thoughts
that weren’t mine.

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“You left me behind.”

“Why are you here?”

“It’s waiting.”

I shook my head, tried to focus. Altitude sickness, I told myself. A known danger.
Hallucinations. Dehydration. But deep down, I knew this wasn’t physical. It wasn’t even mental.

It was spiritual.

I stopped at a large boulder shaped eerily like a serpent’s head, its “mouth” wide open in a frozen
hiss. A cairn of rocks sat beside it, and in its center was a trident, rusted and half-buried in snow.

I recognized the symbol immediately—Shiva.

I dropped to one knee and touched the trident. It was warm.

I whispered a prayer. Not one I had memorized from childhood, but one that rose instinctively in
my chest—half-plea, half-thank you. A request for passage. For understanding.

As I stood, I noticed something carved faintly into the base of the stone:
“The lake does not forgive. It remembers.”

Later that afternoon, the sky darkened with almost no warning. The clear light evaporated,
replaced by a thick fog that rolled in like a tidal wave.

Within minutes, I could see barely five feet ahead.

I stopped, unsure whether to press on or wait. But the cold left little choice. Movement meant
survival. So I wrapped my scarf tightly and trudged forward into the white void.

Shapes began to emerge in the fog—figures.

At first, I thought I was imagining them. But as they drew closer, I saw their outlines—men and
women, wrapped in robes or shawls, standing silently by the side of the trail. Faces shadowed.
Still. Watching.

I didn’t speak to them. I didn’t stop.

I told myself they were hallucinations—fragments of legend made real by the mountain’s
oxygen-starved air.

But I could feel their eyes on me long after I passed.

One of them raised a hand. Not in warning. In blessing.

15
When the fog finally lifted, I was standing at the mouth of a glacial plateau. A vast, frozen
expanse, framed by cliffs of black rock and snow.

And there it was.

Vasuki Tal.

Not the lake I had imagined—not a serene alpine mirror. This was a shivering, ancient presence,
half-covered in ice, its center glowing faintly beneath a web of cracks like veins beneath skin.

It wasn’t beautiful.

It was terrifying.

Not in the way of monsters, but in the way of truth. As if it knew me. As if it had been waiting.

The sky was empty. The wind had died. And all around me, the mountain watched.

I set up my tent a few hundred meters from the shore. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I just sat, staring
at the ice, listening to my own heartbeat like a drum before battle.

At some point in the night, I pulled out the stone the old man had given me—the one he called
“the eye.”

It was warm again. Pulsing, almost.

I knew what I had to do.

Tomorrow, I would walk to the edge of the lake.

And I would drop the stone into its heart.

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Chapter 4: The Eye Beneath the Ice

17
Dawn came without color. Just a gentle lifting of the darkness. As if the sun, too, feared to rise
fully in the presence of Vasuki Tal.

I emerged from my tent with the stone clenched in my fist. It pulsed faintly against my palm—no
longer warm, but alive, in the way a heartbeat is alive. It throbbed not in heat, but memory.

The lake lay before me like an eye, partially frozen, partially liquid, its center dark and
unreadable. The ice around the edges had cracked overnight, forming thin veins that spidered
toward the center. It looked… ancient. Not old in years, but outside time, like it had always been
here and always would be.

As I walked toward the shore, every step felt heavier. Not physically—but emotionally,
spiritually. Like I was walking through centuries of stories, sorrow, and forgotten names.

The whispers returned. Clearer now.

“We are all coils of the same serpent.”

“Truth is colder than death.”

“He waits for what you carry.”

I knelt at the shoreline, the stone still in my hand, trembling now—not from cold, but from what
I knew was about to happen.

For a moment, everything around me fell completely silent. No wind. No breath. Even my
heartbeat seemed to pause.

Then I saw it—beneath the ice.

A shape. Massive. Coiled. Still.

Not just imagined.

Real.

Vasuki.

I couldn’t see details—not a head or fangs—but the sheer magnitude of the form was
unmistakable. It filled the depths of the lake like a sleeping god. And somehow, I knew it wasn’t
dead. It wasn’t even sleeping.

It was waiting.

The stone in my hand grew hot—so hot I gasped and almost dropped it. But I held on.

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And I spoke aloud for the first time that morning.

“I’ve come to return this. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it means. But it called to
me. You called to me.”

The lake gave no answer. Only the shifting of light beneath its surface.

I closed my eyes, stood, and walked to the very edge of the ice where the liquid water began—
dark, impossibly still.

I took a breath and dropped the stone in.

It hit the surface with a sound that didn’t match reality. Not a splash. Not a plunk.

It rang.

Like metal striking crystal. Like a temple bell underwater.

The vibration spread outward across the lake in perfect concentric circles, each ripple humming
with unspoken language.

I stumbled back.

And then the visions came.

I wasn’t standing by the lake anymore. I was inside something. Not a place—a memory.

I saw a mountain valley teeming with pilgrims—thousands of them. Chanting. Weeping.

Above them, a serpent of light coiled through the heavens, vast and majestic, trailing sparks and
ash.

And at its head—Shiva. Dancing. Laughing. His third eye burning with cosmic fire. Vasuki
curled around his throat like a garland of storms.

Then, the scene changed.

The pilgrims were gone.

The valley was covered in snow. Silent.

And the serpent lay still beneath the ice, watching.

Waiting.

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I came back to myself gasping, as if I’d surfaced from deep water.

My knees gave out and I fell to the snow. The lake before me was calm again. The stone was
gone.

But something inside me had shifted.

The air around me shimmered faintly, like heat waves—though it was freezing cold. And then I
felt it.

A presence.

Not hostile. Not welcoming either.

Just… aware.

Like a judge.

And in that moment, I understood.

The lake wasn’t a place of worship. It wasn’t a shrine.

It was a mirror.

It showed you your truth, stripped of language and illusion. The part of you that still writhed like
a serpent in the dark. Fear. Guilt. Purpose.

And it expected something in return.

Not offerings.

Not prayers.

Honesty.

I sat there for hours, unmoving.

I remembered my brother. The one I’d lost on a similar trek, years ago. A climb we’d attempted
together. A storm that came too fast. A moment of hesitation. A decision I’d never forgiven
myself for.

I’d buried that memory deep. Pretended it had been fate. Weather. An accident.

But here, beside this ancient lake, the lie melted away like the ice underfoot.

It had been my fault.

20
I had chosen to press forward while he wanted to turn back. I thought I was being brave.

But I had been afraid. Afraid to fail. Afraid to appear weak.

And in that fear, I lost him.

The lake didn’t speak. It didn’t need to.

It had shown me what I came to forget.

And then—something unexpected happened.

The ice cracked.

Not dangerously—just a long, slow fracture across the surface, from one end of the lake to the
other.

And from the depths, a glow.

Blue. Gentle. Pulsing.

I realized then—Vasuki was not punishing me. He was witnessing me. Acknowledging the truth.
Accepting it.

And for the first time in years, I felt light.

Not absolved. Not redeemed. Just… real.

I stood, bowed low toward the lake, and whispered:

“Thank you.”

21
Chapter 5: The Descent and the Dream

22
The morning air was thin and brittle as I packed my things, the lake behind me now a quiet
witness under a fragile sky. The weight I carried wasn’t in my pack—it was a settling inside me,
like the final piece of a long-forgotten puzzle clicking into place.

I traced my fingers over the empty spot in my palm where the stone had been, gone to whatever
depths lay beneath Vasuki Tal. Somehow, I felt lighter for its absence.

The trail down looked less daunting, but the mountain had other plans.

No sooner had I left the lakeshore than the weather shifted—slowly, at first. A gentle gray
creeping over the sky like spilled ink.

I moved quickly, but the wind picked up, sharp and biting, forcing me to crouch low behind
rocks. Clouds began to swirl, descending fast, swallowing the path.

Visibility shrank to a few feet. Every step felt uncertain, every shadow a possible threat.

And then, in the middle of the mist, I saw her.

A woman.

She stood on a ridge, barely visible in the swirling fog. Dressed in a flowing white shawl that
seemed to flicker in the wind like smoke, her hair tangled with mountain flowers.

Her eyes were dark pools of sorrow and wisdom.

She lifted a hand in greeting—or warning—and then vanished.

Was she real? Or another trick of the mountain?

The descent grew harder. The fog thickened into a suffocating wall of white. I felt watched—
again—not by the wind, but by unseen eyes.

Suddenly, the ground beneath me shifted.

A rockslide.

I leapt sideways, heart pounding, as stones thundered down the slope where I had just stood.

Breath ragged, I scrambled lower, the echoes of falling rock ringing in my ears.

That night, I camped near a sacred grove marked by prayer flags torn and faded.

Exhausted and shaken, I drifted into a restless sleep.

In my dreams, I stood once more by the lake, but the water was dark and roiling.

23
The serpent stirred beneath the ice, eyes blazing with fierce blue fire.

From the depths, the woman from the ridge appeared beside me.

She spoke—not with words, but with feelings.

“You carry guilt. But also courage. The mountain tests both.”

She touched my forehead, and suddenly memories flooded me:

My brother’s laughter, echoing across a narrow pass.

The storm’s sudden fury.

The moment I chose to climb ahead.

The silent promise I made, buried in regret.

I woke at dawn with tears on my face.

The mountain hadn’t just been a place of trials—it had been a mirror.

A place where past and present collided.

With dawn’s light, the fog lifted, revealing the path home.

Each step down was lighter than the last—not because the terrain eased, but because I was
different.

24
Epilogue: Whispers on the Wind

25
I returned to the lower valleys with the first light of morning painting the hills golden. The air
was warmer here, filled with birdsong and the scent of pine — a stark contrast to the austere
silence of Vasuki Tal. Yet, the mountain’s breath still lingered in my lungs, a whisper I could
neither shake nor fully understand.

Back among the familiar, the noise of daily life settled around me like a soft cloak. People
hurried past, chasing their routines, unaware of the world I had just left behind — a world where
ancient serpents slept beneath ice and truths waited patiently to be faced.

In the quiet moments that followed, I found myself returning to that frozen lake again and again,
not with fear, but with a growing reverence. Vasuki Tal was no longer just a place on a map; it
had become a part of me — a shadow and a light intertwined.

I think about the figures in the fog, the woman who appeared like a ghost, the voices carried on
the wind. Were they spirits? Memories? Or simply the mountain’s way of speaking to those
brave enough to listen? I don’t have answers. But maybe some questions are meant to stay
unanswered.

What I do know is this: the journey was never about conquering the mountain or even reaching
the lake. It was about confronting what we carry inside — guilt, hope, regret, courage — and
allowing ourselves to be changed by it.

The stone I dropped into Vasuki Tal did not just sink beneath the ice. It unlocked something
within me. Something I thought I had lost.

And now, as I stand here in the warmth of the valley, I feel the serpent’s coil tighten and loosen
within my soul — a reminder that the past is never truly gone, and the future is always waiting
beneath the surface.

The mountain taught me to listen to whispers before the climb, to face the breathless heights with
honesty, and to meet the eye beneath the ice without fear.

And perhaps most importantly, it taught me that some journeys don’t end when we leave the
mountain behind.

They begin.

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