The mountains are calling and I must think about work…
This year I got to ring in the new year in the hills of India — Manali. I spent the last 5 days, 30 minutes ahead of Manali near Kullu, at an altitude of 1300m, in negative 5 degree celsius. Why? Just because I like travelling on a broke college student budget (get the sarcasm?) and there was promise of some good company.
Fast forward to a week later pondering about the trip, what did the hills teach me? And can I implement the learning in my corporate career?
- You don’t mess with mountains ’cause it can mess with you or shall I say don’t mess with the boss….
Sounds daunting but if you are nice safe traveller you are probably going to have a decent time however, if you are students of SDA Bocconi who think that they can take on mountains of Himachal Pradesh, you are in for a treat.
Our hosts at the airbnb suggested a detour from our safe plans of instagramming in the cafes of the foothills of Manali, and experience the local life by going to a village which lacked any form of concrete road. Like obedient tourists we took their advice at the promise of a good view, and took our mini bus for a spin. As the journey started, we heard our driver question — “can a bus go to this spot” , we assured him , “yes, ofcourse, we had checked with the cafe and our airbnb hosts (who were regulars at this cafe)”, 10 mins later, we saw a car coming from the opposite end and some how our skilful driver was able to manoeuvre and get us through. 5 mins later we heard our driver saying“you are going to get me killed” . By this time we had realised our folly and half of us were singing the Hanuman chalisa internally and the other half were convincing the driver that it’s a decent route.
You guys know the ending of the story since I am alive and well, writing this story, that we did indeed make it back from the cafe. The view was amazing, and we got a benefit from our risk. But even the cafe owner’s little girl confirmed our suspicion, that it indeed was a risky drive, we could have easily dropped off the mountain and never seen the sunset we had set out to experience.
Putting this analogy to a corporate career — I still question if being bold at work is worth it. Questioning your boss, and standing up for your ideas sounds like a career starter or breaker? If you are lucky you might get the benefit of a risky move, but some might not make it past the boss’ office.
2. What goes in, comes out — especially when driving on a windy mountainous road, but if you rate high on interpersonal skills you might do okay
A shared experience with the 10 travellers who had come to Manali from all over India, of getting sick because of a random cafe’s food right before our long 21 hour mini bus journey back and what that experience taught us.
5 out of the 10 people who ate at that random cafe got sick and the windy roads of Manali didn’t help. By the time we made it to our homes, we didn’t want to see another morsel of food.
Being stuck in traffic with no access to a bathroom is one stressful situation. But a few kind words with the driver, some niceties with people you meet on the street and being prepared for the worst goes a long way.
Thinking about getting sick in the mountains and comparing it to a corporate situation might sounds gross, but think about the times you have been stressed at work and lost your cool with a subordinate and regretted it after. Just in our situation, lost temper would mean no directions to the toilet or the nearest grocery store.
My one learning from this experience is to keep your friends close. They’ll pat your back when you’re getting sick and they’ll have your back when you’re in a jam at work. A few nice words go a long way.
3. To follow or not to follow the set mountain man’s rules
So this story comes straight from our hosts at the Airbnb of Myoho house in Manali. We had a nice projector that played whatever songs we liked. And come New year’s eve we wanted to turn up the music a little, and prior to signing up for the Airbnb we had agreed to keep the volume to a minimum at night. But it was NYE and we wanted to celebrate, so things might have gotten out of hand where the host came up and scolded us by asking us to go to bed at 2 am!
Now we both were right in our places, us wanting to celebrate and him wanting to sleep at 2am. So we came up on a compromise of switching off the music and just hanging as a group.
Now in corporate culture, breaking the rules isn’t acceptable, you’d have a reputation for breaking rules, and fewer people would want to work with you. But that’s when you start enjoying your career, when you break the regular path and come up with a solution that might be quicker or more feasible. To enjoy the work life or be stuck in the monotonous ways of a 9 to 5 job — definitely something to think about.
In hindsight, I am only pondering over the more memorable negative experiences and what I learnt from them, but I assure you this trip had more positive experiences than the negative ones — my instagram (@sneybha) was used to capture the first time paragliding experience, the “Never Have I Ever” nights or teaching my fellow Bocconians strategy board games where they questioned if I was teaching them the right rules or just trying to win my way. I highly recommend visiting Sissu via Atal Tunnel and paragliding in Solang if you go towards Himachal Pradesh side.
