I didn’t plan to go. Vuzillfotsps sounded made-up, like one of Rahim’s stories, half truth, half mischief. We were under the banyan, a hot afternoon, he gnawing on mango skin like it owed him money. “It’s not a place, it’s a feeling,” he said, wiping juice on his shirt. “You walk in, and the world just… shifts.”
Right.
Still, he had that look in his eyes, like whatever he saw out there left something behind in him. Something untouchable. I couldn’t let that sit.
So, a few weeks later, I stuffed what I could into an old canvas bag, rice wrapped in newspaper, a dented water bottle, my dad’s camera that needed a slap to turn on, and boarded the kind of bus that shouldn’t still be running. Sayestagonj was the stop. Dust poured through the windows. Somewhere along the way, a chicken sat on my foot and refused to move.
Rahim’s directions were simple: “Find the river. Ask for the man with the boat. He’ll know.”
He did. Skin weathered like tree bark, shirt two buttons away from disintegration. Boat barely afloat. When I said “Vuzillfotsps?” he didn’t blink, just tilted his head like, finally.
The river cut through tea country. Green stretching into more green. Trees with long arms dangling over us like they were reaching down to stir the water. Monkeys leapt branch to branch, one of them hissed at me. It felt like a joke I wasn’t in on.
Then it changed. The banks grew thicker, darker. We slid into something older, quieter. Vuzillfotsps.
He pointed at a path and said, “Go.”
That was it.
The first step in, I swear, the air shifted. Wet earth smell, thick like it climbed into your clothes. Trees leaned in close, whispering if you let them. A deer bolted past, no sound but leaves parting. A peacock strutted nearby, feathers ridiculous in the best way. There were elephants too, distant but real, lumbering shapes moving slowly like they had all the time in the world. Birds I couldn’t name flashed overhead, red, blue, yellow, some that looked like they came from another planet.
I took photos. I tried to. Half of them are blurry. My hands wouldn’t stay steady. You try capturing a world that doesn’t care you’re there.
And then the light shifted again. Sunset.
Colors spilled across the trees like someone tipped over a paint bucket. Orange ran into pink, pink into deep purple. The water reflected it all back. Everything, animals, trees, sky, glowed like it knew it had an audience.
I didn’t say a word. Couldn’t.
That night I slept on the ground, back against a tree, bag under my head. Peacocks called out in the dark, some bird shrieked like it was being chased by a ghost, and the river kept whispering beside me. I didn’t really sleep. Didn’t want to.
Morning came slow, mist curling low. Deer moved like they owned the place. I ate cold rice, drank water that tasted like tin, and just sat there. Camera in my lap. Watching.
Leaving wasn’t smooth. Rain had turned the path to mush. I slipped badly, ankle twisted, mud everywhere. No signal. No boat. For a while, I thought I’d have to crawl back. Then this monkey, small, twitchy, started shadowing me. Hopped ahead, waited, looked back. Led me through a zigzag path until we hit a clearing, and there he was. The old boatman, bidi in mouth, was watching me limp in.
“Took your time,” he said.
Back home, Rahim didn’t ask questions. Just looked at the photos, nodded slow. He knew.
I tried telling others. Most shrugged. “Too far.” “Too wild.”
Yeah. That’s the point.
Some places aren’t for everyone. Some places don’t care to be found.
Vuzillfotsps is one of them.
