Dehradun and Why I Keep Coming Back

I've lived in Mumbai. I've worked from Bali, Amsterdam, Dubai. I've been to ten-plus countries. And I keep coming back to Dehradun.

Not because it's the best city in India. It's not. The Wi-Fi is unreliable. The food options after 10 PM are limited. The roads are either beautiful or broken, sometimes both at the same time.

But Dehradun has something the other places don't. And I've spent a long time trying to figure out what it is.

I think it's pace.

Dehradun moves at the speed of thought. Not the speed of hustle. Not the speed of ambition. The speed of a human being actually processing their life.

In Mumbai, I was always reacting. Always catching up. The city moved faster than I could think. I was productive, sure. But I wasn't present. I was surviving the speed.

In Dehradun, I can think. I can sit on my terrace at 6 AM and watch the mountains and not feel like I'm wasting time. I can write. I can stare at nothing and have it mean something.

The mountains help. There's something about living in the proximity of something that big, that old, that indifferent to your problems, that keeps you honest. The Himalayas don't care about your deadline. They were here before you and they'll be here after you and looking at them every morning is a good way to remember that most of the things you're stressed about don't matter.

I know people who think you have to live in a big city to do big things. I used to think that too. Then I shipped products from a small town in Uttarakhand and realized the geography of ambition is a lie.

You can build from anywhere. But you can only think clearly from the places that let you breathe.

Dehradun lets me breathe.

-I.R.