Sleepless to Ladakh: A Pre-Wedding Journey

It had been just over a month since I’d last visited my fiancée in Delhi, and our long-planned agreement to do our pre-wedding shoot in Ladakh dated back to shortly after our engagement in March. “Decided.” The original plan was to go in November, but we soon learnt that after around 15 September Ladakh begins to shut down to the outside world, with the weather turning increasingly unpredictable. That left me with a choice. Within the space of two days, I realised that if I wanted to make my fiancée’s supposed “dream location” for the shoot a reality (none of my alternative suggestions had lived up to her expectations), then it had to be now—literally. So, I called her up. After countless disagreements, it became clear: either we went now, or I faced eternal sadness on her end. I chose now.
In just two weeks, we pulled together an entire pre-wedding shoot—dresses, photographers, locations, hotels, and even my fiancée’s best friend, who was deemed “absolutely essential” because she would also be the makeup artist. Two weeks. It was set. Now all that was left was to make it happen.

My flight from Dubai to Delhi marked the beginning. On 27 August, it was scheduled to depart at 11 a.m., which meant I had to be up at 7 and out by 8. Like most of my fiancée-related Delhi trips, the routine was familiar: no sleep, a touch of panic, and plenty of curiosity. This time, though, there was an added twist. At 3 a.m., my dad’s friend decided it was the perfect moment to ring our doorbell and shout at my dad, “When did you come back home?” Needless to say, I didn’t manage any more rest after that. With just an hour and a half of sleep in total, I powered through on coffee and a round of last-minute, overthinking-fuelled packing before finally heading out.

Funnily enough, my plane was practically empty—barely fifty passengers in economy. In my head I thought, “Perfect. I can stretch out across the seats and finally sleep like a baby for three hours.”
Again… nope. Absolutely not. The air hostess decided to tap my knee and chirp,
“Would you like the vegetarian option, sir?”
In reality, I just shook my head, muttered a “no”, and forced my eyes shut again. But in my head? I screamed, “You evil…”—well, best not to finish that sentence. And then, God knows how much later, it happened again. Same lady? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I was furious, exhausted, and had somehow developed the back pain of a seventy-year-old from the awkward way I’d been lying down.

This time, I was travelling with three suitcases, so I used a bike lock to fasten two of them together. With the usual chorus of horns and beeping—but, thankfully, less traffic than expected—I made my way to my fiancée’s house.
That’s when she decided it was the perfect moment to inform me that Lucy was at home. Add crushed, betrayed, and terrified to my growing list of feelings. Lucy, in case you’re wondering, is her dog. And I? I’m a cat person. Cats for life. Dogs are… scary. Sorry to all the dog lovers out there, but dogs? Especially in Delhi? Uhhhhhhhhh—absolutely not.
She promised me Lucy would be safely locked away in another room until our flight the next morning, which left me with a long, cautious eight or nine hours ahead. Was I ready? After spending the past two days watching cat reels on my phone for moral support, the answer was clear: no, I was not.

As soon as I stepped into my fiancée’s home, the first words out of my mouth were: “I’m not coming in until… where is she?” They’d put Lucy in a room, out of my reach, but she still barked for hours on end—convinced that the stranger in the house was a threat. The only thing dangerous about me, however, is when I’m hangry. Tired, drained, and—worst of all—unable to get any proper sleep, I spent the next eight hours drifting between thoughts, socialising, teasing, and simply waiting to board that flight to Ladakh so I could finally collapse in peace. It wasn’t even a long-haul flight, but the mini “layover” in Delhi left my body aching, my eyes begging for shut-eye, and my spirit completely finished. And that was before the chaos that unfolded between midnight and 6 a.m.

Once my fiancée’s friend arrived, we had to reshuffle the suitcases so we wouldn’t go over the weight limit. Then we headed to the airport around 1:30 a.m., expecting the drive to take an hour. But at midnight in Delhi, the usual horns and chaos were nowhere to be found—we arrived in half the time. That left us four hours early at an airport that was eerily quiet. By the time we’d checked in our luggage and reached the gate, there was still a three-hour wait ahead of us. That’s when the dreaded email landed in my inbox. Ladakh’s weather had been brutal over the past few days, with flight cancellations one after another—something we only discovered once we were already at the airport. Praying ours wouldn’t be next, we spent another hour in limbo: waiting, asking, questioning, moaning—pretty much crying on the inside—hoping for good news. Five long hours at the airport later, it finally came. Our flight was boarding. Relief.