As I stood at a Himalayan crossroads clutching a paper map, I could feel my fingers twitching for a phone I’d vowed not to use.
I’d traveled from Mumbai to the Tangkhul Naga villages of Manipur and decided to spend a week of my trip not relying on my phone.
At first, the absence of notifications felt liberating — until I realized how much I’d outsourced my survival to technology.
The first hour of my digital detox felt like stepping into a silent void. There was no Google Maps to decode winding mountain trails, and no translator to navigate conversations in the village’s Tangkhul dialect.
My heartbeat spiked when a fog rolled in, erasing landmarks. I’d romanticized the idea of “unplugging” — until reality hit.
I was lost, alone, and utterly dependent on strangers and a paper map. Soon, though, the locals became my unexpected compass. An older woman brewing tea over a fire gestured for me to sit with her.
As steam curled from the clay cup, she traced a route on my map with charcoal-stained fingers: “Follow the red prayer flags, then the goats.”
Her directions were vague, yet effective. By sunset, I’d traded algorithmic certainty for human intuition and found my guesthouse.
Soon, I found myself slowing down and finding other ways to capture memories
That night, I journaled by candlelight. And, with no phone to document my travels in photos, I sketched scenes from the day.
My first drawing — a mist-cloaked valley — took 40 minutes.
Instead of snapping dozens of photos of the valley from slightly different angles in seconds, I was forced to slow down and remember the details.
It was a refreshing challenge to rely so much on memory and force myself to focus on one task instead of tapping around on my phone.
The sketches also made me realize just how much I’d reduced travel to a series of Instagram snapshots. Now, each drawing captured my memories more profoundly, from the prayer flags flapping in the wind to the sunshine breaking through the clouds.
Ironically, my phone-free “Kodak moments” became more immersive than any filtered photo.
As the trip went on, I started to feel grateful and guilty for having a digital detox in the first place
About halfway through my trip, a teenage girl approached me and asked if I could take her family’s photo and put it on Facebook.
Her family posed stiffly outside their home, clutching a prized smartphone — one of the few in the village. Their only internet access was a three-hour walk to town.
The request gutted me. Here I was, romanticizing my “noble” detox, while they saw social media and connection as a lifeline to opportunity.
For them, an online post has the chance to go viral, which might mean getting a scholarship or other meaningful resources.
My privilege hit hard: I could afford to romanticize disconnection.
I took the photo and promised to tag them later. Still, the guilt lingered: Who exactly was this detox serving?
The more time I spent away from my phone, the more I realized how lucky I was to be able to have it as a resource — a way to navigate and to connect with friends around the world.
Still, it’s easy for a phone to become too much of a crutch and a distraction. Maybe I didn’t need to go fully phone-free if I was able to find balance by setting mindful limitations and remembering to have gratitude for all it can offer me.
Some of my lessons stuck with me, but it hasn’t been perfect
When I returned to Mumbai, I tried to take some of my technology-detox habits with me, from going on long hikes without a phone and spending Sundays offline.
So far, it’s been messy. I’ve missed emails, gotten lost in my city, and had arguments with friends who think I’m ignoring them on purpose.
However, I’ve also rediscovered the art of waiting and taking in the world around me — staring out train windows, eavesdropping on market banter, and letting my mind wander without a screen to numb the boredom.
I still keep one of the hand-drawn maps a local shepherd gave me during my trip above my desk. It’s rice paper inked with jagged peaks, rivers like squiggled threads, and an “X” marking his favorite hidden spring.
It’s objectively useless for navigating Mumbai’s chaos, but it reminds me that sometimes, the most unexpected paths — ones that force us to slow down, observe, and engage with the world around us — can best reshape our perspectives the most.
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