Most brides worry about reaching the venue on time. Sharmila had to reach the village itself. In Uttarakhand's Chakrata region, her wedding party set out from Bulhar village for Undava, a remote settlement near Dehradun, and where the road gave out, the bride got down and walked: roughly 18 kilometres of rough hill track, in a heavy bridal lehenga.
The walk began last Tuesday from Lokhandi. Video shot by villagers shows her moving fast along the uneven path, anxious to make it to her new home in time for the auspicious muhurat of her griha pravesh, the ceremonial first entry into the house.
A Bride's Appeal, Straight to the Chief Minister
Partway through the trek, the exhausted bride turned to the camera with a request aimed at the top. She told Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami she was walking from Lokhandi to Undava, and asked him to build a road so that nobody from the village has to go through this again.
The clip has since travelled widely on social media, and with it, an old embarrassment for Undava: decades after Independence, the village still has no road connectivity at all.
Not Just Weddings: Patients, the Elderly, Mothers
A missing road is not only about one difficult wedding day. Across Uttarakhand's hills, villages without connectivity struggle with the basics, and the people hit hardest are the elderly, the sick and pregnant women who cannot easily reach a hospital when it matters.
Undava is not an exception but an example. Reports have flagged the same problem in villages like Handi Kandi, where bad weather has left residents struggling to get patients to medical care.
For one day, though, the face of that long-standing neglect was a bride in a red lehenga, walking 18 kilometres to her own wedding, asking for a road.
