Manali (Himanchal Pradesh) to Leh, Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir State)
Prologue
When you come around the bend in the road, the one that seems sure to fling you full-speed over the edge of the world (past the rocky scree-scattered slopes to the shores of some mystically sparkling lake – or possibly just to the next chapter after this thing called life), you realize that this is where dragons are hatched, where legends lurk and folktales are distilled from patterns formed by shadows of rocks carved over centuries by strong winds and soft waters, that this is the physical location (or perhaps just closer, closer) that they referred to when they dreamed of something larger and claimed that it whispered them guidance in those still moments when they slowed their breath enough to listen or reached that frantic state just above listening, where the ecstatic speaks for itself.
This is the home of the Gods, the home of the ancestors, the origin of your endlessly expandable expendable thoughts (and maybe, just maybe, all those things are the same thing in any case). The mountains – and we danced around just the base of their peaks, at 10,000 and 18,000 feet – are utterly elemental, and they remind you in the simplest way possible that you, you little mound of sentient flesh, are utterly insignificant and therefore powerful beyond belief.
So we rode – in awe – and watched, and breathed in through our freezing wind-pinched noses and out through the tumbling words that formed sentences and marched off in bands of stories to form new folklores in the crevices between the Himalayan peaks where the sun only reaches every other third Sunday on leap years (but the mountains don’t go by calendar time).
Chapter 1
Once upon a time, three blondes and a semi-repatriated NRI set out on three borrowed vehicles – with insufficient woolens, some Yak cheese and (thankfully) fewer digital cameras than people – to cross world’s reputedly* highest motorable road. They had met on an (epic, by definition) 57-hour bus ride in which they ‘narrowly’ escaped asphyxiation (starvation, and hypothermia) when they were forced to spend the night on the bus, behind a seemingly endless train of goods-and-tourist-carriers stuck where a river had rudely crossed the famed Manali-Leh highway before the vehicles could get their wheels rolling. And so there they sat, our four heroes and a comic caravan of mountain men smoking beedies in the small shelter provided by the highly decorated cabs of their trucks while Korean and German women clicked cameras at the peaks surrounding the unfortunately rushing waters and college students studied altitude sickness at approximately 4,000 meters above sea level.
The travelers arrived, to a collective sigh of relief, in Leh, the capitol of Ladakh – a charming hillside city filled with Tibetan prayer flags and the markers of a booming tourist industry: sings written in Hebrew and English (but not Hindi or the local language), internet cafes, white shoulders peeking around torn hippy paraphernalia, Kashmiri salesmen, Italian-trained chefs, Korean food, cheap drugs and overpriced ‘antiques.’ Minutes after being left to his own devices, our semi-repatriated NRI found his own vehicle, and although his traveling companion would have preferred to test her dancing legs on the endless slopes to the gleaming tip-top-temple, she did her best to give in to the romanticism of the open road (a slippery slope easily greased by a sunset ride through the high-altitude Himalayan valley).
And so our heroes were picked up and carried along in the stream of too-cool-for-the-lowlands tourists, through cafés offering American, Israeli, French, or Spanish breakfast, past trekking gear posts, past patios for the making and trading of stories. In this otherworldly (and microcosmically every-worldly) landscape, identity was the currency, and description – sparkle of mischief in the eye required – the preferred mode of bargaining.
Chapter 2
I wasn’t there when they got the permits we would need – I had a project to finish, and was wrestling with the cloud-blocked local satellite internet when I heard the announcement, delivered by a pair of grinning faces astride a bike. That afternoon we met – the three blondes (your narrator, Mar and Ty) and my travel companion, Vam** the semi-repatriated NRI – and that evening I went through my requisite panic for the love of leaving.
Leh shrank behind us, folding in to the valley as the road lifted up and shot us sideways along soft golden slopes glowing kindly in the afternoon light. Small streams of ice water gave the first hints of snow, and as we paused to re-fasten our bags we added layers of jackets, scarves, socks. The first stop was South Pullu, an army checkpoint where men wrapped in olive green khaki checked our permits and shuffled aside to make room at the local chai stall. The second stop was Kardong-La, where the thin air whipped our lungs and stole the breath from beneath our words and the frozen breezes nipped any piece of flesh so unfortunate as to meet the outside world. The view was expansive (as it should be at over 18,000 feet), but not as stunning as the panoramas of ice and height and distance, of lancing sunlight and dancing cloud formations that had been so sumptuously spread before us on the way up – so we stepped into the metal-walled canteen and dined on hot maggi noodles and more (always more) chai. We left the pass, around six thirty in the evening, with two extra pairs of yak-wool gloves and one less sleeping bag (thanks to high-altitude pickpockets).
The descent was chilling and the day’s last sheaths of clear mountain sunlight were stuck on the far side of the pass, leaving us in a grey shadow-land while white mountaintops sparkled with snow. This section of the road was rough, scattered with small boulders and gouged by a million invented creeks. Vam and I stopped once, to make sure that Mar and Ty were within sight, steadily spinning down the switchbacks behind us.
By the time we stopped again, the little light we had had prancing along with us was marching off to bed. We paused for a moment in the shelter of what looked like a giant metal oil barrel turned on its side, buried half underground, and pierced with a few brick-sized windows and midget doors at each end; when the road behind us remained empty after five, ten, twenty minutes, we parked the vehicle where it could be clearly seen, and knocked on the neighboring tin can.
A withered soldier came to the door – I had never seen Vam speak to anyone with such complete deference, sir’s peppering every sentence. The man – maybe forty-five, but with white stubble standing out on his dark chin and an olive beanie pulled low over high cheekbones – waved us inside. The warmth emanating from a thin, round stove in the middle of the room folded around us, and the low curve of the walls gave the impression that we had just stepped underground. The soldier waved us to a seat on a bench where we could warm our hands, while he ruffled through the contents of a second bench – his kitchen – and produced his last box of Maaza mango juice for me and a bag of mixed nuts for Vam, before sitting on a third bench – his bed. Vam explained that these supplies, along with a bottle of XXX Rum, were the special rations that the army provided to these men posted along the ridges of reality, and as thanks, he left some of his cigarettes on the bench as we bowed back out the door. The bite of the wind hit us immediately.
Chapter 3
We had two choices: drive five kilometers back up to the pass, hope we find Mar and Ty on the way, and sleep on the floor of the canteen, or drive five kilometers further down to North Pullu, where the soldier said that some civilian buildings were being built near a large army base and police station. I voted for down. Mar and Ty had each been wandering this spinning ball of dirt for years, and I had no desire to continue our highway experiments with low-oxygen sleeping arrangements. The road improved as we continued our descent, but I was still giddy with excitement to pass the Buddhist temple at the upper gate of the base and pull into the yellow pool of light waiting for us outside the main office. At least five men answered each of our questions, and soon we were pulling back out and spinning across the dark road, blinking to adjust our vision before the sign of our dreams wavered before our eyes: double beds hot water Indian Chinese Continental Kitchen oxygen First AID local yak-wool products available for Sale! The beaten dirt disappeared under our feet as we ran to the front door.
He gestured for us to take a seat on a large bed, and we gladly traded mud-caked shoes for thick synthetic blankets and the ability to lower our scarves enough to let full sentences fall from frozen lips. The man’s quarters were small – a single bed pushed against one wall, and a double against the other, thick matting in between. Two large sets of windows filled most of two of the walls, giving a spectacular view of the pre-moon inky blackness outside the not-quite-yet-hotel. At the back of the room, a windowsill supported a small shrine to Buddha – water bowls, incense, Tibetan inscriptions, and a popular photo of the Dalai Lama waving at the camera with one arm around a young and powerful monk. Although the walls of the room were thick plaster, the roof was thatch, and an open-air skylight the size of a basketball pierced a hole to the heavens. Two low tables, one on either end of the double bed, held the man’s possessions – a red and white plastic cooler, lace doilies, and a cardboard box for clothes. We were soon served steaming chai, and I held the thin ceramic cup to my face to warm my tingling cheekbones as I smiled and let the tension drain from my jaw.
I listened with what was left of my waking mind to the conversation in Hindi – picking up basic vocabulary and the smattering of English words and re-arranging them in my mind into a semi-coherent narrative about my ‘husband,’ ‘marriage,’ and our foolishly late passing over Kardong-La. A policeman – in his late thirties, skinny with smooth skin and a healthy mustache, almost a cartoon Indian cop – came and went and came again to say the women had not been found and there was nothing more he could do. An optimistic traveler’s trust in the utter absurdity of the world and the strange resilience of its human inhabitants had combined with an easy acknowledgment of my utter lack of control over the evening and all its inhabitants to created a wooly layer of clouded across the floor of my mind; the news that Mar and Ty were still ‘out there’ sent a few mental porcelain plates shattering, the shards lodged comfortably. I smiled my thanks to the policemen as he left and belatedly wondered about my status as a ‘good wife’ and a loose American.
I smiled again – facial expressions are so much simpler to translate – at Vam as he followed the policemen out the door and towards the army base, the wooly layers continuing to build up inside my mind. I gratefully gulped the contents of a small metal soup bowl, but all memories of hunger drained from my mind as two massive plates of Chow Mein – noodles cooked with the remnants of vegetables and impressively few spices, a wonderfully plain and absurdly boring dinner – were placed on a white plastic tray and balanced on the mattress next to me, on the spot where the my only means of verbal communication had recently been sitting. While he was gone, and our host was present, I ate with ‘evident relish,’ smiling at each bite and emitting an animalistic variety of small positive comments. When I was alone in the room, I stored my fork in the remaining pile of pale noodles and stared intently at the layered floor and ebony glass windows, visually dissecting the suddenly scintillatingly removable bits of the shrine. When Vam returned, I eagerly shoved the remains of my plate into his chilled fingers, and made space for the night-time moon dust falling from his jacket to the bed.
I have to go back to the officer’s quarters – he explained between bites – they’re young, hip Punajbi guys, and I told them we were engaged but not yet married because my parents don’t approve, that we met in New Zealand in 2005 when you were studying abroad (I tried to imagine fitting this asynchronous detail in to my life story, and smiled at the awkward result)… but I’d given up the reigns long ago, so with blatantly false promises to return in ten minutes, I re-wrapped my extremities and allowed myself to be led across the near-freezing compound. The light and warmth of the room that opened to us would have felt like salvation enough from our brief trip through the high-altitude valley night (with stars you could touch if you were humble and brave enough to gleefully announce your insignificance) without the familiar babbling of television in the background: Star TV, HBO, murder mystery, gleaming advertisements featuring Aryan-toned Indians with perfect kitchens, Nicholas Cage’s Ghost Ride blazing a trail of fire and lost souls across our suspended evening. The officers were in casual dress, American sweatpants and matching navy sweatshirts with thin cloth covering the perfectly rounded buns of never-cut hair that marked them both as Sikh.
They waved us a welcome as an anonymous soldier ushered us through the door, to a cot with a bright green wool blanket and a stove-side view that allowed us to quickly shed a rainbow of warm garments. I flexed my fingers, and answered a question about things ‘to do’ in America without the constant entertainment of extended family. It was OK now – the army had found Mar and Ty at their roadside station and were sending a truck to retrieve them. This was strictly beyond any call of duty – the army gave up sovereignty of the road at dark, six or seven in the evening, but the temperature was literally dropping to zero, and they worried on our friend’s behalf. ‘This is not an easy place,’ the older officer – on an acclimatizing stop-over before continuing to a higher post – remarked with a pre-proprietary smile. So we settled and chattered and turned down food but drank tomato soup and by the time we were forcing some syrupy sweet carrot halvah down our throats Mar and Ty were losing elevation.
Mar sat at the outpost’s stove, trading pieces of her broken Hindi for pieces of the soldiers’ broken English – but the fumes made Ty dizzy, and she turned in early, wrapping herself in the adjacent room. It was only a little while after Mar had joined her for sleep – they were just drifting off – when six soldiers burst the doors of their room, yelling gruffly with flashlight accompaniment for the two women to come with them.
The young captain set the black receiver on its cradle, and flashed us a confused smile.
The call repeated itself on an unpleasant relay track until, around eleven thirty, we got a positive; they were heading down the mountain. When the trucks pulled into the graveled yard, we jogged out to meet them, accompanied by a random smattering of curious soldiers. Mar and Ty climbed down from the massive cab, and Vam was immediately directed to take Ty to the base’s doctor. I found Mar, and together we ran off for the unfinished guest house. The porch light was on, casting an imaginary safety net over the steps, but the door was locked. I felt guiltily exposed and completely at home, and when our host peered bleary-eyed around the door – it was past midnight – I ushered Mar easily through the kitchen to our room. Our host, walking ahead of us, had already re-settled his bedding on the floor, and before we could protest had traipsed directly back to dreamland. I waved Mar silently to the smaller bed, and settled on the edge of my own with a black leather journal and a strong determination to stay awake. After 45 minutes, I pivoted easily to a horizontal pose – ten minutes passed, or maybe fifteen before a ghostly grinning face and a sharp tap at the window sent me running to the front door. Vam dripped frozen night air as he stepped in to the bedroom and enfolded me and disappeared with a few breaths of the warm bedroom air to keep him company back to the hospital.
The rising sun and a shake to the shoulder dragged me into a hallucinatory morning of reporting officials, oxygen re-fills, mutton maggi breakfast, and the efficient bustle of an important stopping point on the only road connecting the Nubra Valley to Leh. Time had folded in on itself in so many layers that I don’t remember when it started to snow – I just remember that my automatic reaction was to sing Christmas Carols.
Mar and Ty’s bikes were still stranded on the mountain, and the policeman who hadn’t found them the night before now offered to ensure a ride to Diskit.
This is the home of the Gods, the home of the ancestors, the origin of your endlessly expandable expendable thoughts (and maybe, just maybe, all those things are the same thing in any case). The mountains – and we danced around just the base of their peaks, at 10,000 and 18,000 feet – are utterly elemental, and they remind you in the simplest way possible that you, you little mound of sentient flesh, are utterly insignificant and therefore powerful beyond belief.
So we rode – in awe – and watched, and breathed in through our freezing wind-pinched noses and out through the tumbling words that formed sentences and marched off in bands of stories to form new folklores in the crevices between the Himalayan peaks where the sun only reaches every other third Sunday on leap years (but the mountains don’t go by calendar time).
Chapter 1
Once upon a time, three blondes and a semi-repatriated NRI set out on three borrowed vehicles – with insufficient woolens, some Yak cheese and (thankfully) fewer digital cameras than people – to cross world’s reputedly* highest motorable road. They had met on an (epic, by definition) 57-hour bus ride in which they ‘narrowly’ escaped asphyxiation (starvation, and hypothermia) when they were forced to spend the night on the bus, behind a seemingly endless train of goods-and-tourist-carriers stuck where a river had rudely crossed the famed Manali-Leh highway before the vehicles could get their wheels rolling. And so there they sat, our four heroes and a comic caravan of mountain men smoking beedies in the small shelter provided by the highly decorated cabs of their trucks while Korean and German women clicked cameras at the peaks surrounding the unfortunately rushing waters and college students studied altitude sickness at approximately 4,000 meters above sea level.
The travelers arrived, to a collective sigh of relief, in Leh, the capitol of Ladakh – a charming hillside city filled with Tibetan prayer flags and the markers of a booming tourist industry: sings written in Hebrew and English (but not Hindi or the local language), internet cafes, white shoulders peeking around torn hippy paraphernalia, Kashmiri salesmen, Italian-trained chefs, Korean food, cheap drugs and overpriced ‘antiques.’ Minutes after being left to his own devices, our semi-repatriated NRI found his own vehicle, and although his traveling companion would have preferred to test her dancing legs on the endless slopes to the gleaming tip-top-temple, she did her best to give in to the romanticism of the open road (a slippery slope easily greased by a sunset ride through the high-altitude Himalayan valley).
And so our heroes were picked up and carried along in the stream of too-cool-for-the-lowlands tourists, through cafés offering American, Israeli, French, or Spanish breakfast, past trekking gear posts, past patios for the making and trading of stories. In this otherworldly (and microcosmically every-worldly) landscape, identity was the currency, and description – sparkle of mischief in the eye required – the preferred mode of bargaining.
Chapter 2
I wasn’t there when they got the permits we would need – I had a project to finish, and was wrestling with the cloud-blocked local satellite internet when I heard the announcement, delivered by a pair of grinning faces astride a bike. That afternoon we met – the three blondes (your narrator, Mar and Ty) and my travel companion, Vam** the semi-repatriated NRI – and that evening I went through my requisite panic for the love of leaving.
You’re being unreasonable. I know. What will help? I don’t know – waiting. Ok, then let’s leave now. Right now? Tonight.After that, I was set to hit the road early in the morning. Four breakfasts, three cinnamon rolls to go, two new used vehicles, and one stop at the petrol station later, it was nearly two thirty in the afternoon and we were just starting up the road.
Leh shrank behind us, folding in to the valley as the road lifted up and shot us sideways along soft golden slopes glowing kindly in the afternoon light. Small streams of ice water gave the first hints of snow, and as we paused to re-fasten our bags we added layers of jackets, scarves, socks. The first stop was South Pullu, an army checkpoint where men wrapped in olive green khaki checked our permits and shuffled aside to make room at the local chai stall. The second stop was Kardong-La, where the thin air whipped our lungs and stole the breath from beneath our words and the frozen breezes nipped any piece of flesh so unfortunate as to meet the outside world. The view was expansive (as it should be at over 18,000 feet), but not as stunning as the panoramas of ice and height and distance, of lancing sunlight and dancing cloud formations that had been so sumptuously spread before us on the way up – so we stepped into the metal-walled canteen and dined on hot maggi noodles and more (always more) chai. We left the pass, around six thirty in the evening, with two extra pairs of yak-wool gloves and one less sleeping bag (thanks to high-altitude pickpockets).
The descent was chilling and the day’s last sheaths of clear mountain sunlight were stuck on the far side of the pass, leaving us in a grey shadow-land while white mountaintops sparkled with snow. This section of the road was rough, scattered with small boulders and gouged by a million invented creeks. Vam and I stopped once, to make sure that Mar and Ty were within sight, steadily spinning down the switchbacks behind us.
By the time we stopped again, the little light we had had prancing along with us was marching off to bed. We paused for a moment in the shelter of what looked like a giant metal oil barrel turned on its side, buried half underground, and pierced with a few brick-sized windows and midget doors at each end; when the road behind us remained empty after five, ten, twenty minutes, we parked the vehicle where it could be clearly seen, and knocked on the neighboring tin can.
A withered soldier came to the door – I had never seen Vam speak to anyone with such complete deference, sir’s peppering every sentence. The man – maybe forty-five, but with white stubble standing out on his dark chin and an olive beanie pulled low over high cheekbones – waved us inside. The warmth emanating from a thin, round stove in the middle of the room folded around us, and the low curve of the walls gave the impression that we had just stepped underground. The soldier waved us to a seat on a bench where we could warm our hands, while he ruffled through the contents of a second bench – his kitchen – and produced his last box of Maaza mango juice for me and a bag of mixed nuts for Vam, before sitting on a third bench – his bed. Vam explained that these supplies, along with a bottle of XXX Rum, were the special rations that the army provided to these men posted along the ridges of reality, and as thanks, he left some of his cigarettes on the bench as we bowed back out the door. The bite of the wind hit us immediately.
Chapter 3
We had two choices: drive five kilometers back up to the pass, hope we find Mar and Ty on the way, and sleep on the floor of the canteen, or drive five kilometers further down to North Pullu, where the soldier said that some civilian buildings were being built near a large army base and police station. I voted for down. Mar and Ty had each been wandering this spinning ball of dirt for years, and I had no desire to continue our highway experiments with low-oxygen sleeping arrangements. The road improved as we continued our descent, but I was still giddy with excitement to pass the Buddhist temple at the upper gate of the base and pull into the yellow pool of light waiting for us outside the main office. At least five men answered each of our questions, and soon we were pulling back out and spinning across the dark road, blinking to adjust our vision before the sign of our dreams wavered before our eyes: double beds hot water Indian Chinese Continental Kitchen oxygen First AID local yak-wool products available for Sale! The beaten dirt disappeared under our feet as we ran to the front door.
Sorry, hotel is not built yet. But this building, please, is there anywhere we could stay? The hallway, if you have your own bedding. We don’t. Yeh bibi hai? (Is that your wife? I finally understood a sentence). Ji han (yes, sir). My wife is out of town, she is up at her village, so you can stay in my room – don’t worry, I’m a safe man and I won’t hurt your wife, she’ll be safe in here.As we stepped through the kitchen, with its conglomeration of skinny boys and mountains of noodles being drained from heavy black pots, I was giddy with relief. Our savior was a recently retired soldier – he served in the local Ladakhi unit for twenty three years, and the partially finished hotel was his retirement project.
He gestured for us to take a seat on a large bed, and we gladly traded mud-caked shoes for thick synthetic blankets and the ability to lower our scarves enough to let full sentences fall from frozen lips. The man’s quarters were small – a single bed pushed against one wall, and a double against the other, thick matting in between. Two large sets of windows filled most of two of the walls, giving a spectacular view of the pre-moon inky blackness outside the not-quite-yet-hotel. At the back of the room, a windowsill supported a small shrine to Buddha – water bowls, incense, Tibetan inscriptions, and a popular photo of the Dalai Lama waving at the camera with one arm around a young and powerful monk. Although the walls of the room were thick plaster, the roof was thatch, and an open-air skylight the size of a basketball pierced a hole to the heavens. Two low tables, one on either end of the double bed, held the man’s possessions – a red and white plastic cooler, lace doilies, and a cardboard box for clothes. We were soon served steaming chai, and I held the thin ceramic cup to my face to warm my tingling cheekbones as I smiled and let the tension drain from my jaw.
I listened with what was left of my waking mind to the conversation in Hindi – picking up basic vocabulary and the smattering of English words and re-arranging them in my mind into a semi-coherent narrative about my ‘husband,’ ‘marriage,’ and our foolishly late passing over Kardong-La. A policeman – in his late thirties, skinny with smooth skin and a healthy mustache, almost a cartoon Indian cop – came and went and came again to say the women had not been found and there was nothing more he could do. An optimistic traveler’s trust in the utter absurdity of the world and the strange resilience of its human inhabitants had combined with an easy acknowledgment of my utter lack of control over the evening and all its inhabitants to created a wooly layer of clouded across the floor of my mind; the news that Mar and Ty were still ‘out there’ sent a few mental porcelain plates shattering, the shards lodged comfortably. I smiled my thanks to the policemen as he left and belatedly wondered about my status as a ‘good wife’ and a loose American.
I smiled again – facial expressions are so much simpler to translate – at Vam as he followed the policemen out the door and towards the army base, the wooly layers continuing to build up inside my mind. I gratefully gulped the contents of a small metal soup bowl, but all memories of hunger drained from my mind as two massive plates of Chow Mein – noodles cooked with the remnants of vegetables and impressively few spices, a wonderfully plain and absurdly boring dinner – were placed on a white plastic tray and balanced on the mattress next to me, on the spot where the my only means of verbal communication had recently been sitting. While he was gone, and our host was present, I ate with ‘evident relish,’ smiling at each bite and emitting an animalistic variety of small positive comments. When I was alone in the room, I stored my fork in the remaining pile of pale noodles and stared intently at the layered floor and ebony glass windows, visually dissecting the suddenly scintillatingly removable bits of the shrine. When Vam returned, I eagerly shoved the remains of my plate into his chilled fingers, and made space for the night-time moon dust falling from his jacket to the bed.
I have to go back to the officer’s quarters – he explained between bites – they’re young, hip Punajbi guys, and I told them we were engaged but not yet married because my parents don’t approve, that we met in New Zealand in 2005 when you were studying abroad (I tried to imagine fitting this asynchronous detail in to my life story, and smiled at the awkward result)… but I’d given up the reigns long ago, so with blatantly false promises to return in ten minutes, I re-wrapped my extremities and allowed myself to be led across the near-freezing compound. The light and warmth of the room that opened to us would have felt like salvation enough from our brief trip through the high-altitude valley night (with stars you could touch if you were humble and brave enough to gleefully announce your insignificance) without the familiar babbling of television in the background: Star TV, HBO, murder mystery, gleaming advertisements featuring Aryan-toned Indians with perfect kitchens, Nicholas Cage’s Ghost Ride blazing a trail of fire and lost souls across our suspended evening. The officers were in casual dress, American sweatpants and matching navy sweatshirts with thin cloth covering the perfectly rounded buns of never-cut hair that marked them both as Sikh.
They waved us a welcome as an anonymous soldier ushered us through the door, to a cot with a bright green wool blanket and a stove-side view that allowed us to quickly shed a rainbow of warm garments. I flexed my fingers, and answered a question about things ‘to do’ in America without the constant entertainment of extended family. It was OK now – the army had found Mar and Ty at their roadside station and were sending a truck to retrieve them. This was strictly beyond any call of duty – the army gave up sovereignty of the road at dark, six or seven in the evening, but the temperature was literally dropping to zero, and they worried on our friend’s behalf. ‘This is not an easy place,’ the older officer – on an acclimatizing stop-over before continuing to a higher post – remarked with a pre-proprietary smile. So we settled and chattered and turned down food but drank tomato soup and by the time we were forcing some syrupy sweet carrot halvah down our throats Mar and Ty were losing elevation.
Mar sat at the outpost’s stove, trading pieces of her broken Hindi for pieces of the soldiers’ broken English – but the fumes made Ty dizzy, and she turned in early, wrapping herself in the adjacent room. It was only a little while after Mar had joined her for sleep – they were just drifting off – when six soldiers burst the doors of their room, yelling gruffly with flashlight accompaniment for the two women to come with them.
The young captain set the black receiver on its cradle, and flashed us a confused smile.
They won’t come – they won’t go with the soldiers.This message had been relayed from the outpost to the peak and then down to us – direct communication wasn’t possible, and civilian voices were not allowed on airways so close to Indian’s northern borders.
Ask again, tell them we’re here, tell them Vam and Lily are waiting for them.Chapter 4
The call repeated itself on an unpleasant relay track until, around eleven thirty, we got a positive; they were heading down the mountain. When the trucks pulled into the graveled yard, we jogged out to meet them, accompanied by a random smattering of curious soldiers. Mar and Ty climbed down from the massive cab, and Vam was immediately directed to take Ty to the base’s doctor. I found Mar, and together we ran off for the unfinished guest house. The porch light was on, casting an imaginary safety net over the steps, but the door was locked. I felt guiltily exposed and completely at home, and when our host peered bleary-eyed around the door – it was past midnight – I ushered Mar easily through the kitchen to our room. Our host, walking ahead of us, had already re-settled his bedding on the floor, and before we could protest had traipsed directly back to dreamland. I waved Mar silently to the smaller bed, and settled on the edge of my own with a black leather journal and a strong determination to stay awake. After 45 minutes, I pivoted easily to a horizontal pose – ten minutes passed, or maybe fifteen before a ghostly grinning face and a sharp tap at the window sent me running to the front door. Vam dripped frozen night air as he stepped in to the bedroom and enfolded me and disappeared with a few breaths of the warm bedroom air to keep him company back to the hospital.
The rising sun and a shake to the shoulder dragged me into a hallucinatory morning of reporting officials, oxygen re-fills, mutton maggi breakfast, and the efficient bustle of an important stopping point on the only road connecting the Nubra Valley to Leh. Time had folded in on itself in so many layers that I don’t remember when it started to snow – I just remember that my automatic reaction was to sing Christmas Carols.
Hark how the bells, sweet silver bells, all seem to say, throw cares away...Flakes swirled through the hole in the thatched roof, and the morning sweats that had woken me a week before in the height of the Hyderabadi summer seemed several small lifetimes away.
Mar and Ty’s bikes were still stranded on the mountain, and the policeman who hadn’t found them the night before now offered to ensure a ride to Diskit.
Diskit?! The nearest town with a hospital, in case Ty gets sick again. Oh, of course – Diskit.Vam and I left on our own, re-wrapped and reluctant, but ready to smile our goodbyes at the Bhangra-dancing group of Indian tourists buying chai and noodles from our new Ladhakhi friend. The flurries followed us at first, and the sun took her time catching up with our spinning wheels, but that mystical little breeze created by our own forward motion snuck under our skin and soon we were smiling and chattering and singing as the road unfolded in strange bends and familiar hand-painted signs.
(... to be continued...)
Notes:
* Generally known to vary from 'reality' - 'Khardong-La' is among the highest motorable roads in the world, but there are reportedly some higher crossings near Lhasa, give or take a few hundred feet.
** For the purpose of correlating stories told in photos with those told in words, Vam and Ra are the same person
*** If you'd like to view the photo album and don't have the link, just drop me a note!
Notes:
* Generally known to vary from 'reality' - 'Khardong-La' is among the highest motorable roads in the world, but there are reportedly some higher crossings near Lhasa, give or take a few hundred feet.
** For the purpose of correlating stories told in photos with those told in words, Vam and Ra are the same person
*** If you'd like to view the photo album and don't have the link, just drop me a note!
Posts
