Travelers' Tales India

by James O'Reilly

  Walking remains one of the best means of seeing and interacting with a culture. No boundaries exist, other than the ones that you set for yourself. In the tourist world of packaged tours, seen through closed windows of air-conditioned buses, with carefully prepared cultural events, performed daily for tourists, directed through the concientious efforts of hired guides, the genuine “travel experience” becomes increasingly rare. But setting out on foot, on your own, is usually all it takes to uncover the sought-after glimpse of life as lived in a strange place.

  Elated to be independent, I strolled past whimpering dogs, curious children, and countless friendly and beautiful faces. Men stopped, or stopped me to chat, and always pointed me in a sure direction. It wasn’t, however, always the same direction. Unbothered, I continued, motivated by a sense of adventure.

  From not too far away, I heard a sound that echoed from my childhood and movies of the wild west: a steam whistle filled the air, calling out to all within range. This was the India I had come to see. I followed the sound to a bridge overlooking a train station. Beneath the bridge people were still boarding the train as the whistle blew again issuing forth white steam which rose and mixed with black smoke belching from the smoke stack. The old engine began to slowly rumble forward. As the train gathered momentum and passed beneath me the bridge shook, and I shook with it. From atop the crowded wooden cars, people looked up and waved enthusiastically as I gazed down. Smoke filled the still air, slowly dissipating, and with it the sound and motion of the train. I was elated.

  Dusk was at hand, and with it came the necessity of getting back to the hotel, the group, my job, and admittedly, dinner. Looking around, the street was full of people, mostly standing idle, talking amongst themselves. I walked slowly first in one direction, then retraced my steps and started off in the other direction. Hopeless, I returned to my place on the bridge and looked out at the train station.

  It was only then that I heard a small voice at my feet. I looked down, and from within a shallow cardboard and cloth enclosure a bearded head emerged. From a wizzened wrinkled old head, covered with soot, hair in a tangled mat, emerged two sparkling eyes and a smile: “May I be of assistance?” said a gentle voice. Looking up at me from a crouched posture from within his little tent on the street, sat a man, his head scarcely two feet above the pavement. His speech was impecable, his elocution refined, his accent remniscent of the Queen’s English.

  “I am lost,” I replied.

  “You are found now,” he said comfortingly. “May I show you my book?” he added, with only a slight hesitation.

  “Well, of course,” I said, and he spun delicately inward, rotating back with a tattered, loosely-bound sheaf of pages hand written in a script that I could only guess was Hindi.

  “Here look at this.” And I did.“I have written it myself,” he said modestly.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The story of my life on this bridge. I have been here for nearly eight years now living in this…” and after a moment’s reflection added “tent. You are the first tourist I have spoken with, although I have seen a few pass by. Do you mind being a part of my book?” He carefully opened it to a page only partially full.

  The bridge guardian

  “No, not at all,” I replied.“My name is Joel, I am from America, this is my first day in India, and I am lost…and happy.”

  “Please repeat what you have just told me,” he asked. I did, and slowly he wrote those words in Hindi, I suppose, with an old black pen.

  “Now how may I help you?” he asked.

  “I should like to go back to the hotel, the Sheraton hotel for dinner with my group.” By this time there was a small circle of onlookers and onlisteners clustered around the crouched man and myself. He spoke some words in Hindi to a man standing next to him. That man spoke to a younger boy who ran off down the street. Soon the boy returned and with him a rickshaw-wallah. The crouched man in the tent (I never knew his name), told me that the driver would take me to the hotel whenever I wished. I told him I wanted to stay longer and chat through the evening, but that I was obligated to return to the group. They expected me to photograph a dance presentation.

  I slipped my hand into my shirt pocket and drew out my only pen, a cheap ball point pen, but nearly new. With a smile, I offered it to him. With grace he took it into his soot and ink-covered hands. Holding my hands in his and holding my eyes with his, he thanked me for my contributions to his book, and to his life.

  In this simple moment I knew I had been found. I had become lost in India. But India had found me.

  Joel Simon’s photo and writing assignments have taken him to all seven continents, including the North Pole, the Antarctic, and ninety-five countries in between. When not traveling, he’s at home in Menlo Park, California, with his wife, Kim, their twin daughters, their cat, Ichiban, and an itinerant possum named Rover.

  Dr. Jaffery was prostrated on a prayer carpet, finishing his evening namaaz. Fardine went to join him. Uncle and nephew knelt shoulder to shoulder, hands cupped, heads bowed in the simple position of submission.

  When he had finished, Dr. Jaffery rose to his feet, brushed the dust of his pyjamas and came over to Olivia and me. He welcomed us, then added: “You looked at us strangely while we were praying. Do you never pray?”

  “I used to,” I said, embarrassed. “Now…I am not sure what I believe in, whether I’m an agnostic or…”

  “You make God sound so complicated,” said Dr. Jaffery, cutting in. “God is simple. To follow him is not so difficult. Just remember the advice of Rumi: ‘Follow the camel of love.’”

  “But follow it where?” I said.

  “To wherever it leads,” replied Dr. Jaffery. “God is everywhere. He is in the buildings, in the light, in the air. He is in you, closer to you than the veins of your neck.”

  —William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

  The Cycle-Wallah Does Northern India

  MICHAEL BUCKLEY

  The views are different from the saddle of a mountain bike.

  THERE IS NOTHING POLITE ABOUT ROAD SIGNS ON THE LEH-TO-Srinagar road in Ladakh: they are directed at Indian drivers fond of taking hairpin bends and blind corners at full throttle. The roads are high and rough and treacherous: Beacon, the paramilitary organization that constructed and maintains this highway in Ladakh, has erected bright yellow concrete markers along the route or painted signs into sheer rock walls. Signs that range from the cryptic—IF MARRIED, DIVORCE SPEED—to exhortations like GO MAN GO—BUT GO SLOW. A bit below the belt is BE GENTLE ON MY CURVES, later reinforced by DARLING I WANT YOU—BUT NOT SO FAST. And to really tug on the heartstrings: PAPA GO SLOW—ORPHANAGE NO NO. But the strangest one yet seen offers this stark advice: DEATH LAYS ITS ICY HANDS ON SPEED KINGS.

  Fortunately, I was spared the maniacal Indian truck drivers because the road up from Kashmir was blocked by snowfalls at Zoji La Pass. The pass blocks traffic for an inconvenient eight months a year—but I had flown into Leh from Delhi and thus bypassed the pass. When the pass opened, it would be bumper-to-bumper trucks spewing exhaust fumes. For the moment, there were only a handful of trucks and jeeps commuting up to the pass and back again. Sooner or later I would have to face the problem of actually crossing the pass, but until then, I had the entire road to myself—and my trusty mountain bike.

  Before noon I came upon several huts enclosed by a bamboo fence. Several men crouched around two huge tree trunks pushed into a smoldering ash pile, smoke wisping from the log ends. Coached by my stomach, I made a quick decision and pulled around. I squatted with them around the fire, smiled, and felt good when they smiled in return. Soon I was their guest, happily gorging on an endless meal of rice, chapatis, dhal, and subji (curried vegetables). The rain came again, and the cook valeted my cycle into an unoccupied thatched shack. My hosts then eagerly started up a card game. I lost rupee after rupee while trying to figure out the rules, doubly confounded by a suspicion that the rules were being changed as
we played. When I drew the line for betting at my watch they were disappointed. I dared not bring out my camera.

  —Michael Sutherland, “Rohtas Riding”

  And what a magnificent road it is. I’d been on it for five days now, breezing along with a string of snowcapped mountains to the right, and Salvador Dali desert landscapes to the left. On the approach to Lamayuru, there is a long uphill stretch nicknamed the “Jalabi Bends” by truck-drivers—Jalabi being a kind of Indian sweetmeat with orange twirls. I passed a small roadside shrine that marks the spot of a serious accident, and gives the names of the fallen—these unnerving memorials punctuate the entire route to Srinagar. I tackled the laborious climb up the coiled switchbacks with rockbands of green shale, purple shale; near the crest, I came across some traders with donkeys having a tea break. They motioned me over to their campfire, and foisted Ladakhi tea on me—a horribly salty, pinkish concoction that I knocked back out of politeness. I gave them some chocolate. They examined the bike; I examined their gear; we sat around the fire. These encounters were strange and almost wordless, but somehow very meaningful.

  The road continued through a bizarre moonscape of yellowish clay and pitted rocks. Rounding a bend, I caught sight of Lamayuru Monastery, dramatically lit by the afternoon sun—an impossible structure fused to a rocky outcrop, with dark, brooding hills behind it. It seemed to come straight off the page of a book about mythical places—even in its advanced state of decay, this Tibetan fortress exudes an air of majesty and splendor. Lamayuru is set down a valley: monastery at the top, village below, and a stream and barley fields at the bottom. The village is small—perhaps five hundred souls—and has only a rough jeep road in.

  I rode the bike down a dirt track to the monastery—travelers are allowed to stay in a wing of the temple. Phuntsak, the monk in charge, is a wheeler-dealer—he runs a small shop, which had the best stock I’ve seen so far. He had Indian peanut butter, chapatis, dried apricots, biscuits, garlic, tea. The monk immediately took a fancy to my pile sweater, a bright monastic red, and inquired about trading food for it.

  “You dhal? You ricing? You potato? How much you jacket? How much shopping you jacket? You biscuit? You tea?” Phuntsak spoke a variety of English that conveniently eliminated all verbs. I resisted the attempts to buy the sweater, and sipped chai while he cooked up some dhal.

  Two other travelers drifted in for food. Stephanie was from England, and her boyfriend, Wally, was from Portugal. They looked like they had stepped straight out of the 1970s. Stephanie had a hippie headband; Wally sported five earrings in each ear. They rated all their travel destinations in terms of hashish—how available it was, the quality, the price, and whether smoking it was tolerated or not.

  “Ah, Singapore, freak me off!” cried Wally. “Incroyable the policia there. Quand I arrive they search me everywhere. Everywhere. Freak me off!” He took a toke on a hash-lined cigarette. “Kathmandu was the best place—smoking in the restaurants, ma the laws they change. Even in India they change the laws. Goa was the place—lots of crazy people. Carazey! And then the police arrest me in India—shake me over, you know. Bastardos! So we go up to Tibet. Lhasa was the greatest—lots of good hashish there, ma then the riots, they close out the place.”

  “You biscuit? You tea?” asked the monk.

  “Yes, both thanks.”

  Hoping to change the subject, I inquired about Zoji La. They crossed the pass several days ago.

  “Ah yes, we met with one dead man there,” said Wally. “He was lying on the snow, very stiff. Poor bastard.”

  “It was fucking freezing!” piped in Stephanie. I glanced at her gear.

  “Were you wearing those?” I asked, pointing at her sandals.

  “Yes, but with socks,” she said.

  God spare us—no wonder it was freezing. And they crossed at night, by the light of the full moon. That way, claimed Wally, there was less chance of an avalanche.

  “How did you get to the pass?”

  “Oh, with some Indian soldiers, in a jeep,” said Stephanie.

  “They were all sex-starved or something—kept asking me about kissing. Wanted to know how I kissed, and whether I liked kissing and things like that.”

  “Freak me off!” cut in Wally.

  As I left, they were arguing furiously with the monk over the seven rupees for the dhal. And I was glad I was traveling in the opposite direction. I stepped outside and found it was snowing, and I cursed and cursed. The fresh snow had thrown all my calculations about crossing the pass into doubt again.

  From Lamayuru, some very tough climbing. I reached the top of Fotu La, the highest pass along this road at almost 13,500 feet, marked by some frayed prayer flags. But my legs weren’t tired. I felt high. I felt like riding. And riding. A rhythm had been set up that I couldn’t break now—nothing could stop me except a sunset. And so I bounded along, headed for the next pass. After all the complications of flying into Leh, this part was remarkably simple: a bicycle, a ribbon of road, and crisp mountain air. And I moved along in a kind of trance, with a cadence that seemed effortless. Rather than trying to conquer a pass, I found myself somehow integrated with the landscape.

  It occurred to me that if meditation can be induced by concentrating on a single action such as breathing, or on the rising and falling of the stomach, then any repetitive action could induce a similar calming of the heart. So if there is walking meditation (that concentrates on the act of walking), there must also be jogging meditation (focusing on footfalls), snorkel meditation (concentration on breathing sounds), ski meditation (honing in on the sounds of skis scraping the snow), and bicycle meditation (my foot is going down, the chain is going around, the other foot is coming up, the chain is going around…).

  And so I whipped through to the next pass, Namika La. Then I put on my downhill gear—fox-fur hat, silk scarf—for there was a glorious six miles of switchbacks down into the green, green valley of Mulbek.

  There wasn’t much in the way of lodgings in Mulbek. I found a family with a spare room. Mulbek was a very small place—I was an instant celebrity. Across the street was a nine-meter-high Buddha sculpted into a granite rockface with a tiny monastery at its base. The monks took turns riding my bike. I was given tea. A townsman took me off to his house for dinner—a double-storied place with animals below, and living quarters on the main floor. His family and neighbors crowded into a courtyard to get their photos taken and I promised to send some copies. One duo especially caught my eye: a grandmother cradling a child. The child had a smooth, pinkish skin; the grandmother was dark and leathery—and when she smiled, a thousand wrinkles creased her face and rows of stumps appeared instead of teeth.

  At Kargil, you cross a cultural divide, from Buddhism to Islam. It’s only a matter of twenty-five miles away from Mulbek, but there was a very different kind of energy here. “Salaam Alekum” was the new greeting. The town has several mosques—and a heavy military presence because Kargil sits right near the border with Pakistan. I left Dras early in the morning after tea and biscuits, and climbed into a snow and icebound area, steadily up to 11,300 feet. My goal was to get in as close as I could to Zoji La Pass—which meant a stop at Gumri army post. Gumri was a quagmire of slush and dirty snow; gasoline barrels were embedded in the muck, and hundreds of empty tins were scattered around, with flies and crows picking at them. Obviously no collection here—the rubbish of the years just piled up in the snow.

  I saluted the platoon commander. He was decked out in a down parka, with heavy snow-goggles perched on his head.

  “You’re near Zoji La now,” he said.

  “Can I stay here for tonight?”

  “No need—it’s only a few hours over the pass.”

  “It’s dangerous in the afternoon—avalanches.”

  “Soon night will come—it’s better to cross at night.”

  What, and freeze my bollocks off? Not bloody likely—I’ll be damned if I’m going over at night—after I’ve come all this way, I want to see the pass.
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  “I want to cross early in the morning—at sunrise.”

  “We have no space for you here.”

  “All right then, I’ll sleep in the snow.”

  Finally he relented—and I was shown a shed littered with empty rum and whisky bottles. I got some hot water and added a packet of noodles. The hot food lifted my spirits. It had been a rough day. I was glad I’d found refuge here because I didn’t have the energy to carry on.

  There were a dozen men at Gumri, locked in for the winter—it was an isolation posting. Behind the army huts stood Gumri Glacier, shaped like a gigantic stupa. There were about two miles of snow-blockage on the road through Zoji La; bulldozers were working it from both ends so it would be open in four or five days. At sundown the road crews returned. They had blackened faces, and the blackest clothing I’d ever seen. I doubt if any of them had washed their clothing since the date of acquisition. As for themselves, well, that was hard to tell.… Probably too cold in this region for cleaning up. It all reminded me of a grimy fairytale: the soot-men—back from their grimy stint on the road, going into grimy rooms full of soot from stoves, smoking grimy cigarettes, sleeping in grimy beds in grimy buildings covered in grimy snow. Myself, spattered in mud up to the knees, must’ve looked immaculately clean to the grimy men. At least I had a few colors to show—red and blue. All their stuff was either camouflage khaki, or diesel-fume black.

  In the shed, I slept with every stitch of clothing on, my head in a fox-fur hat, body in a sub-zero sleeping bag, and all of this inside a bivvy sack—and I was still freezing.

  I had no idea how I was going to cross Zoji La with a bike. All I knew was that I had to start off at dawn, when everything was still frozen, so less chance of an avalanche. I just hoped the crossing didn’t involve any climbing. The next morning I tied down the flaps on my fox-fur hat so my ears were covered, and set off. The track from the army base turned into a roadway with a layer of solid ice, and walls of frozen snow on either side. Great! I got on the bike and started wheeling off—and promptly went for a six on the ice, banging my elbow. I got up slowly—this was not going to work.