Travelers' Tales India Read online

  We are now outside on the sidewalk in the hot, turbulent Indian night. A taxi is hailed, my bag put in the back, a hotel name given.

  “Auto-rickshaw, three-wheel taxi, sir. Very cheap, only thirty rupees to your hotel. Good-bye. God bless you, sir.” I am flabbergasted. “Wait! How can I thank you? You have been fantastic! Let me give you something.” No answer. I extend my hand and meet only hot air. “Who were they?” The rickshaw driver laughs. “Beggars, sir, beggars.”

  The small vehicle zigzags to avoid the potholes. Cramped between the roof and my bag, I endure endless bumps and vibrations. Like everyone else, my driver ensures our safety by honking all the way.

  The Imperial Hotel is an old-fashioned building on Janpath with vast rooms. At six a.m., after a short but restful night, I start looking for the swimming pool. A very old man in a very clean loincloth and turban, with measured movements and a vaporous voice, leads me from the changing room to the pool.

  My vision, which is just as real as yours, just as unique, enables me to describe here the whiteness of a turban, the shades of brown in the rock, and the expression of greed on a face. Believe me when I tell you that this visionary state overcomes me unawares. It is almost as if the generosity of the world surrenders itself to me if I wish. The swimming pool is deserted. I dive in. The water is still cold from the night before. I swim enthusiastically, tearing twenty hours of flight from my muscles. Suddenly, something hits my forehead. For a fraction of a second, I think I am going to smash into the wall. I extend my hand and find no obstacle. I start swimming again, gently at first, but as I regain self-confidence, throwing myself into it once more, I am again forced to stop. A hard object actually brushes against me. This time I am faster, and in one fell swoop, as if catching a fly, I grab hold of…my cane! Yes, my cane, just as the old man’s voice directs my attention from the edge of the pool, “This way, sir, this way!”

  This “visionary state” the author describes allows him to see not in the usual sense but through mental images formed by feedback from those around him, his own memory, sensory stimuli including smell, touch, sound, and emotion, and some amount of light.

  —JO’R and LH

  He had noticed how I guide myself by following my cane. Since it was obvious that I could not use it to swim with, he was running around the pool, pointing it in front of my nose to indicate the line I should follow. Rescued by beggars, led while swimming by a galloping old man—I am enchanted by such irrationality. I may not run into any serious difficulty in India after all.

  That afternoon, the plane is postponed every hour, and I end up sleeping at the airport. Finally, we take off on time…the following day.

  In the warm Srinagar afternoon, I jolt along in an old taxi sent by one of the houseboats on Dal Lake. At the lake we abandon the car for a kind of gondola called a shikara. Showing me to a wide seat covered with cushions, the driver tells me to stretch out and relax like a rajah.

  The mountains on the north horizon, the lake, all are still. Only the birds move over the evening waters. The sound of hawks cawing is somehow sinister. It must be past five o’clock. The children are coming home from school. So much laughter. The boatman’s hook hits the hull at regular intervals with a thud. Without seeing, I perceive all this beauty—the mountains, the lake, the floating islands, the sunset blurring softly—and it stabs me like a dagger. I plunge my hand into the water. It is warm, thick. Half a million human beings defecate into it daily.

  The houseboat is built entirely of sandalwood and smells like a pencil sharpener. All around, the creaking of floorboards. It must come from the many gangways linking the houses to each other. A cup of tea is brought in silently. A gin and tonic would be more appropriate. Life seems to flow here, more than anywhere else, in a sort of static frenzy or frantic stillness. A breeze coming down from the glaciers makes the lake shiver. How am I going to find her?

  In the pale morning, I board a shikara padded with stuffed rags and shaded from the sun by a plastic patchwork. We set off for the palace of the maharajah of Kashmir, which has now become the Oberoi Palace Hotel. Built around 1925, it stands in the middle of lawns like a great white elephant overlooking the lake.

  Doormen welcome me with pomp and circumstance. At the reception, I am told that the young lady has indeed been staying here but left two days ago.

  Dal Lake, once a popular place for travelers, sees few visitors now. The seeds of the conflict go back to the 1947 partition of India by the British, which created independent countries and cleaved the subcontinent into India, West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The borders of Kashmir were contested at the time and still are.

  —JO’R and LH

  I decide to review the situation over a cup of tea served on the lawn. An acrid smell rising from the lake, carried over on the gentle breeze, mingles with the scent of Darjeeling tea and marmalade.

  “Good morning, sir. Allow me to introduce myself. Here is my card.” He reads, slowly, over my shoulder, “Kemala, that is my name, sir. Guide No. 1 for hunting. Underneath it is written, Srinagar, Kashmir, India. Please keep it, sir. You are looking for one lady. I know where she is.”

  I ask him to sit down. His voice sounds virile and wily. An old fox, in fact, he smells of earth, leaves, and rain. He must be around fifty years old. “This lady has gone to see a holy man. He is my friend. I can take you there.”

  I have no illusions whatsoever. The old fox may well have invented the whole story, but it does not matter. He says that there is no road to the village and that it is two days’ ride from Sonamarg. A car will take us to meet the horses. I suggest we leave tomorrow. We agree on a price, and, busy already, he stands up, touches me on the forehead, and walks away across the lawn.

  Next day we drive for three hours. At the edge of a saffron field that has a sickly sweet smell, a boy is waiting for us with three ponies, one of which is laden with a tent, supplies, and kitchen utensils.

  For several hours we ride up rocky paths that become progressively steeper. By evening we have reached a grassy plateau dotted with trees and shriveled bushes at the edge of a glacier. The sun has slipped behind the ridge, and the cold from this mass of ice at proximity penetrates our clothes. The boy, who has been trotting all the way alongside his horse, gathers some dead wood and builds a small fire. The water is soon singing in the kettle. Behind us, the fettered horses munch the hard, dry grass. My thigh muscles are stiff from the ride. Suddenly we are very far away, and instinctively we huddle together around the little fire. Kemala drinks his tea with long, noisy slurps. We eat a meal of rice and curry cooked over the embers. Kemala reminisces about hunting and women. He muddles up the furry animals with the pretty ladies. Wood fires, nights on high plateaus, incite fantasizing. Kemala guarantees that it will not rain tonight.

  All is quiet. The silence is awesome. Lying in the grass, in this wide open space under the stars, cradled in the warmth of my sleeping bag, I drift off into the wisdom of uncertainty.

  We leave before dawn and soon reach the other side of the plateau, now covered with a cedar forest. Birdsong echoes through the undergrowth. Followed by the boy, Kemala takes a shortcut too steep for me to attempt. I let go the reins and let the little horse follow the trail. The other two ponies are waiting for me ahead. We ride on for a while, until they leave me again for another shortcut. Once more their steps grow fainter. Then there is silence. I sink into a formidable mineral and botanical world. Sometimes the way is barred by a small torrent, which my pony crosses, meticulously putting down his feet, punctuating the difficult moments with an unforeseen movement of his withers to get us over the obstacle. Suddenly, a rumbling resonates up above, rolling down into the valley. And again—thunder!

  All at once I realize that I must have been riding alone for more than half an hour. Where have the others gone? I bring the horse to a halt. A few raindrops fall on my face. Taking hold of the reins again, I urge the little horse forward. Having listened to me, he too is wor
ried now. After a while, soaked through and freezing, I jump down by a tree trunk as big as a medieval tower and flatten myself against the bark while the horse leans against me. I am buried in this forest, these mountains, this India. There is no question about it, I am well and truly lost.

  Suddenly Kemala emerges from the rain like a sad, vegetal Don Quixote. He dismounts agilely and comes and leans against my shoulder. His voice cracks like dry wood. He says that the rain has put the horses off the scent. He hands me a lighted cigarette.“Only small rain. Rainy season is finished.” Without another word, we wait in silence.

  A few hours later, under a clear sky, we reach our destination. A small, unruly, and boisterous crowd is standing outside the holy man’s house. We walk through the groups of people, who step aside to let us through. An old woman greets us, laughing. Kemala thrusts a plastic bag into my hand. “Fruit, sir, no money.” But the woman has already snatched the bag away from me and is leading us to a room at the back of the house.

  The room is dark, windowless. The noisy crowd outside has suddenly ceased to exist. I can hear the woman placing the bag of fruit before the man; then he speaks. His voice is gentle but firm. Didn’t Kemala say he was a hundred and thirty years old? I would have said he was a hundred years younger. Kemala launches into a long-winded monologue, interrupted by the short, precise questions of the saint, then turns to me with disapproval in his voice. “He can do nothing for your eyes.”

  “Tell him I know, not to worry. Ask him about the young lady.”

  The holy man laughs. He asks that I sit on the mat near him. The tips of our knees are touching. He has placed one of my hands, the right one, on his knee. Under the cotton, his skin feels surprisingly young and elastic. And yet, if one is to believe Kemala, he lives here on this mat without having slept or eaten for years. He seems to be enjoying our meeting. I am conscious of this by the smile in his voice, the way he puts his hand on mine, flat on his knee. He says, “Learn to live slowly—that way there will be no hazard in death.” Kemala translates.

  As I leave him, I almost feel as though I am abandoning him to his strange destiny, sitting there on his cushion in this dark room with a crowd at his door. Perhaps he has felt my compassion, for he grabs hold of my hand again just as I am getting up and says, “Surviving life is everything.” Kemala translates. I find the idea hilarious, and we laugh heartily together.

  Back in Srinagar, the receptionist at the Oberoi says that the young lady most likely went on to Leh, the capital of Ladakh.

  In the early dim gray morning, I board the plane for Leh. We fly over the rock face of the Himalayas, the col, and then a fluffy mass of cloud suspended between the mountains like an eider-down beneath which lies the valley of Ladakh. After a while I realize that we are going around in circles. The man on my right, who has introduced himself as Krishna, a dry-fruit merchant, says that the pilot cannot find the hole in the cloud.

  Even a man with a hundred horses may need to ask another for a whip.

  —Ladakhi saying, quoted by Helena Norberg-Hodge in Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh

  Suddenly the plane drops, leaving our stomachs in our mouths. The pilot found the hole. A few minutes later, we land.

  A bit shattered, I disembark on the concrete runway amid the general excitement of guttural shouting and laughter. Beyond the runway, yet uncannily close, however, looms a formidable presence that reduces our little troop to a handful of ants. Krishna asks me where I am staying and recommends the Sankar Guest House.

  As the taxi drives through the plain, Krishna does not say a word; he seems just as much in awe as I. We drive to Leh, through its main street swarming with animals and human beings.

  The Sankar Guest House is a small squat building that stands on a hillock at the north end of town. Already the land here begins its ascent toward the surrounding monstrosity; its mass does not seem to grow out of the earth but to descend from the sky.

  “Jullay… Jullay…” is the local greeting. Smiling voices, quiet and mischievous. My room is like a bare cell. There is absolutely nothing to disturb the mind. Outside my window, conversations linger on in the pure air. Immense, the void in the valley reverberates against all the rock, assailing us. The ephemeral tender green cultivation enhances the hardness of the rock. Naked children are jumping off a bridge into the icy water. Their cries pierce the air like raining pins. A sudden breeze enters the summer of my room. I strain to listen to the void outside. Suddenly I am filled with an intense desire, a mad, aimless desire to go out on the plain and climb up to the horizon. I start to laugh. A laughter provoked by the absurdity of my situation and by the altitude, which has gone to my head. The valley of Ladakh is situated thirteen thousand feet above sea level.

  Next morning, Krishna and I walk to the little bank of Leh to change some money. The clerk recognizes me immediately as the “strange tourist” whose arrival was announced on the local radio.

  In the street I can feel Krishna’s plump body shaking with laughter. I listen to footsteps—small steps, dragging steps, bright skipping steps—thudding on the ground.“Listen,” I say to Krishna. “Stop laughing. The girl I’m looking for is here. Help me find her.” But how is he going to recognize her? I assure him that as soon as she sees me, she will stop dead in her tracks and stare at me in such a way that he will not be able to miss her.

  Despite all the rupees that we lavish on the rapacious Kashmiris, the hotels yield no result. Krishna suggests the Dreamland Restaurant, where all the Westerners hang out. To get there we struggle through the market, an extraordinary mixture of smells, noises, and mud.

  As we walk through the door, Krishna squeezes my arm:“There she is!” Heart pounding, I step forward, when he suddenly pulls me back. “Now there are three women staring at you!” He laughs. “You are a strange tourist, my friend.”

  In silence, we walk back up the road in the cool evening air. On the way we pass a peasant pushing his donkey along by kicking his behind, while his friend, laughing, is doing the same to him.

  “Since you can’t find your girl, why don’t you come to Rizong with me to buy apricots from the Julichen nuns?” I agree.

  Next day, in glorious light, the jeep speeds along the wide, muddy bank of the Indus. The river winds its way toward the Lamayuru pass, flowing by the ancient monastery of Alchi, then dips from the Himalayan heights into the Arabian Sea, bringing wealth and death, alluvial fertility and floods.

  Suddenly Krishna starts cursing. “The road has been cut off! There has been a landslide.” On our right a gentle breeze whistles through the tall trees; on our left a vigorous torrent gushes where the road has been destroyed. We hide the car in the bushes. We cross the fault and continue on foot. My bag is not meant for trekking. I keep shifting it from shoulder to shoulder, but after a while both shoulders hurt just as much. I try to relieve the pain by carrying it on my head, but the load only makes my foot stiff, forcing me to walk like a robot.

  We fork left and cross the torrent through a shallow ford. The ice-cold water soothes my aching feet. The sun is now directly over us; it must be midday. Sitting on round boulders at the edge of the little river, we make a meal out of chapatis and cold chicken.

  We resume our rugged walk along a steep path. I desperately keep shifting my bag, trying hard to avoid the question burning my lips: how much farther? We keep on climbing in undisturbed silence except for the cries of a few birds of prey. At last we hear voices. We have arrived at Rizong and the apricot orchards of the Julichen nuns.

  It is a humble retreat. We pass under the arch that leads through the main building to an open courtyard that smells of apricots. The nuns greet us with much hilarity and gentle hissing, owing to their toothless mouths. They are all old, ageless, drier than their apricots drying in the sun. They invite us to drink rancid butter diluted in tea and offer us apricots. Afraid of catching dysentery, I stuff them into my pocket. The nuns chatter incessantly and regularly throw me a “Jullay!” I feel them to be extremely ligh
t, as light as the air around us. They are stoning the apricots before drying them on the terrace overlooking a tiny valley. Krishna describes them to me. They are dressed in rags, never bothering to mend or sew their torn skirts, bodices, or shawls. He says that he is going to do business with them but that it will take time; therefore, we will have to spend the night here.

  In the evening, which goes on forever, two nuns who seem even older than the rest bring us an indefinable, frugal supper. We eat it in front of the stone hut that serves as the convent guest house. Rather than spend the night in that windowless hovel, I decide to find a relatively flat piece of ground where I can put down a mat. The only possible place, after getting rid of the stones, is the path that leads to the Rizong monastery. Despite Krishna’s disapproval, something to do with the effect of the moon on the “already lunatic spirits,” I spend a delightful night in my sleeping bag on the roof of the world. Between the infinite and myself, I can hear an imperceptible whistling—God whistling between his teeth, between the high, sharp ice peaks, in the night.

  In an infernal racket, all the mountain demons tumble down on me at once. Sounds of iron banging on rock, gongs resounding, shrieks of laughter. Dust is getting into my nostrils, throat, and ears. I sit up with a bolt. “What the…?”

  “Jullay… Jullay…” answer voices. They are not demons but a group of monks who have started at dawn to repair the track gullied by the rains. I roll up my sleeping bag and mat, then, helped by a young monk, go and wake up Krishna. In his stone box, he has not heard a thing and laughs when he sees me covered with dust.

  As I wash in the little spring near the hostel, Krishna informs me that he had bought the nuns’ harvest and is ready to go down. I point out that although he has found what he wanted, I still have not.