No Donkey For The Honky

Morning in the village of Chopta; you rub your eyes and are faced with a problem of Choice: do I want potato-breads with rice and lentils for breakfast, or do I want potato-breads with lentils and more breads for breakfast? Neither, you decide, you would rather just take a shower and...HA! Too bad. Try that hustle somewhere with running water, punk.

I stumbled about Chopta's street (it has just the one) early in the morning to make sure we didn't miss an oppurtunity to escape. Our luggage was already packed and we had our daytime clothes neatly folded at the foot of the bed in case of an urgent departure to get the hell out of Chopta with little warning. As it turned out, there was probably going to be a jeep coming by later for passengers, and if it did it wouldn't be leaving until 11:30 anyways. Remembering Girlface's recent outburst in a hailstorm, I decided it was time to teach her to properly curse, especially since this would help her decrypt about two-thirds of my spoken utterances. We began with such staples as the trusty "shit" and "fuck" in all their myriad forms, and then tackled the more contextually-challenging case of "bitch". It was time well spent.

Meanwhile we began to miss having Santoosh around, because Santoosh would have driven us immediately the fuck out of Chopta. We were on our own now, and completely at the mercy of the Garwhal transport system, a mystifying and infuriating assortment of buses so infrequent their schedules are illustrated by phases of the moon, and crazily-packed "jeep-taxi" services that are under no obligation to actually go anywhere if they don't feel like it. When we finally did get on the promised midday jeep we were reminded of another fact: on any given moving vehicle in Uttarakhand, at least 25% of the occupants will vomit out of the window more than once. Buses and jeeps in the Himalayas are absolute puke-wagons. The winding mountain roads combine with the bizarre Indian prevalence of carsickness (even on the plains one would do well to drill oneself in rapidly raising hand-cranked windows behind sudden pukers) to make the roadside a de facto gutter for lentil seasonings from all over the subcontinent. Of the twelve passengers in our jeep that day, eight threw up.

Our destination was Kedarnath, the most important of all the Himalayan temples, by some accounts the spiritual "north" of India (though there are other, much more northerly places that are revered for similar rasons). The temple also contains a rock of no less significance than being the earthly remains of Shiva's fat, bull-metamorphosed ass. Kedarnath is, however, a 14-kilometer hike up into an alpine valley so we were compelled to spend the first night, like everyone else, in the roadhead town of Gaurikund. (For the information of readers concerned about such practicalites, Gaurikund is crowded and filthy and it is very hard to find a bed to sleep in or a plate of noodles without flies buzzing around it without making prior arrangements, but if you want to go to Kedarnath, you're staying here at least once, so tooooooo bad).

We began the long walk to Kedarnath early in the morning. The sight of the start of the trail was astonishing. Never before had I seen such an expansive, rumbling sea of shitting mules. Since the way is quite long and steep, many pilgrims can't be dicked to do the walking themselves. The wealthiest take helicopters, while elderly or stuck-up people of means get themselves slowly hauled all the way up in wooden chairs on the shoulders of four grunting men. There are also porters with basket-chairs on their backs for carrying small children, though all too often they are enlisted to hunch and bear a fully-grown adult larger than they are in their little basket all the way up the mountain. Most prevalent of all, however, are the fucking mules. I'm actually not sure if they're mules in the strictest sense. Their Hindi name is gora, which the drivers rather generously translate as "horse". Whether they be actually donkeys, mules, ponies, or something else, there are thousands and thousands of them and they are shitting everywhere. Though the droppings are quickly dried and pounded under the feet of the constant river of pilgrims, and the resultant brown powder is swept from the trail every so often by tip-seeking youths, the areas where the donkeys concentrate as their owners jostle for business are pervaded by an unmistakable donkey stench. You could almost say it smells like...ass.

We stopped in the donkeyzone for a bit. I wanted to offer Girlface the option of going to the top on donkeyback as I was afraid I had subjected her to enough mountain hardships lately, but she quickly yelled back at me "Donkeys are for bitches!" *sniff* I've never been so proud.

The walk was indeed 14 steep kilometers, first of forest in the Mandakini gorge, and then in the high alpine terrain above the trees. It all kind of blended into one as we tried not to focus on the passage of the six to eight hours we were assured it would take. Finally, we reached the upper valley, a stark basin of empty grass surrounded on two sides by surging rocky cliffs marked every few minutes by rushing cascades of frigid snowmelt, and on the third side by a very snowy mountain winged by inpenetrable ridges and gleaming glaciers. I looked at my watch, and to my amazement saw we had come up in just four hours. How long it took you to climb the trail inevitably figures into every conversation you have with the other pilgrims up there, and Girlface and I found no end to satisfaction in boasting about our feat to anyone who proffered the excuse. We have after all been spending just about every day schlepping up some forsaken pinnacle and were feeling a little smug at our rapid transformation into pilgrimagein' machines.

Even pilgramagein' machines need to nap, but when we were done I set off on some photo-seeking expeditions and then we walked together up the Bhairava cliffs, where there is a teeny outdoor shrine to Shiva as Lord Of Being A Fearsome Motherfucker, and an unidentified ledge somewhere where crazy Hindu people used to jump off for instant, grisly Liberation. We stayed on this ridge above the town for sunset and it was well worth it. The sun sank behind the mountains long before it 'really' set, and rather than the familiar combinations or pink and orange, the mountain sky in that direction glowed with pristine and otherworldy blues and whites. As the sun set, the idol arrived. We had timed our arrival in Kedarnath to be the night before the annual opening ceremony, and the brilliant, extremely excited entourage carrying the idol's palanquin arrived at the temple door as we were looking at the town from above. When we got down much later in the night there were still groups of people banging drums, 'dancing' around on pivots in their own little universes, and waving their fingers in the air in that oh-so-familiar silly Indian manner.

I took a look at the shrine behind the main temple, which was the tomb of the great guru Shankara. You don't see many Hindu tombs because only the greatest of sages are buried rather than being burned, and Shankara was one of the greatest of them all. Shankara lived way back in the 9th century, and was remarkable in many ways. For starters, he was an obvious child prodigy and supposedly attained Enlightenment at the age of 12 beneath a mulberry tree in Joshimath. He also got Liberation pretty quickly, because he died young in his early thirties, but not before he had penned the most influential Indian theo-philosophical treatises since the Buddha, established a plethora of temples in every corner of India, and more or less single-handedly defined the core of mainstream modern Hinduism and giving it the push it needed to finally overcome its old rival, Buddhism. So that's why he gets to be buried.

Around the corner from there, I met the Naga Saddhus. The Naga Saddhus are a sect of wandering Hindu mystics who most famously show up to all the major festivals not wearing any clothes, and are considered to be the hardcore of the hardcore among Hindu ascetics. Apparently, this is their festival comportment only, for when I found them up in the mountains they were not naked but wearing leopard-skins (some of them fake) over their loins and around the coils of their beehived dreadlocks, while their entire bodies were covered in ashes. Girlface froze in her tracks. Indian people are generally a bit scared of the Naga Saddhus, because they are obviously very strange and also because they are credited with great and dangerous powers and are not to be trifled with. I however am quite familiar with the ways of saddhus in general, and decided to test if the Naga Saddhus could also be so easily befriended. I was right. I simply eased up to an opening in the circle around their fire and began to warm my shivering hands. They shifted to make more space and I invited Girlface over as well. Some of them spoke English and we had a rather normal conversation about my country, my work, and so on. Once the ice was broken Girlface began asking a great many questions in Hindi, and from the tone of the conversation I guess she was surprised by their normalcy as well. However, this could not go on forever because we were getting hungry. The saddhus directed us to the army station where we could eat for free. I found this appealing. We crept into the entrance of the army canteen and sat on the floor, and were quite indifferently received by a combination of about a forty saddhus of various types and some fifty muscular, uniformed soldiers of the crack mountain brigades all sitting around and shoveling small paper bowls of chickpeas into their mouths. It was probably the most bizarre dinner company of my life.

The temple opened at 8 the next morning. The police were already stationed to ensure order, with the mustachioed officers holding position at the main gate with their customary wooden sticks. As the moment drew nearer the crowd swelled more and more, though mostly they clambered for elevated positions with unhindered views, leaving Girlface and I quite comfortable with a half-obstructed front-row view. The peace wouldn't last long, as we were dealing with Indians in a crowd. Inevitably someone eventually tried jumping the blockade and got away with it. From that moment on the police were pressed by a constant surge of entitled, mostly middle-class young men who felt it their god-given right to cut the cue and swarm into the temple grounds by climbing over the locals' fragile shops and any ledge with enough clearance to offer a boost over the perimeter. Poor pilgrims from far away who just assumed they could walk up through the front door were politely but firmly turned away by the officers, but there was little to be done about the cocky urbanites, whose numbers prevented them from being turned back even by having some of them shoved off the ledges with sticks. A group of people pushed against my shoulder. I turned to glare at some rude pilgrims, only to see it was a team of commandos. About ten men in all-black uniforms with black berets, bulging body armour, and folded submachine guns with extra ammo clipped over their battle dress cut an efficient swathe through the cloud. One of them, a handsome Sikh commando, has a gritty black beard to complement the outfit, and instead of a beret wore a tight, jet-black turban; he was quite possibly the most badass-looking motherfucker I have ever seen. Not that I was entirely impressed. Appearances are just appearances. Some people take the manner of the lion; Ghostface Buddha is a harmless log floating down the river, but if you jab me with an oar I'll bite your fucking arm off.

At precisely 8, the temple door opened, and all hell broke loose. Whatever tension kept the crowd relatively in check snapped. The crowd rushed the temple perimeter from every direction, swarming around and through the massively-overpowered police who could do no reasonable thing to stem the tides. As hundreds of people vaulted the metal fence from ledges and the pilgrims who actually had gotten into qeueue as directed became more agitated, another surge pushed right up into the front stairway, and the dignified officers couldn't do anything but turn back one unlucky soul at a time as dozens of others effortlessly rushed in. Even the commandos looked around in some hope of restoring order, but everyone knew that this was one of the few times it would be inappropriate for Indian cops and soldiers to start beating the mob with sticks. One officer clearly thought about it for a second, then saw the European documentary teams in the front row and saw the headlines "Pilgrims Beaten At Ceremony" flash before his eyes. All hope was lost.

Girlface rather optimistically decided to go to the back of the queue on the assumption that when the brainless assholes were finished the ordinary people could proceed as normal,and I decided to go say hello again to the Naga Saddhus, who for all their fanaticism at least take up a course of reflection that grants them the rather un-Indian trait of self-restraint. While the chaos continued on every side and donkey-trains of provisions pushing through the alleys added to the confusion, I remained in the oasis of the 'saddhu corner', blissfully discussing techniques of physical self-discipline, mental empowerment, the meaning of Action, and Ghostface Buddha's "diagnosed" future of Changing the World over a warm fire and a perpetually-restocked chillum of hashish with the some of the most infamous and elusive mystics in the Hindu world. As sneaker-shod pairs of feet occasionally violated the saddhu corner by jumping dangerously close over our heads, we merely muttered mantras, passed the drugs from one ashen hand to the next and revelled in the power of the towering Himalayas under the glowing blue sky of morning.

It was fucking awesome.