A Storm O'er Camp Ghost

A new day dawned (as they usually do), and we were excited. Santoosh pulled up with his car early in the morning and we set off for a dot on the map called Gamshali, or at least that's what we would have been doing if Gamshali were so much as a dot on the map. From Joshimath one road leads through the dramatic Alakananda valley to the great pilgrimage centers of Badrinath and Hem Kund. The other road leads into the middle of nowhere, an expanse of mountains so rarely visited that Google Maps is unaware of the road's existence. Of all the Himalayan "highways" we have traversed so far, this was by a long shot the roughest, crappiest, emptiest, and most beautiful route of them all. We wound for hours over the single-lane, rock-littered track hewn out of the cliffs along the Dauliganga river, passing not a soul but the teams of lonely road laborers and their military supervisors that keep open this solitary, almost ridiculously tenuous lifeline to the remote army stations on the Tibetan border.

The Indian Army is extremely sensitive about these roads, and is going to extraordinary lengths to improve these unlikely threads of civilization into the wilderness for one reason and one reason only: the wily Chinese. In 1962, the Chinese army swept into Himalayan India from occupied Tibet in a sneak attack that ended in utter humiliation for the Indian armed forces and considerable loss of territory in eastern Kashmir. The Indians managed to get all of the part of the mountains we're in back (obviously), but they've never forgotten the war, and the preparations the military now makes for alpine warfare in these sectors verges on complete paranoia. Other than the disproportionate amount of military surplus clothing worn by local villagers, there is little physical evidence that the Chinese have ever been here. Indeed, Indians seem scarcely aware of China at all other than that it is very large and vaguely nearby. This does not stop every restaurant in India from boasting that it offers Chinese food, by which they mean "one, two, or possibly even three varieties of chowmein."

All this however was little on out minds as we made our ponderous way along the road, slowing at regular intervals for Santoosh to revere various mountain peaks visible through the side-valleys and for Girlface Buddha to make drive-by prayers at the tiny roadside shrines. The people around here are Hindus, but they practice a form of Hinduism that is openly pure nature worship. In a long-standing sop to the priestly types that have flooded here annually for the last few millennia, the locals have taken to overlaying an orthodox Hindu veneer on things. For instance, the holy mountain Nanda Devi is somehow claimed to be a form of the goddess Durga, and so on. The people's true colors come out quite easily though, as when Santoosh would pray to the mountains, or when you walk into a noodle shop and see a huge sign reading "Nature Is God."

Past a string of migrant road-labor camps we finally reached the village of Malari, the largest of the seasonal settlements in the high valley. It's an endearing place, a one-horse town of old stone houses above a ledge of bright green pastures that stands out against the increasingly bleak mountains. We looked around for a bit and I was quite sure we were near the end, since the few maps I found that even showed this route had it ending at Malari, but to my surprise we pressed on. We descended into the valley once it ceased to be a thousand-foot, bone-pulverizing precipice, and stopped for the night in a pasture at an abandoned army bivouac near the village of Gamshali.

It was about four in the afternoon and it was reaching that part of the mountain day I've come to call "the gusty bullshit part." By five we had set up the tent and the camp kitchen, and I'm pretty sure that Girlface did not then leave the tent at any point until it was taken down the next day. I didn't blame her, because pretty soon it was fucking cold. A storm was clearly brewing so I huddled in the tent as well. Santoosh eventually came in with our dinner, a steaming hot pile of rice and chicken...oops. Santoosh and I had made out culinary plans the previous night when, you may recall, we were both drunk and I was neglectful of Girlface's feelings. In the merry atmosphere that only whiskey and fresh goat entrails can produce, we had planned a hot chicken dinner in the wilderness, completely forgetting that Girlface has not eaten a bite of meat in her entire life.

“Oh, I understand,” said Santoosh, trying to ease the situation, “I don’t drink or eat chicken or mutton on Tuesdays. Tuesday is Hanuman’s day and he does not like these things.” I didn’t really think this was comparable, but he continued. “You know some of my friends are totally crazy. They don’t drink or eat meat on three or four days a week! One day Hanuman day, no drinking, one day Shiva day no drinking, one day Ganesh day no drinking. Completely crazy!” I then caught a glimpse of what remained of the bottle of rum we had procured for the occasion, and determined by examining the amount of empty space therein that it was definitely not Tuesday.

Girlface stuck to her guns and ate just rice and curried vegetables while I picked even the tiniest chicken bits out of her plate, but when it came to the rum it was a different matter. “Have some rum! It will make you feel warmer!” Santoosh implored. At the mention of warmth I could see the flicker of temptation suddenly light in Girlface’s eyes. “Eh, what the hell, I’m having some” I helpfully added. Girlface caved, but not without making a great speech about how she needed it for its alleged body-warming abilities (she later confessed that she had tried whiskey with her elder brother on occasion but did not care for the sensation or the flavor). As Santoosh zipped up into his sleeping bag and Girlface and I squeezed into ours I couldn’t resist jabbing “Imagine what your parents would say if they could see you drinking rum with me in this sleeping bag!” I was quite glad for the numbing effects of cold and alcohol, because Girlface has taken a liking to “cutely”, in her view, punching me in the face. We settled in for a snug night in our little world hiding from the cold.

Santoosh’s voice broke the silence.
“Poosy?”
“…” I felt it best to just let that one slide.
“Pussy?”
“rrmmmmmm whaaaat?” I groaned, suspecting that this was about to become wildly inappropriate.
Finally speaking with some clarity, if not prudence, Santoosh asked “What does ‘pussy’ mean?”
I squinted and could see that Santoosh was, once again, looking up dirty jokes on his cell phone. “It’s…you know….where you….fuck the girl.” I replied, hoping that getting to the point would end the conversation promptly. It didn’t.
“What where you fuck the girl?”
“Uhhhhh…..you know….the hole….”
“Hole?”
Santoosh is, by the way, married and has produced offspring.
I was then forced to elaborate a lecture on sexual anatomy so embarrassing and plainly stupid that I hesitate to repeat it here. At least when I have children and am called upon to explain the facts of life, I will have had the experience of having delivered it already to a middle-aged man with a five-year-old son.

Finally, Santoosh was satisfied and declared “Oh, pussy, now I get it!.... joke not that good.”

“Hey Ghostface.”
“What?”
“You want to listen to some jokes?”
I felt a distinctly negative elbowing from the feminine quarter. “No thanks.”

Unfazed, he commenced. Indian mobile phone jokes are by and large sexist in nature and deeply cynical about the value of love. It’s as if an entire country was only recently allowed to start loving again (drop the phrase “love marriage” at any dinner table and see if you can elicit an indifferent reaction), and has discovered just as quickly that love isn’t all about whispering sweet nothings and singing duets while dancing together sideways in flowering mountain meadows, and is channeling that disappointment through bitter subscription text messages. A typical example will end with a punchline like “Because LOVE is the END of happiness!!!! ;-)”

I heard the end of the last joke Santoosh repeated as his patience with my non-laughter waned “….and a woman has two 100-watt bulbs and one 3000-watt oven!” I was glad that it was over and prepared to sleep, but Girlface was once again discontented. Nevertheless, I began to doze off.

“Hey Ghostface….”
“…..wwwhhhaaaattttt?” I grumbled, unaware that Santoosh's obliviousness to the mixed company was about to deliver the killer blow to a tranquil slumber.
“How many girls you fucked?”

I didn’t answer but it was enough to keep our half of the tent agitated while Santoosh sunk into a rum-tinged sleep. Some hours later, still awake and grumpy, I heard thought I detected a change in the pattering sounds on the top of our tent, so I crawled to the zipper and took a peek outside. We were an inch deep in snow. I pulled out my alarm clock and looked at the date. “Yup….middle of fucking May,” I thought, “just checking.”

By morning the snow had melted around our tent, but was lingering on the steep slopes not far above us. I decided to clamber up and have a look-see. What I found was that even when the Himalayas look really goddamn steep they are still steeper than they look. From just below the snowline I noticed that the campfire far below had died so I hurried back down and got there in time for Girlface to hand me a plate of cold, meticulously extracted mutton-bits. Hell, even I don’t like mutton. I still have yet to wrap my head around how this entire country seems to believe that mutton is the finest of meats, especially since the common cut used in nearly every dish seems to be “les broken bones du l'goat”

After breaking camp we moved on to Gamshali village, for it was as far as we could go. We had a brief chat with the army men posted at the checkpoint to the “Inner Line” just beyond the village, and we unable to convince the low-ranking guards that they had the authority to decide I wasn’t a Chinese spy. Girlface and I wandered around Gamshali and it was captivating. It was full of traditional old houses of stone with wooden carvings, with the steam of boiling vegetable pots rising out of the windows into the chill morning air. Little old ladies whose faces revealed without a doubt that they belonged to some long-wandering Tibetan tribe hobbled around in traditional aprons and strange hats, greeting us pleasantly but quickly moving on because they had cow-ploughs and the yearly rebuilding of pasture walls to attend to. We sat on one deserted porch as the white curtain closed in around the village and finally it began to snow on our little spot in the universe, dropping large, wet flakes into the medieval alleys. “You know…” I said, “I’m actually glad it’s snowing.” “Yes,” Girlface replied, “it is very beautiful….”. And then we walked on through the lanes together. It was one of those moments.

Specifically, it was the moment that Girlface discovered hail.

Suddenly balls of ice started tumbling from the heavens. Girlface, who I had not yet heard be so much as discourteous towards a dog, began screaming “SHIT SHIT SHIT”, and I had to concede, it fucking blew. We hustled through alleys and archways trying to find the footpath down to the car and eventually made it to the main path of the village. A cow, apparently even more alarmed than we, came hurtling up the street faster than any other cow I had seen before. I couldn’t resist smirking at that a bit and thought something along the lines of “Heh. Bitch.” Then, to our even greater surprise, the same cow came hurtling downhill towards us at about twice its recently-set cow-speed record, racing down like a fat, flabby comet and ramming us both off the path and sending Girlface for a mild collision with the nearest building. And I had just been thinking of letting those fuckers off with a peace with dignity. You fuck with a warrior and it’s one thing, but you go for the women and children, and that, my cow foes, is when shit gets ugly.

Jus in bello, motherfuckers. Look it up, ‘cause that's the last you're going to be seeing of it.
NO MERCY. SHIT IS ON.