The Art Of Cow-Spitting

With Remarks On Puking On Mules

I would say it was one of those days, except all my days are some of those days.

It began innocently enough. I was just on day two of the journey from Gangotri to Yamunotri. Yamunotri, as some of my sharp-witted and dedicated readers may deduce, is the mountain temple dedicated at the source of the Yamuna river, India's second-holiest natural waterway. Yamunotri is by far the least busy of the four Char Dham temples, and is usually visited by people who have been to Gangotri already. It doesn't have the prestige of being the source of India's very holiest river, and it doesn't have the attractive bonus features of the Kedarnath and Badrinath temples, so it gets a little neglected. Sure, people pay attention to it. It's a logical and respected complement to Gangotri, but it just doesn't draw the same masses and explosive devotion; it is the Joe Biden of pilgrimage.

Anyways, after an exceptionally tedious journey averaging ten kilometers per hour over the ridges dividing the Ganges and Yamuna valleys on an ass-grinding, kneecap-shaving bus ride, we arrived in an extremely forgettable town called Barkot. I only refer to this dump by name so that I can embarrass the whole community by telling the whole world that its main recreational activity is sneaking into extremely crowded, plywood-built speakeasy shacks disguised as chicken coops. Young men came tumbling triumphantly out of their pitch-black premises, completely unaware that all the young women in the town were openly ridiculing them. I was quite concerned that I would get stuck in this town because the mid-afternoon transport window was rapidly closing and I was losing out on the struggle to claim seats on the last jeeps to men who were much more biochemically prepared for a brawl. They all left, without me on them. I waddled off with my luggage figuring I would sit and leisurely eat at a roadside snack hovel until the next jeep came by, if ever, when I ran into a young man who had been passingly nice to me on the bus. His name was Karun and he too was waiting for a ride with his father. One last jeep came by, already packed to the gills. A rapid negotiation in Hindi followed, and Karun called to me "Quickly, get on the top!" Oh, hells yes, time to ride the roof of the jeep.

This was perhaps not the best idea. I was already physically weak as I hadn't eaten all day. I suspected strongly that I was suffering from digestive illness, but I have learned a foolproof technique for reducing the adverse effects of these sicknesses: if you don't eat you won't have anything to desperately need to expel. Seven of us squeezed on top of the pile of luggage on the roof rack, and most of the others sat comfortably within the railings. I, being the last one on, had to content myself with balancing on the spare tire on the roof and clinging onto the railings and bracing myself in various ways with my feet for dear life. It was quite taxing on the limbs, but at least I had legroom (an infinite supply of it, seeing as my feet frequently flailed in the air) and that was an improvement. The real problem, I discovered, was that like all Uttarakhand roads, most of this 'highway' was under construction and there were rocks everywhere, sending me flying off my tire perch and more than once landing with a two-inch steel lug bolt up my ass. Finally we paused for a moment to allow an excavator to work, and we all managed to squeeze a bit intimately into the proper luggage area. From there on out it was all sport.

Riding on the roof makes the trudge over Himalayan roads seem about twice as fast as it actually is. Besides the rush of cool mountain air and the exhiliration of 360-degree mountain vistas passing by as you cling for your life on the wobbling roof of a vehicle that is itself rarely distant from falling off a tall, dangerous cliff, the open air and sense of freedom gives scope for a number of recreational activities. I refer of course, to cow-spitting.

I am proud to join the small community of men who have pioneered a wholesome game that can uplift the lives of many. Rather than being inspired by balls, nets, and sticks, I took a cue from the environment around me, which included a comparatively swift motor vehicle, no windows, and the frequent appearance of cows by the roadside. The sport is called cow-spitting. I will allow you to imagine the rules.

The secret to a reliable cow-spitting score is to resist the mighty temptation to go for the headshot, and instead rely upon the convenient breadth of the bovine target's abundant flank. The sputum is best formed as solidly as possible to counter the effects of wind resistance, and one most 'lead' the shot by remembering the vehicle's momentum vis-a-vis the fat fucking cow. Though I never did achieve the much-celebrated Face Splatter, I was the first player in the recorded history of cow-spitting to accomplish the elusive Double Kill, an achievement requiring a combination of luck and skill, dependent upon the tendency of spit globs to separate in flight and the tendency of groups of cows to cluster in panic on the roadside at the approach of fast-moving vehicles. Like Arjuna himself letting loose an unerring rain of arrows on his foes as Krishna drove his chariot daringly across the battlefield of Kurukshetra in the victorious battle of Good over Evil, so too did I strike many of my enemy's unrighteous cohort and leave them stained not just with slime, but also with the unwipable mark of dishonor.

We continued on our way merrily through the beautiful Yamuna valley, passing perhaps the most perfectly-situated little pagoda in the world atop a rock tower deep in the center of a bowl-like chasm at the confluence of two rivers. The occupants of vehicles close behind us frantically pointed and waved and displayed general confusion as soon as they identified my foreign face among our roof-riding troupe. The saddhus who we rapidly passed as they tromped barefoot up the road would have had time for no such observation, but they may have been puzzled by what they heard, which would have been something like this: "Eeiighty-four bottles of beeeeeeeee........"

After a quite enjoyable and scening ride on the rooftop, we approached Janki Chatti, the Yamuna's answer to the horrible little villages at the end of every pilgrim road in Uttarakhand where the people assemble for the last push on foot. As the village came into view at the narrowing of the valley around a number of long bends in the road, the inevitable happened, and I am afraid that I caused my traveling companions much wetness, because the gods clearly wanted me to complete the end of this journey riding on top of a jeep in a thunderstorm. At least, I figured, if I was to be struck by lightning because I was the highest point on an exposed metal doodad I would have the possibility of an exciting death combining a lightning strike with a flaming jeep accident and a thousand-foot plunge into a rushing river. You have to look on these things with a certain detachment. But not the jeep; you want to focus on remaining firmly attached to that.

The situation was most craptacular, but Karun and his father decided to take me under their wing and make me the third member of their group, treating me to all the negotiating benefits of apparently being part of a trio of broke-ass pilgrims. We had great difficulty finding a room in Janki Chatti, and the storm became so fierce we sheltered under a posts-n-trash-bags dhaba for a rest and some chai. They insisted on feeding me, and upon seeing my stomach unease Karun's father revealed he was a pharmacist and offered me one of an assortment of very large pills. I took it without water, suspecting that Janki Chatti's water supply would quite negate the salutary effects of pharmaceuticals. The pill did not have precisely the desired effect, as I immediately bolted up to go for my monthly vomit. I hunched over a miraculously-situated rubbish bin (I hope some day to find all 9 of India's remaining trash cans) in the edge of the rain, and puked my guts out a few inches away from the faces of a group of mules. The howling winds caught dribbles of my dangling, spit-infused regurgitation and blew them straight onto the mules' cheeks. I grinned with perverse satisfaction. "Well," I thought, "I may be puking my guts out in a goddamn thunderstorm next to a bunch of mules, but at least I still have some dignity...."

"...Bitch."

The three of us eventually found a room and I spent the remainder of the evening not eating a bite and huddling quite snugly and smugly under a heavy blanket. Pharma-Dad had a great deal to say about my condition and showed me a number of pills I could take if I so desired. Finally he concluded "What you need is Shiva." I was a little irritated by this. I didn't wish to begin a debate on traditional healing, and I had already had a bit of an odd conversation after Karun claimed his father was a Christian, which would have made this a rather odd pilgrimage, especially since the father lit candles and prayed to Shiva at dusk.

"What you need is the Shiva power" he repeated.
"Shiva power?" Color me skeptical.
"Yes, Shiva. Here, look, the Shiva power." Karun's father then began unwinding a dirty old rag. "The Shiva medicine can cure many problem. The headache, the fever, many illness, anything that make you need the rest. Take the Shiva." He opened the rag and showed me Shiva: a perfect ten-gram lump of sticky, soft, dark brown hashish. "You must take this any time" he said. Well, doctor's orders.

Karun and Pharma-Dad left for Yamunotri at some godforsaken hour of the morning, and I crawled out of my primordial blanket-cave around to pounce upon my age-old prey: gluten biscuits. The hike to Yamunotri is only five kilometers, but it is quite steep, and in my condition I found myself stopping every few hundred yards to contemplate the miserable fate of all living beings. It took me far too long to walk that negligible distance, but at least I had objective verification that parts of the trail were pretty hard: Yamunotri is far and away the home of Uttarakhand's most perilously-descending dholi-teams and its angriest, most immobile mules. Nobody was having a good time of it.

When I finally reached Yamunotri I was blown away. I'd been told by numerous people that it was the least interesting of the four great mountain temples, but it was beautiful. It is the lowest of them, and lies in a tight, lush gorge where the dripping-wet trees tumble down the slopes of the enormous Bandarpunch massif that closes in from every side. Once again, Yamunotri is evidently not the actual source of the Yamuna river, but in this case it is forgivable, because about fifty meters past the temple the water becomes a sheer tumble down the side of a snow-capped mountain from a glacial lake that you aren't getting to without the aid of actual climbing equipment. The town is tiny, but incredibly crowded as it has but one street the terminates in a horrendous crossing on a staircase when pilgrims to the temple must force their way past half-naked, dripping-wet men who have emerged from the hot pools on their way to recover their clothes and shoes. Finally, at the top of these stairs is a large stone patio and the temple itself. The temple is small and not much to look at save for its bright yellow pinnacle. Upon close inspection, the lower half of the shrine is built of the same cheap concrete pillars as every new village shrine in India, but these pillars have been covered, apparently, in kitchen-top granite slabs. The result is that the temple looks half-Mahabharata, half-Country Living. I stayed for a long time because it really is a beautiful spot, and I found a little ledge by the bathing ghat on which to nap. I napped soundly until I was awoken by a police officer jabbing me with a big wooden stick. He wasn't angry with me; indeed, he was concerned I was suffering from a serious headache. It's just that Indian cops know no way of interacting with the world that doesn't involve hitting things with sticks.

I returned to Janki Chatti and had an all-too familiar conversation with my hotel manager. Later, on the phone with Girlface I was asked "How do you get kicked out of so many hotels? You don't do anything bad!" Well, that is patently false, but she is right that I do nothing to hotels or their managers to deserve my constant ejection onto the streets of inclement mountain villages. Anyways, it didn't matter. I resolved, once again, to make an early start down towards the lower valleys of Uttarakhand, and this time I wasn't coming back. Uttarakhand was lovely, perhaps my favorite of all sixteen states I've toured so far, but I had completed my mission and more. It's time to move on.

Himachal Pradesh, you're next. Guard your cows.