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.

The Treasure Is The Glaciers Of Ice

Part 1: Kedarnath
Later that day...

The glacial lake was empty. Girlface Buddha and I had walked up a long stone trail above Kedarnath to a sacred lake on the edge of the mountainside, one of the various places to have been distinguished by the sprinkling of Mahatma Ghandi's ashes. We reached the end of the trail, and it was about as definitive an ending as there could be because beyond the lake was nothing but sheer faces of ice and rock. If you were very determined you could equip a full-scale expedition to cross the glaciers, but you wouldn't get anywhere but even more isolated mountains and glaciers to climb over. Nevertheless, reaching the end was slightly irritating seeing as this lake has gotten the shit global-warmed out of it.

Everyone in Uttarakhand believes in global warming. You don't have to tell them about complicated observations of glacial meltage and carbon emissions and such, because they will just point out across the rocks and say "When I was a whippersnapper the glacier used to be here, now it's there. It's global warming." In the lowland city of Dehra Dun one man told me "Did you know it used to snow here in the winter?"

Cue the cries of a million Republicans: "Global warming? But it's sooooo coooooooooollldd." Cold? You shut the fuck up and you shut the fuck up NOW; that's what the fuck you do. Let Ghostface Buddha tell you some stories about cold. For instance, falling into a glacial river, that's pretty cold.

Well, I didn't so much fall into the river as slip into a shin-deep creek I was crossing on the slopes of the snowy ridges whence the water tumbled. In any event, the frigid waters soaked my legs and flooded my shoes, and though it was not miserable it was certainly unpleasant. When it really became ugly was when we realized that because of laundry issues I had made the 14-km hike up to Kedarnath the previous day without bringing a spare pair of socks. Not so easily discouraged, I planned on walking around town looking exaggeratedly miserable until someone agreed to let me dry my socks by their chai-boiling fire. Then we got kicked out of Kedarnath.

Once again, I may need to clarify: we were merely kicked out of our hotel. The owner, who I did not like, was upset with us for two reasons. 1) I had been repeatedly ignoring his angry bangings on our door on the assmuption that he was a member of the pilgrim group that was having exceptional difficulties keeping track of which four of the eight rooms in the lodge they had rented. 2) It was four hours past checkout time and nobody had informed us that we were supposed to vacate the premises in favor of a group of huddling pilgrims. The man was livid and within five minutes we were on the streets of Kedarnath village looking around very anxiously at a donkey-train of pilgrims passing through town that definitely outnumbered the amount of available hotel rooms. Girlface and I looked at one another in despair. She realized before I had to break it to her that we were about to have to make an unexpected and rapid descent of the Kedarnath trail before nightfall.

"OK, we must go" she said in a no-nonsense manner. Trying to lighten the mood she added "It's no problem, we're the fastest people here!" There actually was one problem: I had no socks and a sheet of ice had formed in the bottom of each of my shoes. But then, rummaging through my bag, I remembered I still had my emergency hot-floor socks I take everywhere! Except there was only one sock. I then had one of those perverse flashes of inspiration that come to me from time to time. I may not have had any more socks, but I did have two pairs of clean underwear. I tried to decide which I liked less. "Alright," I thought, "It's going to be the last flight of the Scotch Red," and tied the ill-fated pair in a knot around my right foot and began hobbling down the mountain.

In no circumstances are boxer shorts the ideal footwear for rough stone trails in the mountains, but the experience was made all the more unpleasant by the now-pervasive coating of dry, pummeled shit of three thousand donkeys on the entire length of the trail. Or at least it was dry, pummeled shit until it started to rain. And it least it was merely cold, squelching shit rubbing on my bruising feet through my much-abused underwear until it became goddamn freezing, squelching shit when it started to snow. Four rushed hours of this torment and one failed attempt at squeezing into Girlface's petite spare loafers later, we arrived in a darkened Gaurikund and went to retrieve the bulk of our luggage, to discover that the hotel we had hoped of returning to was now full. Fortunately, we found a place nearby in a closet-sized box to sleep in, and the hotel boy brought us down to the manager to check in. "Room is OK" I said. The manager looked at me with a face somewhere between fear, confusion, and contempt. I realized what the problem was, and decided to clear up matters so he wouldn't think I was crazy. "OK, Girlface, translate this very carefully into Hindi so the man understands...."

"You must know... that I did not shit my pants... I was just wearing my underwear as shoes... and this is donkey shit... and I promise to throw them away."

It did not help at all.


Intermission

Travel in Uttarakhand is a huge pain in the ass, and getting from one place to another takes days. Besides the fact that vehicles can rarely exceed 25 miles per hour on the dangerous, narrow roads, one frequently comes to a chokepoint where two buses are extremely slowly inching forwards and backwards to clear each other on the one-lane roads without sending one of them and its fifty passengers for a thousand-foot plummet into the nearest sacred river. Furthermore, you can only even travel for half the day because for some reason the people of the highlands are loath to depart any town in the afternoon. Even if you get out at seven in the morning and arrive in your transfer point in midafternoon, too fucking bad, you're spending the night, because the last bus out left at 11:30. It's partly because they don't want to travel after dark, but this is hogwash because the scheduled trips always end up hours late anyways and crawl through the dark whether they like it or not.

All this assumes the transport actually leaves. Often, you can sit in a stationary jeep for hours at a time waiting for more customers to fill up the 'departure quota', only for the driver to decide he doesn't really feel like working today. The locals take this bullshit in remarkably good spirits and I always wondered what gave them this zenlike composure in the face of such intransigence. Over the course of some recent conversations I've realized it's because they never leave the state and have spent their entire lives assuming that this is the best you can expect from the operators of motor vehicles. I don't find any fault in this provincial attitude; attempts to leave the state are doomed to near-certain failure.

For these various reasons, it took me no less than three days of travel to cover the 250-odd kilometers (155 miles, seriously) between Gaurikund and Gangotri. The last transit point, the rather uninspiring town of Uttarkashi, marked a sad moment for this blog: it was as far as Girlface Buddha could continue on the journey. Alas, despite all my arguments that gainful employment is wildly overrated, she felt obliged to end her vacation and return to her accounting job as scheduled and not get fired.

Wait till she finds out I switched the pocket calculator in her purse with a similarly sized glow-in-the-dark, plastic-framed mini poster of Lord Ganesh.

Part 2: Gangotri and Gaumukh

In Kedarnath I walked 14km down a mountain on a shit-strewn pilgrim trail, some of it in a snowstorm, wearing a pair of boxer shorts on one foot. Oh, I can hear myself telling the grandkids now. But it was on my next adventure that shit really got...real.

There I stood, at the source of the Ganges, looking upstream at another 18 or so kilometers of the Ganges river. Gangotri isn't really the source of the Ganges, they just say it is. I really can't figure out why, because to get here you have to pass along an very long and dangerous gorge whose foot would quite happily be identified as a 'source' by Hindus anywhere else, and beyond Gangotri to the actual source is actually much easier terrain. However, for those pilgrims whose piety trumps both their curiosity and their negligible desire to walk up to 4000 meters above sea level at the end of a glacier, the holy waters of Gangotri are quite satisfactory.

The Ganga temple of Gangotri marks the spot where King Bhagirathi meditated for the goddess Ganga to descend to Earth in the form of a river. You see, the king's wife had 60,000 sons, but the king sent them on a mission and they, like, pissed off this sage and he turned them all into ashes, so the king was like, please, we need a really big holy river to perform funeral rites and/or restore my 60,000 sons to life, and Ganga was like, yo, that sounds reasonable, I'ma come down, but wait, I'm too powerful, I'll destroy the Earth so someone has to catch me, and all of a sudden Shiva was like, yo, no worries, I'll meditate over here and I'll catch you with my dreadlocks.

And that's how it went down.

Gangotri is a beautiful place and on such an obnoxiously long, inconvenient route into the mountains that it is much less pilgrim'd than the first two Char Dham temples we've visited. It's a narrow valley full of pine forests and a small pilgrim town, with little stone hermitages dotting the edge of the wilderness. Right through the middle of it all, the upper reaches of the Ganges river roar through a deep, pitilessly vertical gorge where the water leaps through holes and crevices in the the smoothed stone walls, gouging it ever deeper like a taut wire cutting through a block of cheddar. The temple itself, however is not much to look at, and whoever has been going around publishing the common claim that the roof is "gilded" obviously has some difficulty distinguishing between a sheet of gold leaf and a sheet of gray metal that one of the gods left to be battered in an asteroid belt for a few cosmic cycles.

My real purpose in coming to Gangotri was to begin the hike up to the actual source of the Ganges, the ice-cave of Gaumukh, the "Cow's Mouth", the legendary formation at the bottom of the Gangotri glacier way up in the mountains. The trail is actually quite gentle and easy, but it is long, and there are several points that would appear difficult to the squeamish who don't want to cross icy creeks on slick logs or pause and cling to dusty cliff-faces when gusts of wind threaten to blow you off the extremely narrow footpath. Midway through the hike, you leave the forest and the trail really deteriorates as it becomes exposed in the whistling expanse of rocks and scraggly grass above the treeline. Rocks tumble onto the trail with bursts off wind and waterfalls crashing down from the snow-capped ridges directly overhead carve fresh little chasms in the loose dirt of the spindly path.

After many hours of walking you arrive at a place called Bhojbasa, which people have the audacity to call a village. Bhojbasa consists of: 1 restaurant with dormitory tents for hire, 1 police barracks, 1 ashram, 1 utility shack, and 1 utility manager's shack. Just beyond Bhojbasa is the massive pile of rocks left thousands of years ago when the Gangotri glacier reached its greatest length and didn't push no further. Neither the restaurant nor the ashram had anywhere for me to sleep, and I had a feeling the weather that night would be distinctly, well... glacial.

I decided my best chance was to wait for nightfall and look miserable so that someone would take me in, and that in the meantime I might as well hike my ass up the last five miles to the end of the glacier. From there on out the path was a mere track through the sand and boulders winding its way through the massive, barren gouge left in the mountain rocks by the ancient glacier. After a while, even the grass disappeared, and I was walking amid nothing but the multi-tonne boulder scatterings of the last ice age. Occasionally I would see a carving in the rocks, marking the toll of global warming, as the scientific and religious authorities had collobarated to mark the spots where the Gaumukh ice-cave stood in 1935, 1966, and so on. These glaciers are definitely melting. Finally, around the last mighty pile of rock deposits I saw it, the source of the Ganges, the Alpha, the holy spring whence flows forth the timeless life-giver of Indian civilization.

It looked like shit.

I'm not saying that Gaumukh doesn't possess a certain majesty; indeed, it is spectacular, but you would be hard-pressed to call it gorgeous. You see, the thing about glaciers that I had forgotten is that in addition to being rivers of ice, they also carry along incredible amounts of rock and dirt, especially at the ends. It took me a while to realize I was not going to climb up the giant pile of filthy rubble I saw before me to get to the glacier; it was the glacier. Right in the center, in the gaping hole that must be the Cow's Mouth, you could discern that indeed it was a huge mass of greyish ice, but that the ice, like solid stone beneath soil, was obscured by a thick coating of ugly brown crap. And from that gaping hole emerged a surprisingly large and powerful Ganges river.

It must be said that Gaumukh doesn't look a damn thing like a Cow's Mouth. Of course I didn't expect any more than the most passing resemblance on a geological feature, particularly one that spends centuries moving and melting. However, Gaumukh looks about as unlike any part of a cow as it possible to be. The most important part is called the "Snout", which on every cow I have seen is an outwards projection of the head, whereas on the glacier the snout is a gargantuan indentation in the ice. It wouldn't look like a cow's face unless they were to find a cow that had recently confronted a sledgehammer. (A note to the Hindu priesthood: I have a suggestion for a service I could render...)

Some pilgrims caught up and began clambering over to the riverside to collect the holy water in big plastic jugs. They dipped into the freezing torrent and emerged with a proudly-filled containers of yellowish sludge. Far from being a pristine source of ever-clear melted ice poured from the heavens that many expect, even at its very source the revered Ganges is visibly disgusting, and doesn’t become clean for a single inch of its epic journey. I felt that this threw a new perspective on the last eight months of my life.

I stayed up at the glacier to watch the sun fall behind the mountains and cast massive shadows across the valley, and had half a mind to get to some serious plant-extract-assisted “meditation” only to find that it was impossible to keep a light in the whirling winds. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t see any saddhus up there. I trudged back to Bhojbasa for my delayed confrontation with homelessness. I made a point of befriending everybody who was huddled in the Spartan mountain canteen, and as the diners dispersed I stood with my day-pack near the front gate of the compound, very exaggeratedly and slowly changing my clothing in the chill alpine air. One person after another became alarmed and would say “Oh, please see for room at the ashram!”, the ashram being full, and people from the ashram would say “Best you look at the lodge!”, which was of course full. When this dilemma was pointed out, nobody really had anything to say.

Finally, the last diners tucked off to bed and I was forced to resort to plan 2, or rather, plan 2x10^99, where all other plans were “Say ‘fuck’ repeatedly.” I was going to sleep outside.

About a kilometer into the old glacier-path I had spotted a boulder with an Om sign painted on it, and had peeked around and discovered a cleft of sorts in the rubble where a Shaivite trident and some rusting butter-lamp trays marked the long-abandoned refuge of an unknown saddhu. Well, if the babas can do it, so can I. I put on every item of clothing I had and nestled into the rocks, found a way to shield a lighter from the wind, and decided that if I was going to curl up to sleep at 4000 treeless, windswept meters in the Himalayas at the end of a glacier behind a fucking rock like a deranged, frostbitten mystic, at least I was going to get high first. If a man has no principles in the face of hardship he has no principles at all.

It was, without a doubt, the coldest night of my life.

The next morning I shuffled down to the café for an overpriced potato breakfast. “Oh, where did you sleep?” the manager inquired. I answered first by brushing the coat of dust and small pebbles out of the fold in my wooly hat, sniffed a wet dribble up into my nose and added verbally, for clarity “Fuck You is where. Give me that chocolate bar or we’re both going to fucking die.”

That evening I was back in Gangotri. I hiked down that very morning despite my weariness because I refused to take a bed for the second night and give those people any money. Hot noodles awaited me, and after devouring three orders of them I creaked my body to a pay phone.

“Hi! How was Gaumukh!” Girlface said on the other end of the line.

“It was spectacular…” I said (and I meant it), “…oh, and how do you say cumming on the face of adversity in Hindi?”

“I’m at work. Don’t be disgusting. AND WHERE’S MY CALCULATOR?”

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.

Exeunt Santoosh

By six in the morning we saw the most unusual thing we would witness all day: a naked Jain monk walking down the highway from Joshimath with his sacred whisk swishing through the air and his middle-aged buttcheeks jiggling with the rhythmic motion of a long walk down the mountains. Girlface, Santoosh, and several of Santoosh's relatives who were all squeezed into the car stared in disbelief, for although they are Indians they do not spend all their time in India seeking out the strangest people (and, wow, how strange they are) that this country has to offer.

We dropped off the relatives after a few hours in the district town which had such amenities as doctors and a hospital, and we continued on our way to Chopta. Descending from the inner mountains of Garwhal, we passed first through a series of terraced canyons and sleepy hill-towns and from there into a thick forest on a little-used road. We arrived in Chopta, an unlikely scene for a momentous occasion. Chopta can hardly be called a village; it is actually a string of about eight open-air rice'n'dal joints where the proprietors sleep on blankets in rocky nooks at the back of their stalls, and a single 'hotel' with enough solar-powered electricity to keep one light bulb flickering in each room. It was here in Chopta that Girlface and I said our goodbyes to Santoosh, as he was dropping us here and returning to Joshimath to prepare for the impending peak tourism season. I can't say I was greatly shattered at the time, but over the next few weeks I deeply began to miss having a vehicle on hand along with somebody who actually has a clue what the hell he's talking about. So, farewell Santoosh; your company and ability to give us information not diametrically opposed to reality will be missed.

Having settled at our pad in Chopta (a process which involved nothing more than observing that our room did indeed have four walls), Girlface and I got down to the business we came here for: climbing another goddamn mountain. Chopta is somewhere on the side of Chandrashila mountain, a 'modest' 3900-meter peak which we were visiting for two reasons. 1) The Tungnath temple is near the top. 2) Santoosh told us not to try traveling from Joshimath to our actual next stop in one day.

It was a three-kilometer walk to the temple; this we knew. What we did not know is that the walk was to be damn near vertical for much of its length. We labored up the switch-backed trail, taking numerous breaks to admire the scenery and temporarily remove our pulsing lungs from chests. I heartily reccomend that anyone who travel in the Himalayas first have cybernetic augmentations installed in and around their cardiovascular systems. You may weary of the rust-proofing and occasional hard-coded urges to kill all humans, but the respiratory benefits are well worth it.

We reached the temple above the treeline in a rather desolate-looking village at a height of a little over 3600 meters. The high priest came out of his quarters wearing military fatigue trousers and a heavy jacket. Almost immediately he boasted that Tungnath temple is the highest of all the noteworthy shrines of Garwhal. I thought that if he wanted people to know this fact so soon, he should put up a sign announcing the same at the battom of the trail, so that curious visitors might read it and declare "Well, well, that is pretty high. All in favor of staying down here and eating cold lentils instead, say 'aye'"

The temple is dedicated to Shiva, and is up there because of some rock that is apparently what was left of Shiva's arms after he dove into the ground in whilst evading the heroes of the Mahabharata for some reason in the form of a bull. There are five such temples in this area of Garwhal, and they mark the remains of Shiva's hair, arms, and so on. The most important is Kedarnath, the hallowed site of Shiva's ass. Whatever the story, the Tungnath temple is definitely something to see. It's not very big, but its lonely, windswept perch is memorable enough and the temple and its lilting neighbor shrines have perhaps the most ancient-looking aura of any shrine I've seen in India. It's an almost crude but powerful little structure of rocks obviously gathered from now more than a few yards away on this very mountaintop, and though the trail down the mountain isn't that long it has a distinct feeling of wondrous isolation. I asked the priest about these things, as I had no information about when it was built. "Oh, more than a thousand years ago..." he said. I examined the temple and that seemed quite plausible. "It was built in the ancient times by Arjuna, Bhima, and Krishna." Oh, that kind of 'more than a thousand years'. Never ask a priest about archaeology, unless you really want to have your 'answer' followed by a lengthy dissertation on cosmic cycles, the divinity of scripture, and the precise respective ages of planet Earth and the universe.

It was late afternoon again, and as always the storm clouds seemed to be nearing so we began hurrying back down the trail. A local shepherd stopped for conversation. After some talking there came a moment when he became personally upset that we had come all the way to his village from across the world and had not taken in the full experience by continuing to the peak of Chandrashila mountain while we were there. I explained there was no way we were hiking ourselves the last stretch up that steep mountain with a storm impending, particularly since we couldn't see its fabled vistas through the clouds anyways. "Oh, please," the shepherd said, "then wake up early morning and climb up see Chandrashila, and you can go down before afternoon jeep leave Chopta." To which, I thought, FUCK THAT. There is a profound difference in mentality between people born in the mountains and lowland-lubbers like myself. Hell, when I was a child I lived near the ocean in a house six feet below sea level. If it wasn't for the massive Dutch sand dunes, my family would have included half a dozen pet flounder. What the shepherd couldn't fathom, and I had no way of sensitively explaining, is that both Girlface and I were reared on level ground, and therefore there is no way in hell we were climbing up most of the same damn mountain twice for any reason short of a neo-Biblical deluge.

And speaking of neo-Biblical deluges, the mountain custom of serving your drinking water hot makes you feel even better when it's going in as it does going out. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

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.

Livin' La Vida Baba

It was another chilly morning in Joshimath and it took quite a bit of prodding to get Girlface Buddha out of bed. Eventually, after being reassured that there was a perfect blue sky, she crept out onto the balcony with two entire quilts draped over herself and squinted towards the horizon. Just then, Santoosh pulled up in his car and shouted "Mr. [Ghost]! It is beautiful! Today we go Auli Gorson!" There were certain benefits to moving into Santoosh's own hotel, most notably that being greeted by his exuberant shouts were a more pleasant wakeup than peeking out the window and scanning for lurking Nepali perverts.

It was indeed a perfect day and we made quick time up the mountain above Joshimath to the ski resort of Auli. It isn't skiing season, but Auli doesn't look like that great a place to ski anyways, with just one rather easy-looking trail. The problem with skiing in India is that everywhere is either too hot for snow, too steep, or located within mortar range of Kashmiri militants, so for Indian skiers, Auli just has to do. Our interest was not skiing. There was no snow at that altitude, thankfully, and we merely were passing through Auli to go to the higher hill of Gorson. Gorson is a popular (i.e. easy) mountain to walk up, and at the top you are treated to a lovely green meadow with grazing sheep, donkey caravans, and an almost 360-degree view of the Garhwal Himalayas. Santoosh pointed them out to us: The Horse, The Elephant, The Black-Throated Shiva, and more.

He pointed to one and said "Look there, that is the Dunagiri. This mountain Hanuman carried all the way to Lanka to save Rama and Lakshmana." I recalled the episode vividly. I remember wanting to throw my copy of the Ramayana across the room when Hanuman had to go retrieve this mountain for the second time. Girlface's eyes lit up. Hanuman is much beloved in her family. "We should go there to a Hanuman temple!" she said. "There is no Hanuman temple," Santoosh replied, "The people of Dunagiri village hate Hanuman. They say he took their everything." At this point I burst into a snicker, tickled pink at the idea of this little Himalayan village holding a grudge against the monkey god for stealing their mountain.

Most awesome of all was the 7816-meter peak of Nanda Devi, the second highest mountain in India, which is worshiped as a goddess by the people in these parts, and you can see why. Santoosh and his neighbors are all deeply inclined to nature worship, which is not surprising given the beauty and life-determining power of the surroundings. Many a time on our travels, Santoosh would stop the car at a special bend in the river, or at the mouth of a valley leading to a sacred peak. In one of the numerous sops to orthodox Hinduism in this area, they say that Nanda Devi is an embodiment of the goddess Durga, but it is quite clear that most of the people have greater reverence for Nature itself.

Santoosh led us another way down the mountain, passing through an oak forest. We came across a flock of sheep, which I cheekily approached hoping to find some especially stupid-looking specimens. I caught a glimpse of a sudden motion, and soon realized I had pissed off the sheepdogs. They barked at me first, then inexplicably rushed at Girlface and Santoosh. Santoosh waved a tiny stick and I intercepted the dogs with kicking gestures. Santoosh gave me a knowing look; most men know the value of convenient and easy acts of "heroism" around women. Unfortunately, a knowing look was not enough and Santoosh, heedless of Girlface being right there, spent much of the descent making loud, ribald jokes about the benefits I would reap from my doggie-interdiction.

It was not to be.

Still having much of an afternoon to kill, we went off in search again of Joshimath's Narsingh temple, which we had failed to locate on the day we were asked to enact a softcore porn with boiled eggs at the nearby hot springs. We found the modest temple and admired it. As usual, Girlface went off in search of whatever priestly authority was about, and I went off looking for trouble. I found it just outside the temple door, in the form of about 25 saddhus gathering in Joshimath for the final hike to the formal opening of Badrinath in a few days. I made polite greetings as I usually do. Saddhus are usually treated warily or with intense, overbearing curiosity, so they often react positively to a friendly nod or "namaste". As I predicted, one cluster waved me over to sit down with them. "You want smoke?" they beckoned. Why, yes. Yes I would.

We began passing around a chillum that was repeatedly refilled with either ganja or a tobacco-hashish blend much favored by this huddle of babas. They introduced themselves to me, rattling off their colorful "baba names", which I have sadly forgotten. Forgetting things is often a risk when hanging with saddhus. We discussed the breadth of my travels in India, and I am proud to say that I have amassed such a list of sacred sites that the saddhus called many of their fellows over to tell them about it, and they offered me a type of blessing that seems roughly equivalent to Mad Propz. One saddhu, who I started to think of as Monkey Baba tried to sell me a statue of Hanuman lifting Dunagiri mountain, claiming it would give me great strength. With a very silly look in his eyes, he also gave me a large, knobbly stick to pound on the floor, which everyone agreed would also give me great strength. Monkey Baba rolled up his sleeve (such as it was) and revealed a tattoo of a mountain-lifting Hanuman. "Very strong!" he said, flexing his baba biceps.

At this point Girlface found me and looked at our little cohort very sceptically. "Are you coming?" she asked. The saddhus began to protest. Seeking to mollify both sides, and having the misfortune of the chillum being thrust in my hands at that moment, I offered "I'll come when when we're finished."

This was a mistake. Babas never finish smoking weed.

Girlface huffed off and the conversation turned to the urgent matter of chai. Eventually I caughed up a dollar or so for a big tub of tea, regarding it as an interview expense. One saddhu who I thought of as Toothy Baba explained the centrality of tea to the baba life. "We have no money. We just get little money from person. Here twenty rupees. Twenty rupees, five babas, chai... chillum....twenty rupees, chai, chillum. Chillum, chai, chillum, chai. Baba life." He illustrated his point by drinking chai and smoking from the chillum.

Smart Baba chimed in. "Baba life no father, no mother, no wife, only God." I nodded understanding, but before I could speak another saddhu chimed in "No father, no mother, no wife...five children!" I decided this one was to be Dirty Baba.

Not all saddhus take vows of celibacy, but Monkey Baba had, and pointed towards his genitals saying "Bramicharyi!" and looking smug. He then pulled up his loincloth and began poking and rubbing the small cloth around his package, and indeed, the small bulge thereunder remained remarkably placid.

As the chillum passed around again and again, the saddhus would recite popular praises to Shiva before their monstrous inhalations. "Shanti om. Om namo Shiva. Hai Ram. Sitaram. Ram ram ram. *shhhhhuuuuuwwwwwfffff* *cough**cough*." There are many types of saddhus. Some are hardcore mystics, some are just complete raving lunatics, and some are just free-spirited types who like to wander around India smoking weed every day. Most of those in our circle seemed to be of the latter category. "1 2 3, everything India free!" a saddhu cackled. The rest joined him in laughing. "1 2 3, India free!" Smart Baba clarified for my benefit. "Baba no work. Everything free. Chai...chillum..."

It was time for chai again. I took a few sips and thought something was a little off. Raising an eyebrow I asked "This is...special chai?" "What?" was their response. There was then some discussion in Hindi and Smart Baba interpreted "Yes, yes, this is special chai." I have enough experience with these matters to know the evening was going to take some unexpected turns.

More and more saddhus were trickling in to the temple area from the path up the mountainside. Joshimath was becoming a veritable saddhu camp. One stranger in a bright white loincloth and turban sat opposite us. "This man magic man..." a South Indian saddhu said, "...in desert he is pouring water then pouring again same water and water is never empty. Yes, look at him... magic man."

At this moment a cow strolled by. Really Stoned Baba rocked back and forth and said in Hindi "Coooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww". Monkey Baba and some of the others who were particularly happy starting repeating "Yes! cow. Cow." Some of them offered gestures of prayer. Monkey Baba and Southern Baba grabbed me and began prostrating themselves, saying "Mother holy cow. Praise cow, praise cow!", encouraging me to do the same. This is where I draw the line.

It turns out that Smart Baba had lived in Joshimath without interruption for 25 years, dwelling in a small cement "cave" on the hillside right under the temple. I was about to ask him some questions since he was the best conversationalist when a large group of Hindu pilgrims walked by and the whole gathering of saddhus erupted in pious appeals. They were poor pilgrims, and in the end only five rupees were given. The saddhu with the five-rupee coin beamed "Chai!"

It then occurred to me that I should leave, because I was getting the munchies and it was clear that the babas were quite serious about consuming nothing but chai and cannabis that evening. As I began my slow departure, the saddhus blessed me with various sticks and other implements and guaranteed me that my extensive holy wanderings would bestow great providence on my family, friends, and future wife, and would ensure that my next life will consist of a long spell as a heavenly being. A "minor demigod" as they put it. Well, well, well.

I recalled I was supposed to meet Girlface for dinner, but she is a strict vegetarian and I was craving a succulent meaty dish, so I hatched a plan of sneaking off on my own, eating dinner, and then relying on my baba-incited stomach cravings to get me through a second dinner with Girlface. This would have all been well and good had I remembered the plan while I ate the first dinner. As I tore into a plate of chicken momos, I looked up and saw Santoosh and a friend of his settling down at a table with a bottle of whiskey. It was that kind of eatery. Rather than do the sensible thing and walk across the street to the hotel, I ended up downing two tall glasses of whiskey. This was followed by a plate of fried goat intestines, proving better than the neglect of my girlfriend that intoxication really does impair a man's judgment.

I then remembered I was supposed to have a second dinner, because the place we were in gave up all pretense of being a restaurant and ran out of food, or whatever you call fried goat intestines. I did not, however, remember (being now quite drunk as well) that this second dinner was supposed to be accompanied by Girlface. I shuffled into the restaurant down the road, peered in cautiously, and was relieved to see that Old Pervy wasn't waiting for me. I ordered a potato dish and sat down next to a harmless-looking urbanite finishing his meal. We chatted for a few minutes, and then without warning he said "I have my own guru... he has many mystical powers." My ears perked. Though really quite amused I put on an air of bored skepticism. It was the perfect provocation.

"He can know everything, even the most intimate secrets like between man and wife. Also he can know everything from a distance. I can call him right now and he can say 'You are wearing blue sweater and black pyjama and next to you is sitting a foreigner who is eating zeera aloo.' The whole universe is open to him."

"These babas...they have many powers. Some of them live in the most remote places and never leave. Even on top of Himalaya in winter they just stay in trance with no eating. My guru can do some of these things."

"My guru, he can take any form. Like one time me and friends ask him to transform into cock and he transform into cock right there."

"He can be in two places in same form at same time. One time he is with us and we ask him to show it and he say call these people so we call them and they say 'Yes he is here with us last three days.'"

"He know all the facts of my previous life. He tell me in past life I was a schoolteacher who come to India and fell in love with country. So I prayed to the God and told him please let me be born in India."

"You know the Jesus? My guru tell me that in Jesus lost years he come to Kashmir and learn the meditation and the yoga. Then when he is crucifixion he go into a trance. After three days, two yogis go to his cave and take him out of his trance. They say to him special yoga words he know and he come out of trance. Then after he show his disciples his wound, then he go back to Kashmir. He live there fifty more years. You can see he have his tomb in Srinagar. He has Muslim grave. They revere him also, like Musa is Moses."

"He will also know which girl is infatuated with you. He can find all your most love girl in the whole world." Fascinating, I thought, now here is a power with some useful application, girl-finding....OHHHH SHIITTTTTTT.

I hurried over to the hotel. I knew I reeked of smoke and Girlface was not happy. She was made even less so by the evidence of Santoosh's whiskey on my breath. I can't be sure about this, but the goat intestines probably didn't help either. Between Girlface and the whiskey I spent the night nursing more headaches than one.

At least when I get reborn as a demigod I won't have these problems.

The Stairway To Heaven

Later that night, the electricity in Joshimath decided to attempt doing something for once, and I noticed that our creepy old friend was nowhere to be seen, so I sallied forth from the protective cocoon of our hotel in a vain attempt to use the internet. It was then that I met Santoosh.

Santoosh (not his real name) is a respected figure in the Garwhal tourism industry, presumably because people appreciate his services but don't spend too much time hanging out with him. In any case, I happened into his "adventure shop", and at that moment everything changed. Santoosh had all the answers, and critically, his own car. Consulting with Girlface Buddha, we made a plan that not only got us everywhere we planned, but on a number of side-adventures as well, all in time for a festival day on the other side of the mountains. Lifted from despair to exhilaration, Girlface and I made our previously-thwarted trip to the temple village of Badrinath the very next morning.

Badrinath is one of the four great "river source" temples of Garwhal, sitting near the source of the Alakananda. I would also like to point out that it is incredibly far from anything and should really be known for the dramatic shifts of its weather more than its hallowed ground. When we arrived, Nilkanth mountain, which stands well over 6000 meters and was right next to us, was entirely concealed in a big white soup which we soon learned to recognize as the ubiquitous Himalayan snowstorms. So, we went to the village of Mana, which is very famous for being small and quaint, and because of its fame is no longer very quaint. The village is full of fascinating Hindu trivia, such as the very cave where the legendary sage Vyasa supposedly wrote the Mahabharata under the tutelage of Lord Ganesh. There is also a natural bridge supposedly made by the hero Bhima, and a very obscure splotch of rock that the locals will excitedly tell you is a naturally-formed picture of a horse. Mana is also the location of the most remote branch of the State Bank of India, which proudly boasts of having 100% coverage of Indian territory. Given that there are actually hundreds of thousands of villages without banks in India, I would say that Mana is the lucky beneficiary of pilgrim-targeted propaganda.

Beyond Mana is a rather austere valley with a difficult crossing to Tibet guarded by the Indian military, who mostly just sit around and make sure you claim to be on your way to the Vasudhara waterfalls. Girlface and I were about half an hour into the hike when we noticed that there was a snowstorm on each of the mountainsides about a hundred and fifty yards on either side of us...and that the entire valley behind us (the only way back to civilization) was also completely encased in a howling cloud of snow. Ahead of us, the clouds were rolling forwards at a rather troubling pace. We were now in our own little bubble of snowlessness, and it was getting rather cold. Girlface buried herself in the comically outsized sweater she had bought upon entering the mountains and left nothing but her eyes and a tail of shimmering black hair poking out the top. She was evidently displeased.

Since going back would have been even worse we pushed on through our bubble to the waterfall, where the stream that becomes the Alakananda jumps through thin air from a high cliff on a mountain so pointy and inscrutable that the ancients determined that the waterfall is the very stairway to heaven. It was here that the five Pandava brothers, the heroes of the Mahabharata, made their stirring ascent to paradise in the final chapters of that gargantuan tome. Girlface and I stood there as the storms slowly started to drift away from us and clear a path back to the village. We heard voices.

"Hello! Hello! What is your good name? And where are you hailing from?" It was a typical conversation with curious Hindu fellow-tourists. The voices belonged to two young men from Delhi who were there to see the falls as well. They marveled at its incredible plummet just as we had done, and poked in exhilaration at the large pile of ice at its base. Snow and ice are very wondrous things to most Indian people, though this feeling is known to reverse itself very suddenly and usually in correlation with a drop in the ambient temperature. Girlface shuffled over to a spot vaguely around where the water should have been landing and, with the speed of a striking cobra, bared on of her shivering hands to hold a water bottle out to capture some sprinklings from the stairway to heaven. I don't know what she plans on doing with it, but I wouldn't be surprised if her parents gratefully let her spill it all over the house from one of their balconies. Personally, I would commission someone to build a little boat in it with little tanning benches on the deck for Indian mythological heroes.

Together the four of us stood gawking at the point where the waterfall seemed to dissolve into mist in midair and then reappear as the slow melting of the ice below. One of the boys broke the silence. "Do you have a Facebook address?"

At the ends of the fucking earth.

All four of us walked back together, the boys shaking quite violently because they were wearing nothing but jeans and striped Delhi-ite office shirts, and Girlface waddling like a penguin and occasionally making some kind of muffled remark through about four layers of accumulated woolen clothing. The storm above the village relented as we walked, and a proper conversation resumed, at first concerning the cuisine and ethnic makeup of America, and then concerning the mischievousness of Jews.

It was one of the boys who asked "What are these Jews? They are the Yahudis?"
"Please, tell us about the Yahudis" the other said.
"I was talking to one Muslim man from Mumbai. His name Mr Feroz Khan. He says the Yahudis are very bad."
"Yes, and they control everything."

"Nah, nah" I tried to explain "They aren't bad. It's just that Muslims don't like them because of Israel-Palestine."
"Mr Feroz Khan says that the Yahudis own so many of the American medias. Is this true?"
"Uh, well yes, actually Jewish businessmen founded many of the..."
"And also they control the whole world."
"Uh......no"
"And he say also that the Yahudis take Muslims from their homes and never let them return."
"Ummmm well actually...yeah that one's true."
"So the Yahudis really are a danger?"
"No...I mean...there's Israel-Palestine", I began, as I launched into what I believed to be a fabulous Hinglish exposition of Middle Eastern history. Finally I concluded "...basically, don't believe anything Muslims say about Yahudis."
"Hmmm, well I think much must be true..." the first boy managed before his friend cut him off " -Yes, but the Muslims are often the trouble in the close-to-earth matters anyways."

Girlface and I proceeded to the Badrinath temple in a wintry rain, our part in the quest for world peace most satisfactorily completed. I hadn't spoken to her in a while, having been quite engaged in my temporary mission for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. Santoosh, who had rejoined us, displayed a rare moment of tact and left us alone on the bridge to discuss Girlface's apparent unhappiness. "What are you thinking about?" I asked. She pulled her outermost sweater down from her face and I knew everything was all right.

With more than a hint of sulking she said "Can the Yahudis please control the weather?"

Sexy Chicken

Enough of this fooling about at the bottom of the Himalayas: it's time to get up them bitches.

Girlface and I caught a morning bus for the epic 250-kilometer ride to the mountain town of Joshimath, a military and religious outpost that spends half of its year being home to thousands of people who live even deeper in the mountains, where winter gets too desperately cold even for strange Himalayan mountain people. All 250 of those kilometers were on a narrow, twisting road pushing ever further uphill through the Alakananda river valley, one of several places referred to as "The Valley of the Gods".

As the hours wore on, we almost became tired just by looking at the height and steepness of the slopes we were constantly about 10 inches from falling off of. There is just no horizontality in these mountains. It's so goddamn steep the children here don't even play cricket. They barely have enough ground for a half-court game of thumb wars. There is no 'missionary position' in the Garhwal Himalayas; sexual intercourse is instead referred to as 'getting belaid' because you can only do it while dangling in a harness. It's so steep you have to walk uphill to tie your shoes. I don't even know how that works. Logic ends at 10,000 feet.

We finally got to Joshimath and it was everything we hoed for: high, steep, and not quite as fucking cold as it could be. After weeks of over-100 degree heat in lower India, however, I was willing to deal with a spot of freezing rain here and there. It's really no prob...IS THAT FUCKING SNOW??? Friends, weeks after these events first unfolded, I can tell you that much of my reporting for the month of May is going to concern getting snowed on.

Arising early in the morning, we stretched and I donned my prize new possession: a ridiculous "hip" Indian sweater covered in nonsensical Hinglish-isms, mutually incompatible brand labels, and best of all, a prominent tag that reads something to the effect of "GIORGIO ARMANI. PURE ORIGINAL LEATHER". It's a wool sweater.

After our morning tea, we went to speak to the manager. I could hardly contain my glee when the combination of my stupid Indian sweater, stupid Indian haircut, and not-stupid Indian companion made the manager refuse to accept I was an American. He repeatedly accused me of faking my ignorance of Hindi, to which Girlface testified "Oh no, he really is quite ignorant." Leaving Girlface to do the talking, as the manager was now insulted by my ongoing "refusal" to converse with him intelligibly, we inquired as to the easiest way to get to the holy village of Badrinath, for which reason we had dragged ourselves hundreds of miles to this frigid hilltop.

"Badrinath is closed for another ten days" he said (in Hindi).

Well, that put a bit of a spin on things. It turns out that thanks to the Kumbh Mela, which had interrupted the various cosmic cycles of the year, the temples of Garwhal were still remaining closed several weeks after the clearing of the snows. We were left essentially with ten days in Joshimath, of all damn places, with nothing to do. "I know!" I said, "Let's find a crazy, perverted old man and go on an adventure with him!"

Well, that's not quite how it happened, but by that afternoon we were in a jeep with a crazy old pervert who was taking the time out of his busy schedule of criticizing the cooks at the town's main breakfast joint to show us around some village we had never heard of. It soon came out that the village, which was called Tapovan, was notable chiefly for its hot spring, and our new friend was making quite frequent reccomendations that we strip to our undergarments and splash hot water on our bodies. In retrospect, it was quite a mystery why we subsequently followed him a mile out of town to peer into another hot spring, which was little more than a violently foaming, sulphurous puddle of such suspect composition that he didn't suggest we disrobe there at all. Instead, he merely suggested that Girlface boil some eggs within, so that we might enjoy a hearty snack whilst frolicking in the hot springs back in town. He also wanted us to buy a chicken. I suppose he thought we should cook it, but by this point I didn't dare ask what else two young people and an old man could do with a chicken in a hot spring.

Nobody ever goes to Tapovan. Well, nobody except weird old Nepali men with hot spring fetishes, so we were stuck there for several hours before catching another jeep back. "What do we do for nine more days?" Girlface asked, visibly concerned that we had exhausted the touristic possibilities around Joshimath in a single creepy afternoon. Moreover, she seemed worried that though the attractions had run out, the creepiness hadn't. Pervo interrupted "Oh don't worry! There are many good things. You see me in morning. I will be at restaurant. There I can see your hotel."

Nine days... The afternoon was ony just drawing to a close and we were getting a little bored. Girlface was peering out the window and took me by the arm. "The old man is still sitting at that restaurant..." she whispered, "...what are we going to do? I don't want to go out..." She was right. There was something weird about it, and nine days under pervo-siege was a prospect not even Ghostface Buddha felt like having to deal with. I scanned the street carefully. If worst came to worst and the boredom were to start eating us from the inside... well... from the window I could see at least two places to buy chickens.

In Search Of The Galactic Chronicles

I couldn't stop myself: I had to go to Rishikesh. It's only a few miles upriver from Haridwar and is one of the most famous places in India. If you've heard the name, it's either because you know the Beatles went there, or because you too are fascinated by the odd place that now bills itself as "The Spirituality Capital Of The World". Rishikesh, which means "land of rishis" has been a hangout for Indian spiritual types for millennia, and here is why: it is the most remote and isolated place you can go in the Indian Himalayas without every having to actually walk uphill. Nowadays it is Ground Zero of the New Age, and aside from the many people who come here for its renowned yoga centers and serene ashrams, it is also full of goddamn moonbats.

It was my plan to mingle casually among the lunatics but I found infiltration impossible. Like their more grounded (and by "more grounded" I mean they believe in elephant-headed gods but nothing crazier than that) counterparts, they take their studies very seriously and expect some kind of commitment before revealing their wisdom. I was particularly annoyed that I couldn't track down the man whose sign promised he could reveal "Answers To Spiritual Questions, Indology, Galactic Chronicles." I could have visited any of his several blogs, but I disdain to do so, because it is well known that blogs are a complete waste of time.

My time spent searching for the Galactic Chronicles was not completely in vain. So, I present to you, meager as they are, the collected eavesdroppings of Ghostface Buddha's afternoon in Rishikesh.

"She is so, like, NOT on a spiritual journey."

"We can ask that nice man where he bought his beads!"

"No, it's not marijuana. It kind of smells pot-ish but the rishis call it, like, 'Ganja' because it's the herb of the Ganges, I think. It's a special herb."

"Sooooo I don't know what it means, but it was kind of special, Mum. You know I haven't had a girlfriend in seven or eight years."

"Yoga makes me fart."

"I know I shouldn't sleep with the guru, but it's his crossroads as well as mine."
"You really think so?"
"I mean, how can I know? Only he can see the crossroads."

"We don't have lentils in Canada."

"Do any of the ashrams have Skype?"

"There are too many rules here. I think I might change my flight to Dubai."

[At a restaurant] "Do you have any hidden meat?"

And finally, my two favorite conversational excerpts...

"Do you know where I can find a Vedic bakery?"
"Do you know what 'Vedic' means?"

"I don't believe in aliens, because the saddhus would talk about them."
"They speak Hindi all the time... they could be."
"No, they don't talk about worldly things."

Now pardon me, I must discuss worldly things.

The Footstep Of U-God

As the bus from Delhi to Haridwar rumbled through a drizzly day on the aesthetically deprived industrial villages of the western end of the Ganges plain, I noticed that something was...different. For some reason I didn't want to punch the Indian person taking an uninvited nap on my shoulder right in the face. This, no doubt, was because I actually know and am traveling with the Indian in question: the curiously-named Girlface Buddha. Girlface is on vacation from her job for a while and has foolishly chosen to squander it helping me drive buffaloes to the ends of the Earth.

Our objective is to reach a number of the remote, highly sacred temples tucked hundreds of kilometers deep into the very core of the Himalayan mountains, where she will earn spiritual merit and I will earn the right to verbally abuse cows at altitudes so high they have to wear pressurizing capsules on their udders. Our first stop, naturally, was Haridwar, the gateway to the Himalayas. According to Hindu geography (which is practically a field in its own right), Haridwar is the city where the Ganges river definitively emerges from the mountains and pours into its civilization-sustaining course across the plains. They've more or less got this much right. Standing on an elevated point in Haridwar you look one way and there ain't no hills; look the other way and there are hills aplenty leading to a far-off crest of loftily-draped snow on the horizon.

Just a month ago, Haridwar hosted the Kumbh Mela festival, which is held here every twelve years. This is the Hindu festival to end all festivals; a fete of such collossal scope that pretty much every time it is held (it rotates every three years between four sacred riverside cities) it breaks its own record for being the largest gathering of human beings ever assembled. This ain't your grandmother's churhc Revival. We are talking about a mass of humanity practically guaranteed to reach into 8 figures, including thousands of India's most hardcore saddhus, who especially love these fairs and are also completely fucking insane. The most famous group are the Naga Saddhus, who are best known for being dreadlocked, ash-covered, and naked, but are also remarkable for how given they are to forming dancing, naked throngs in the streets. Even now Haridwar is still recuperating from the millions. Weeks later, many of the enormous tent cities are still standing and those that have been torn down leave a skeleton of winding wooden fences that must have demarcated the Queue From Hell.

Everything in Haridwar converges on the Hari-ki-pari ghat, the "Footstep of God", the precise stretch where Ganges makes its quantum leap from being a wild mountain river to being a a suitable watercourse to settle along and get flooded by annually. It's called the Footprint of God because Vishnu himself tromped mightily here, an event commemorated -following typical Hindu logic- by a colossal statue of Shiva. Here the Ganges is split artificially into a series of narrow but swift canals criss-crossed by slender man-made islands and a tangle of red steel bridges. It has the fascinatingly haphazard yet efficient appearance of a downtown designed in a burst of genius while playing SimCity drunk.("fffuck I forqgot to build annyy sewrers...fkuc it, it;s INdia.")

Though there are many ghats along the river, naturally everyone comes together on the Hari-ka-pari. The level of activity here is captivating. I spent hours wandering around the various islands scoping out the numerous somber rituals and delighted splashfights taking place among a fabulous array of obscure and uniquely-dressed peasant castes from all over the country. It culminated in a clamorous dusk ceremony where Ganga herself was worshiped by the swirling of torches and a proliferation of floating leaf-lamps being set adrift in the river. Absurd men in almost parodic blue uniforms goaded the gathered masses to chant and perform an Indianized (read: hilariously botched, misunderstood, and raucously uncoordinated) attempt at the Mexican Wave.

After catching up with Girlface for about the eight millionth time and checking on her progress at rendering obeisances to more deities than you can shake a giant stack of bells at, I began to think that departing from my time-proven practice of traveling rogue and alone might be crimping my style. Ghostface Buddha on the road, you may have noticed, is hardly a spokesman for the principle of compromise. When I found her she was, as I expected, holding a small packet of temple-blessed sugar balls for me to receive Lord Ganesh's gift of tooth decay with. I rarely ask Girlface what she's doing at these places anymore. When I do, I'll ask something like "Why are you putting a cloth on that bush?" and she'll merrily respond something completely unhelpful like "Oh! It's a sari for the tree!" However, I must admit I paid little attention to the offering she had procured because I spent the entire 3-mile walk back to our hotel fixated on her shuffling alongside me in a most appealingly Ganges-drenced sari. Verily, something about this trip is going to be...different.