*
Time seemed to stand still on Rohtang. The sky was a dawn that had stretched into the afternoon. The morning and the afternoon soon blended into one another in the white background of glowing mist. It turned into a picnic, that afternoon on Rohtang - picnic with hundreds of bikes and bikers and cars and taxis and military trucks. 3 and I couldn’t ride together anymore as the mud was making it difficult to control the motorcycle. So he dropped me off at a shoulder and I trekked the rest of the way up. I walked along the edge of the road, staring down when the fog cleared at the tiny, tiny tourists milling around like multi-colored ants. In the valley below, they ate and drank and rode horses and climbed to a nearby waterfall and then rushed to avoid the cold, cold spray that fell on them like a blanket of semi-transparent haze. From my vantage point high up in the mountains, the thin veil of spray seemed to hang in the air, a ghostly unmoving specter.
It took us four hours to get out of the maze of mud and magic and we got out to come face to face with a long wall of ice and snow. In the gray mist, we discerned a huge cascade of water that had frozen in places. It cut through the ice and cut under the road and rolled on towards the ravine to our right. We had only just begun to get the hang of riding on proper roads again when this wall stopped us in our tracks. This was the first time all of us had seen ice on that scale. We had to stop. And we did, and we posed next to the wall and took a lot of pictures. 3 took a stone and etched the word ‘HOT’ on to the ice and drew an arrow ‘->’ and stood at the end of the arrow, and I have a picture of that. Then we crossed to other side of the road, and saw that the cascade of water had frozen into a large sheet of muddy, dirty ice that looked like a giant, dirty tongue of ice. Breaking the sheet with the stone a little, we saw that inside the layer of ice, water still flowed unimpeded and fast. I put my hand through the hole we had made and filled a bottle with fresh, cold mountain water.
Leaving the snowbank, we descended towards Khoksar, and by doing so left behind the deciduous Beas River valley to the more arid Lahaul and Spiti valley. Hoping to make up for lost time, we increased our speed until Moham caught up with 3 and me and indicated for us to stop.
We slowed to our left and stopped, and Moham walked back to us and pointed at the motorcycle’s rear tire. It was flat. 3 and I groaned. So I switched with Moham and we rode together until we could find a place to fix the tire. In an awesome display of willpower, 3 rode the motorcycle alone for the next twenty-one kilometers through switchbacks and hairpin turns and half-roads and no roads, all the while standing and shifting all his weight on to the front tire. And he did this without complaining, singing and shouting at the top of his voice, as oncoming bikers watched amused. This was to me evidence of the fact that something on Rohtang had changed us the moment we decided that we wanted to take away only the positive from an experience, and in that doing, translate a negative event into a positive one. I use the word ‘translate’ there because translation involves interpretation, and interpretation of events is many times a matter of choice and perspective. It is a matter of attitude.
Near the village of Gramphu, in a picturesque and expansive landing on the other side of Rohtang, filled with multi-colored prayer flags and tiny Buddhist Chorten, we found a mechanic. He spent thirty minutes trying to fix the tire before Moham and I realized he didn’t know what he was doing. So we sent him away and used his tools to fix it ourselves. 3 and Sumanth returned from a nearby tea stall and laughed before joining us. As we worked, I looked around and noticed again the flags tied to strings, fluttering in the breeze, filled with prayers in an ancient language. The script of the language is by itself beautiful, and adds to the mystery of the words. Buddhists believe that writing prayers and leaving them out in the elements this way allows the prayers to be carried by the wind to the listening gods. The string of prayer-flags - locally called ‘lungta’ - and the white-washed stupas immediately arrested my attention. We were now in the territory of Buddha.
Everywhere I could see signs of our arrival into this new land. The sky was also somehow different on the other side of Rohtang – it was a slightly deeper shade of blue, and we watched it deepen as we approached Leh and Khardung-La.
A few kilometers further, at the end of the descent from Rohtang, we reached Khoksar, where we stopped again at a proper mechanic shop for an oil check and an overall. While the mechanic got busy with our bikes, we sat down and watched a bunch of kids, perhaps six to eight years of age, all with shaven heads, playing football in orange robes. We laughed as their play became more and more robust, with pockets of friendly tussles turning into all out wrestling matches, as the other kids swarmed around and cheered in strange tongues. I remember mentioning to 3 that it must be a Sunday and so the kids were out playing football instead of being at school, and then 3 and I sat there for a few minutes trying to work out what day it was, until we finally gathered that it was Wednesday.
I wandered off searching for the river to refill our water bottles, and as I was returning, I found what to my eyes looked suspiciously like a human jaw bone, half buried in the sandy banks. I recoiled a little, and rushed back to tell the gang. We all trooped back to the river and were tense until Moham declared the bone was from a cow or an ox and not human.
We are now entering arid zones that lie in the rain-shadow. The thick, lush greenery is left behind on the Manali-side of Rohtang, and what little vegetation we see on this side is due to the Chandra River. The greenery becomes ever sparser as we approach the five thousand meter mark. From Khoksar onwards the skies change, the mountains change and the trees change. We slowly enter the highest, cold-desert in the world. The locals here say that Ladakh is the only place in the world where you can get a sun-stroke and a frost-bite at the same time. The altitude causes freezing temperatures at night, and during the day sun beats down cloudlessly. The mountains are dry and stony and rough, like sandstone daggers with jagged peaks. The trees are short and scrubby, and barely survive above the tree line. Wherever the river flows, though, a trail of brilliant greenery follows, surrounded by an arid area of grey and dust and sand. The contrast of this pattern of green and sand repeats across the desert land, and was clearly visible each time we climbed a mountain, or took a turn on a switchback.
From Khoksar it’s a pleasant ride through tiny villages and hamlets, and lonely bridges and river- crossings. The river is a good companion to have at these times. Her gurgling laughter and the constant swish of her flow induces an unconscious meditation. Near Sissu we spotted our very first snow-capped mountains. We stopped for a short break to commemorate, craning our necks and staring into the sky to look at the way the ice glinted in the sun. From Sissu we could also see a spectacular waterfall that separates from a ridge on the other side of the river and falls for what feels like a long time. The waterfall is large and long, the distance between us and the fall is far, and so an effect is created where you feel the water is actually falling up, in reverse.
The road from Sissu takes us to Tandi, a village at the confluence of two rivers – the Chandra and the Bhaga. From here the now united river flows east as the Chandrabhaga River, and becomes the Chenab in Punjab. Tandi is an important destination for the Ladakh biker – it has the only gas station between there and Leh – a distance of three hundred and eighty five kilometers. We filled our tanks with petrol and our bottles with the river water and, crossing the bridge over Bhaga, we started the ascent again.
Late in the afternoon, we reached Keylong. It was getting alarmingly cold for us, and we stopped there for an eager lunch and a long break. We also found an ATM here and took out cash for the next leg of the journey. We wouldn’t see another ATM until Leh.
Sitting outside a small but picturesque café in Keylong, we drank smoking coffee and watched the snow melt on distant mountains. To our right, a narrow road separated us from the deep gorge of a river beneath. Beyond the gorge, the mountains stood out in icy-blue and white, as proud as crystals. The contrast of the wet, dark tarmac, the green v
alley and the blue mountains embraced by white shapeless clouds was hypnotic and enchanting. It was raining, but the awning of the café sheltered us, and the pattering sound of rain on canvas and the slow pace of time in Keylong transported all of us to some rain-washed afternoon of the mind. The snow on some of the mountains was so thick, and the mountains so close together that we could see it had formed bridges of ice and snow and connected peak with peak. We really didn’t want to move, and contemplated for some time spending the night in Keylong. Here the mountains intrigued us, the river intrigued us, and we felt somehow much closer to nature. By now it was also clear that we wouldn’t reach Pang, and even Sarchu seemed a stretch. We finally decided to push ourselves to Darcha and rest there.
On the way to Darcha, we encountered streams and rivers, countless old and rickety metal bridges, villages and hamlets and places with names but no people and no houses (like Killingsarai), and places with no names but with a collection of ghostly barren barracks. Sometimes, the roads return to earth and run straight through a valley or a plain for miles, rising and falling with the breathing land. In the suddenly expanded vista, one is allowed to see the real vastness of this geography, of the territory of Ladakh. Suddenly the land becomes a brown-green ocean, and the tiny hills that slowly undulate become the waves, and it became easy for us to become lost at sea, but the roads rescue us.
By and by we reached another village, set in the foothills of a mountain rising straight and fast. It was more a collection of shops and huts and tents than a real village. At the mountain’s feet was the river, doing a complete one-eighty degree volte-face. The highway jogged along but was interrupted by the river, over which the army had constructed another bridge. Each bridge in Ladakh is given a name by the army, and I remember promising myself to remember all their names, but they have slipped from my memory now.
Parking the motorcycles at the side of the road, we ducked into a small, gloomy place. I hesitate to call it a restaurant – it was too small for a restaurant and too large for a tea shop, and it hung somewhere in the middle, dark and gloomy and nameless. Hunching under its low ceiling, we quickly found a place amidst the thick crowd of locals. What struck us immediately was that almost all of the men there were drinking Mountain Dew. And not from those personal glass bottles that is common in India but from those large plastic Mountain Dew bottles. With curiosity we watched them all drink; while strong whiffs of locally-brewed alcohol pointed us to the answers we sought. Ten minutes later we walked out, unable to breathe, and there we pieced together the answer.
A middle-aged man in a dirty, once-white turban was selling the bottles of Mountain Dew next door. All the bottles had the decidedly unwashed look of having been used too many times. In these bottles he filled, from a large black cylinder, cups of alcohol of questionable heritage. And the men formed a long queue, buying recycled Mountain Dew. We smiled as we witnessed the entire operation and we smiled when it struck us how entirely apt the name mountain dew was for this particular moonshine.
We crossed the bridge and the mountains took us again. We ascended quickly a few hairpin turns, and just as we gathered momentum, we turned around a sharp curve and slowed in surprise when we saw a crowd of people and vehicles blocking the road. But we couldn’t see what was causing this blockade and so 3 and I moved slowly forward. We came to a stop next to a gang of bikers from Maharashtra who waved at us. On the road in front of us, a barrage of enormous rocks had descended to block it completely. There had been a landslide, but thankfully no one was hurt. People from the Border Roads Organization had already arrived and were doing their best to clear the road for us. We chatted with the Maharashtra group about their route - the usual Ladakh discussion - and exchanged route plans and details. Then we walked to the edge of the road and saw with wonder the huge rocks tumbling down and crashing against the mountain side as the BRO pushed them over the brink. Some boulders were as large as a car. To watch them fall is a vertigo-inducing realization of gravity and its deadly effects.
As soon as the landslide cleared, we raced the Maharashtra gang for a few kilometers until they lost us or we lost them, both of which are easy in that wilderness. We cut through switchback after switchback in our final descent towards Jispa and that evening we saw a beautiful sight. To our right we could see a village down below in the depths of the valley, sunlight barely reaching it. The village stood out like a colorful patchwork carpet amidst the thick grey stone walls of the valley. Rectangular sections of neatly divided fields filled the land with green. The rushing river that fed the fields filled the land with a crystal shade of blue. Small, wooden houses and their roofs of chalk-blue and chalk- grey filled it with life. It was a neat little village, with thin, un-extravagant roads all at right angles to each other, all leading to the river. A temple stood near the river, white-washed and well used. And we were perched, like eagles high in the sky, seemingly not human enough to live in splendidness like that. I contemplated spending a year in that village, just waking up in the mornings and swimming in the river, and writing. Can you imagine – I asked myself - what the stars must look like at night from the depths of that village?
Those high roads descended into Jispa, still maintaining a surprisingly smooth and dark tarmac. At a distance we saw a large sign indicating we had reached the Jispa Tent Camp, where we immediately decided to spend the night. Exiting the highway and entering the camp, we were greeted by a laughing stream that separates the entrance from the rest of the camp. The stream has been skillfully channeled from the nearby river and forms many erratic tributaries throughout the camping area, gurgling its way among the tents. We parked the bikes into a neat corner and trooped to the reception area to ask for a place to stay. We were given a huge tent for the four of us for eight hundred rupees – money well spent.
Our tent opened right onto the spirited river. It cut through the camp, frothing white with a happy fury and silencing the camp with its incessant hiss. Behind it were three grey mountains, one behind the other, each changing into a different shade of grey as the sun went down opposite to them. Following the line of the river into the distance, we saw the village and the lights of Jispa come to life slowly with the approaching night.
As soon as the sun set behind the mountains, the night did not give dusk any chance to hold court. It descended rapidly, and submerged the camp in total blackness. Yellow lights inside each canvas tent came on, and suddenly it was as if the camp was being lit by enormous, magnificent fireflies. The thick skin of the tent dulled the yellow bulbs, and the light that was thrown around was blunted and dimmed. And those lights were not enough to light up the entire camp, which is as it should be. We walked along the dark bank of the river, watching the dwindling lights of Jispa slowly fade, far from the camp. The town was going to sleep. The people inside the tents also fell asleep with time and one by one the fireflies extinguished from within.
We ate our dinner in the community tent, sharing our meal with the other travelers there. The night was cold, but the mountains protected us from the worst of it. Returning from dinner, we walked along with the river, unable to see it in the darkness, but listening to it. To experience a natural phenomenon with a different sense from time to time; to listen to the river instead of watching it, to get wet in the rain instead of just listening to it - gives you a strange calm and a deep sensation – the sensation of experiencing or recognizing, for the briefest of seconds, things that tend toward the eternal. When we turned away from the river we saw that the camp was plunged in silence and in darkness. All the firefly-tents were asleep now; but our tent still shone from within, and guided us home.
*
Xession: Eye and ‘I’