The Anatomy of Journey

We made it back to Half-Moon beach late in the afternoon. We ordered lunch quickly, and plunged into the ocean to escape the heat. About thirty minutes into our swim, Sahil, the owner of the resort, hollered about lunch being ready. I argued with the guys all the way to the tables.

  ‘We will never go to Ladakh without a semblance of a plan.’

  ‘Dude, you are already on a road trip! You are walking on a beach, with blue waves and blue skies,’ 3 said, gesturing with exasperation at the sun and sea.

  ‘I am not not-enjoying the present, bub. I am just saying we’re all here; it’s as good a time as any to talk, really talk, about going to Ladakh in twenty-eleven. I don’t want another year of empty discussions. How about we just begin by deciding the date? Just the date! All of us are here; let’s find a month that works for everyone,’ I said, gesturing wildly in equal exasperation.

  ‘Yeah, that’s a start. Let’s do that at the table.’

  When we sat down at the table, lunch arrived piping hot. Sahil served three different dishes made from fish he had caught that morning, prawns marinated in some kind of white sauce, chicken, roti and rice, and jugs full of cold, fresh orange juice. As we ate, I spoke to Suhas and Manoj about their plans for the year and what month could they set aside for the trip to Ladakh.

  Suhas, Manoj, 3, and I have been friends since our school days. I wasn’t part of their group back then, having arrived in Mysore in the last year of High School. But they had been fast friends almost all their lives, having been born and brought up in Mysore. Even though we knew each other since High School, I had lost touch with them, until one, fateful day, I ran into Manoj and 3 near ThoughtFunction. We’ve been close since.

  ‘I am free in March,’ Manoj said.

  ‘I don’t think we can do it in March. The Manali-Leh highway is closed from October to May due to heavy snowfall. So March is out of the question. We have to do it once the roads open.’

  ‘How would you know if the roads are open?’ 3 asked, biting into a piece of chicken. ‘There is a website for that.’

  ‘And when is the highway open?’

  ‘Around May.’

  ‘How long is it open?’

  ‘Usually from May to September.’

  ‘When can you do it?’ Suhas asked me.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that - I have the final semester exams in the first week of July. I am free any time after. I think we should start from Bangalore around July 15th. For now the plan is for it to be a fifteen-day trip. I’ll show you the chart I’ve made when we get back home.’

  ‘What chart?’

  ‘It’s an itinerary – a breakdown of where we should be on a given day along the highway. We have a lot of ground to cover – Delhi to Chandigarh to Manali to Leh is a distance of over eleven hundred kilometers. So a little bit of planning is needed, guys. Another reason why I insist on deciding the date is so that we can book our flight tickets in advance.’

  ‘Flight to Delhi?’ 3 asked.

  ‘No, from Delhi. I am thinking let’s reach Delhi by train with the bikes, finish the trip, load up the bikes on a train heading home, and return by flight. We will reach two days before our bikes arrive, so we can pick them up from the Railway station when we can.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ 3 said, ‘who is ready for July 15th?’ We all raised our hands.

  After the long and lazy lunch, we walked down to the beach languidly. Sitting in the warm sand, we stopped speaking in the dying glow of the sun while 3 rolled a joint. We smoked it slowly, enjoying the rush of it as things began to slow down all around us. I don’t remember standing and I don’t remember walking down to the sea. But I remember sinking into her, eyes level with the water, bubbles forming, bursting and hissing all around me, and a wooden boat looming suddenly wide and large, her hull painted green with a strip of white running around the middle. I could see each chipped grain of wood where the white paint hadn’t entered. The clouds soared from blue sea to blue sky, their edges etched in silver and in the orange and pink of the diminishing sun. And as the sun sank to kiss the water near the horizon, it shattered into a billion shards of diamond and gold and spread upon the ocean.