It's been a while, but I'm back to civilization, with all fingers and toes accounted for. I'm going to try to get the past few months in the Himalayas up on the blog over the next week or so in several sections.
The journey to get to the mountains was a pilgrimage in its own right. After 24 hours on planes, we took a 12 hour bus ride, driven by a highly-skilled psychopath we'd later dub “the Magic Man” for his stunning ability to pilot an awfully large automobile at alarming but impressive speeds through tight mountain roads and over-inhabited village streets. Highway travel in India was thrilling as always: the brightly colored buses passing by; the on-road menageries of monkeys, donkeys, dogs and sacred cows; and the sense that vehicle size and driver courage/aggression/recklessness trump supposed traffic laws. Being well endowed in both vehicle size and these requisite qualities, riding with the Magic Man was like watching an avalanche from too close: simultaneously trying to appreciate power and grace while being viscerally afraid for lifeforms, both your own and others in your path. Most people chose to avoid this emotional vs. intellectual incongruity by popping Dramamine (1) and passing out for most of the jolting ride.After the road petered out to smaller than the width of the bus, we switched to jeeps. This was like an amusement park ride, with the jeeps in tight caravan careening at high speed through driving rain and kicking gravel off the road and down truly terrifying precipices.
We arrived at Song, the trailhead town, in the same downpour, shouldered our packs and headed 1,000 feet up a continuously vertical trail to the rest house. I spent the night dehydrated - a rookie move - with nausea and a splitting headache. It was a tough night, and I awoke in the morning to more rain and a stray dog sniffing my sleeping bag. Welcome to India.
Your man in the monsoon,Jay
Notes:
1 A strong anti-motion sickness drug with the (in this case fortunate) side effect of drowsiness
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