A Moveable Feast (23 page)

And in one of my most foolish moments on this earth, I declined. I laugh at my innocence now, but the truth was I still felt loyal to my English boyfriend, who was probably on his way to Heathrow right at that very moment, waiting to greet me and clasp my hands in this exact same manner.

‘No, I’m afraid I can’t.’ I smiled apologetically.

He shrugged, his face falling with sadness. ‘Well, goodbye then, I guess …’

‘Goodbye!’ I shouted over my shoulder as I ran to catch up with my friends.

I’ve sipped sake under the cherry blossoms of Kyoto. I’ve drunk sangria in the sunshine of a Barcelona square. I’ve slugged cold beers on hot summer rooftops in Manhattan. But I will
always remember that glass of orange juice. And always regret that I didn’t give him ‘just one kiss’. Perhaps the only thing more delicious than the tangy pulp of that gifted potion would have been sinking into the sweetness of the prince’s lips.

Larry Habegger has been covering the world since his international travels began in the 1970s. As a freelance writer for thirty years and syndicated columnist since 1985, his work has appeared in many major newspapers and magazines, including the
Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Travel & Leisure
and
Outside
. In 1993 he founded the award-winning ‘Travelers’ Tales’ books with James and Tim O’Reilly; he is currently executive editor. He is also editor-in-chief of
Triporati.com
, lead blogger for Cleared for Takeoff – the Triporati Blog, and a founder of the Prose Doctors, an editors’ consortium of top editors for top writers (
www.prosedoctors.com
). He regularly teaches the craft of travel writing at workshops and writers’ conferences, and lives with his family on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.

The Sherpa woman glared down from above the unmarked trail junction where I stood, uncertain which way to go. Her black eyes stared through me as if I were a ghost.

‘Keni hinang Nang? Lam ga Nang?’
I asked in phrasebook Sherpa and Tibetan, gesturing towards one trail and then the
other. Then I tried Nepali:
‘Kun bato Nang?’
Finally, English: ‘Which way to Nang?’

Her look seemed full of some deeply rooted hostility that had finally found a place to rest. I had no idea if my attempts at the local languages and hand gestures were in any way comprehensible, but a shiver ran through me. She wasn’t going to tell me which trail went to Nang. She was silent as rock, so immobile that I wondered if she was deaf or mute.

Travelling without a guide, my friend Neil and I had ventured off the most popular trekking route and were heading up a side valley to Mount Everest. We hadn’t been concerned until now because the routes were clear and we knew we could get food along the way at the lodges or from locals happy to earn some money. But we were down to our last few scraps and we had a long way to go.

We shrugged, agreed on the lower trail, and went on our way. Despite the heavy pack on my back I couldn’t shake the chill that had settled upon me, and the longer we walked away from the woman, the more I wondered if the chill was as much from the strange encounter with her as the clinging fog that had crept up the canyon. I began to mull stories my Nepali friends had told me of evil spirits that preyed on vulnerable beings, and wondered if I was vulnerable, if I’d done something to bring this ill omen into our path. I walked on, following Neil, cold, hungry, uneasy.

The trail gradually descended. Fog drifted around us like a shifting shroud. The sound of the river below had grown from a faint backdrop to a constant growling companion. More than an hour later we stopped and ate our final biscuits. We’d seen no-one since our encounter with the Sherpani.

‘What did you make of that woman back there?’ I asked Neil.

‘Strange. Made me wonder if she even knew we were there.’

A puff of damp breeze penetrated my three layers of clothing. ‘I felt like she saw us all right, but wanted nothing to do with us.’

‘Could be,’ Neil said. ‘She probably has a hundred trekkers a day asking directions.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said, but it felt deeper than that.

A moment later I struggled to rise, hardly noticing that Neil was already making his way down the trail. One foot in front of the other, I reminded myself, my mantra for trekking in Nepal. The fog clung to the trees, licking with an icy tongue, deepening my chill.

Soon we could see the river at the bottom of the chasm, a churning grey torrent, stripping the land and sweeping glacier dust from the flanks of Everest. Still we had seen no-one, nor any sign of human habitation except the trail that drew us silently on.

Abruptly, the trail broke off at the site of an enormous gash in the canyon, a landslide that had taken half a mountain with it. Neil was staring grimly at the near-vertical slope we had to cross when I caught up with him. My legs felt like lead, and by the look of things we had no choice but to turn back. My heart sank. We knew we’d find no food or shelter by going back. We’d walked too far and couldn’t possibly climb out of the canyon before dark. But how could we proceed?

Neil surprised me by saying he thought we could make it across. ‘Look, the hillside is soft, we can plant our feet. Take it slow and easy, and we’ll make it.’

With a heavy pack to balance, I didn’t see how I could, but I was too tired to dissent. One slip would mean a certain, fast slide down at least a hundred feet to the boulders and that roiling current. But we had little choice, and Neil set out.

He dug in his boot, then planted the next one in a timid step, then another, and another until he was moving slowly across the slide, leaving bootprints for me to follow.

Unsteadily, I took a step, then another. Pebbles dislodged and sluiced down the hillside to the rocks below, their sounds absorbed by the roar of the river. The weight of the pack bore
down and I tried to keep it from shifting, certain that one misstep would send me tumbling along the same path as those pebbles. I glanced up to see Neil halfway across, fifty feet from me, and that gave me hope. I concentrated, wobbled once when my pack shifted, but caught myself with a flash of adrenalin. Sweat dripped from my brow, and my shoulders ached with the pressure from the pack. The delirium of the thin air made my head swim. But I kept moving, and an eternity later I looked up to see Neil standing on firm ground at the end of the slide, only twenty feet away.

A few more steps and I was across as well. I shed my pack and collapsed the instant I touched solid ground. I needed many minutes to regain my composure. Sweat soaked my whole body, stealing what little warmth I had. Down in this cold canyon, daylight was fading and we had to keep going to find shelter.

Neil urged me up and we set off again. I was woozy now, not sure why we were plodding along this way, even where we were and why. I’d spent enough time in the wilderness to know that the bony grip of hypothermia was latching onto me, and I tried to calm myself. Need food. Warmth. Rest.

Then Neil shouted. He’d spotted huts ahead. Two, three, perhaps a village, but certainly food and shelter. He rushed on and I kept up my mantra, step-by-step. When I arrived at the first stone hut, Neil’s sullen look told me everything I needed to know. The place was deserted. Again I collapsed, this time against a cold stone wall, too tired to contemplate moving.

But then Neil shouted again. The third hut was open, we could get out of the fog. I dragged myself up and stumbled the few feet to the hut, where I dropped everything in a heap. Dim light edged in through tiny windows, but the place was dry, full of straw, and not nearly as cold as outside. We finished off our water, climbed into our sleeping bags, and lay down for the long wait till morning.

Sleeping at high altitude is never easy, and I spent hours shivering until my body generated enough heat to allow the
down bag to warm me up. At some point I was aware that I wasn’t freezing any more, and then I slept.

After some hours I woke to faint light that suggested a new day. My stomach ached, but not from the intestinal problems that afflict most trekkers in Nepal. I needed food.

Our maps revealed that we should have been much higher than we were, and we realised we must have taken the wrong trail and ended up in a summer herders’ camp, abandoned now for the approaching winter. Would that mean that the villages ahead would be deserted as well? We needed to climb out of the canyon and keep going in the faith that we’d find the main trail, and someone still there who would sell us food.

With no other option, we began bushwhacking up the hillside. Eventually we found a trail that seemed to be leading us up, and as we trudged along, the track became clearer. Better yet, high above, the first rays of sunshine graced the hillside. Blue sky emerged where we’d seen only fog the day before.

We climbed out of the forest and steadily up. I kept looking ahead, hoping to see where the path would flatten out on the main trail. Then suddenly I thought I saw someone sitting on the rocks high above. With every step I looked again, trying to convince myself that yes, it was a person, but fearing the shattering disappointment if it turned out to be just a trick of the light. The sun was shining on it but it remained immobile, a gargoyle staring out into the canyon. We climbed, mule-like, and with every step what I saw continued to look like a person.

And then it moved. Yes! It was a man, resting on a stone wall in the glorious sunshine, watching our slow progress with amusement, anger, surprise, indifference? Who cared? He was salvation.

When we reached him, the old man slid off the wall as nimbly as a cat. Before we could speak he motioned for us to follow him, gesturing at his mouth and then to us to ask if we were hungry.
We didn’t need to answer. We followed him through the sunshine to his stone hut ablaze with morning light.

He offered us seats on a bench covered with a Tibetan carpet. A fire burned in his earthen stove, sending wafts of smoke curling to the ceiling and out the thatched roof. Sunlight streamed through the window and threw halos around him that seemed to refract into rainbows. Deep lines carved his face into a mask of toil, but tranquillity shone in his eyes.

In a tin basin he washed his hands over and over, taking several minutes as if in a ritual cleansing, then he poured water into a black pot and put it on the stove. After that he took a bag of potatoes off the wall and gently removed them and put them on a tin plate. With a small brush he carefully scrubbed every speck of dirt off each potato, one by one, until they gleamed. The pile of potatoes glowing in the sunlight, and the care with which he handled this food, made me feel we were in a sanctified presence.

I watched every move he made, my hunger forgotten, marvelling at the precision with which he cleaned the cups into which he would pour our tea, the delicacy of his actions when slicing the potatoes, the patient care he took to polish every spoon and fork and plate before he placed them, just so, before us. Here was a man who treated hospitality – the preparation of a simple meal, the sharing of sustenance with guests – as a higher calling.

We sat for an hour or more in that warm hut, watching this patient yak herder prepare a simple dish of fried potatoes. When I took the first sip of tea, when I inhaled the first scent of those potatoes, when I tasted the first nibble of that life-saving meal, I discovered the true meaning of gratitude.

The sun beamed straight into the canyon when we finally rose to leave. Belly full, energy restored, I hoisted my pack to continue along the trail. And then I remembered the woman who had
caused me so much anxiety the day before. She was our messenger as well as our nemesis, setting up our encounter with this man who’d taught me a lesson in kindness and the importance of every detail. He was the yang to her yin, the two of them the whole we all seek, the crazy mad jumble that is our humanity.

We all have our own doses of light and dark, and that thought, along with the memory of those simple but exquisite potatoes, left me feeling lighter than I had in days as we headed up the trail towards Everest.

Sean McLachlan is a freelance writer specialising in travel and history. He is the author of numerous books and regularly blogs at
www.gadling.com
. He has visited more than thirty countries, his favourites being India and Ethiopia, which never cease to amaze him. ‘Chai, Chillum and Chapati’ is adapted from his unpublished book,
The River Outside the Water: Wandering Through Kumbh Mela, India’s Greatest Pilgrimage
. Sean divides his time between Spain, England and Missouri. You can learn more about him at
midlistwriter.blogspot.com
, where he talks about life as a prolific yet unknown writer, and his personal/travel blog,
grizzledoldtraveler.blogspot.com
.

I and a million others have been walking since dawn. Walking to the Sangam, the confluence of the Yamuna and Ganges Rivers in northern India. Walking to immortality.

The crowd is immense yet unhurried. As far as I can see on the highway ahead and behind me is a vast, solid mass of pilgrims
from all parts of India, converging here for this special time at this special place.

It is time for Kumbh Mela, when for the month of Magha the nectar of immortality flows through the Sangam, as it did when the earth was young. The planets are in an alignment seen only once every 144 years, making this the holiest pilgrimage India has seen since 1857.

North of the Sangam lies the broad sandy flood plain of the Ganges. During the monsoon the area is submerged, but now, in January of 2001, we’re in the middle of the dry season and the Ganges has withered to a trickle. Most of the riverbed is dry, and it’s here that the
mela
administration has built the main camp. Throughout the festival the pilgrims pray, eat and sleep within the sacred space of India’s holiest river.

The government estimates seventy million people will wash away their sins by bathing in the Sangam. An estimated ten million will stay for the entire month of Magha to gain the same merits as an entire life lived as a Brahmin. It will be the largest gathering in recorded history.

But I’m not there yet. I’m in a different river, a river of people moving steadily towards the camp along a road lined with palm trees. The pace is unhurried, yet as relentless as the Ganges itself. I have not eaten breakfast and as I walk, the greasy tang of frying food wafts through the air to tempt me. To the left opens up a tamped dirt yard. Dozens of clay ovens give off the fragrance of chapatis and samosas, pulling in hungry pilgrims like a magnet. They crowd around ovens manned by sweating families serving up a hundred meals a minute, a desperate stirring, kneading, frying and stoking factory of food production. Money passes hands at a furious rate as customers scream for rice, bread, fried vegetables, while tiny child beggars pick through the lowing herd of adults, hands outstretched, little mouths watering, eyes
impossibly big on filthy faces, or fight half-wild dogs for the scraps from overflowing trash bins.

I shuffle forward with the rest until I’m in front. The flitting workers, smoothly flowing back and forth like parts of some finely oiled machine, look calm and relaxed. The only sign of their hurry is their utter lack of curiosity at a sunburned face grunting out an order in bad Hindi. They shove food into my hands and toss me change almost before I’ve paid. The crowd flows in front of me and squirts me out its back like some amoebae ejecting a microscopic piece of indigestible flotsam. I tumble away from the mass, avoiding the swarm of newcomers, and weave my way to the curry-smeared safety of a wooden table, a greasy island of stability in a sea of movement.

The other diners watch as I use a chapati to scoop up dhal from a little leaf bowl held together with toothpicks. Their eyes follow my hand as I reach for a thin clay
miti
cup of steaming chai. They crowd around me and the questions start. ‘Where are you from? ‘Hello, what country?’ ‘What is your job?’ ‘What is your religion?’

I answer these questions politely but in haste. The frenetic energy of this place has me wolfing down my meal, eager to reach the
mela.
I’ve flown halfway around the world to see this greatest of pilgrimages, and almost being there has me anxious to continue.

My fast-food meal eaten, I move back into the solid mass of people headed towards the
mela
camp. There’s no rushing or shoving; the frantic swirl around the food stalls is a lone eddy in a placid river of humanity. No-one cuts ahead or lags behind. We flow.

Up a hill and over into … something else.

Our view opens up on the long flat expanse of the Ganges riverbed and the
mela
grounds. Stretching below us is mile upon mile of tents, their dull brown canvas blending with the sand.
Here and there sprout the red, white and saffron pavilions of the great gurus and religious societies. The canvas spires of temporary temples rise above them. To the north the grey curve of a concrete overpass links one riverbank to another, and beyond that gleams the steel latticework of a railway bridge. In the distance are the slumbering bulks of the
yagna
pyramids, massive wicker constructions in which Brahmins are preparing a fire ritual as old as Hinduism itself.

Walking into the camp we enter a barren landscape. Featureless sand lies below an unchanging sky. I won’t see a cloud for a month. The hard light brightens colours and puts people and tents into sharp relief, like figures etched on stained glass. The Hindus couldn’t have picked a blanker canvas onto which to paint their picture of paradise.

I spot a sadhu, one of India’s wandering holy men. He’s no more than thirty, with hard muscles and rough skin from living outside, but the smooth belly hanging over his leopard-skin loincloth is evidence of a bit of luxury every now and then. His hair and beard are long and matted, dreadlocks reaching the small of his back.

‘Hello, sir, what country?’ he asks, fixing me with a bloodshot stare.

‘Canada.’

‘Your good name, sir?’ His words are slurred.

‘Sean. What’s yours?’

‘I am Dharamgiri. Come with me. We’ll have chai.’

Dharamgiri is from the Juna Akhara, a Shiva-worshipping sect known for its large number of Naga Babas, warrior-saints who practise swordsmanship and go without clothes, dressed only in a fine layer of dust to protect them from the elements. They have a reputation for violent and erratic behaviour due to their frequent use of hashish. Dharamgiri doesn’t look threatening, but it’s obvious he’s very, very stoned.

Dharamgiri leads me through the turreted gate of the Juna camp and down an alley hemmed by cloth barriers stretched between poles. Each cloth marks a compound of sadhus. They can be taken down when the sadhus want visitors, or left up when they wish to be alone. At Dharamgiri’s compound the cloth is down. A little crowd of onlookers clusters in the alley, looking inside. Nobody dares cross the threshold. Dharamgiri ignores them as he pushes through. We remove our shoes and enter a small patch of sand ten feet to a side, enclosed by a cloth fence on which hang posters of the gods. Shiva meditates on a mountaintop, his skin blue from the funeral ashes with which he smears himself, the perfect sadhu. Krishna frolics with the milkmaids. Durga, the mother goddess, rides her tiger and brandishes weapons and objects of power in her sixteen hands. A tent takes up most of the space, its dark recesses hiding the slumbering forms of half a dozen sadhus. A young initiate rubs sleepy eyes and gazes at me with mild curiosity before turning over.

In front of the tent stands the hearth, a clay-lined square pit dug in alignment with the four directions. A heap of coals is always kept smouldering. An iron trident, the emblem of Shiva, stands with its shaft driven into the coals, its tines decorated with a garland of yellow flowers.

Two sadhus squat naked in the sand, their bodies whitened with ash. One is old, with deeply creased skin and a caved-in chest with the sagging, deflated breasts of a fat man gone thin. His ribs stick out like the bars of a cage. Dreadlocks are coiled into a bun on top of his head. He sucks on a chillum, a straight hash pipe. He shoots out the smoke in a series of wheezy hacks and hands it to his companion, a younger man with lean, hard limbs. The younger sadhu takes the chillum and sucks greedily, his corded neck muscles flattening and giving him a lizardy look.

Dharamgiri sits down by the fire and motions for me to sit next to him. The crowd outside grows, everyone wanting to see what would become a common scene at Kumbh Mela, the sadhu and his foreign guest. Dharamgiri calls out a name, and the sleepy-eyed initiate pops his head out of the tent.

‘Get chai,’ Dharamgiri orders.

The boy, his saffron robe looking out of place among so many bare bodies, emerges carrying a steel pot, sets it by my host and squats nearby, eyeing me with curiosity.

Dharamgiri takes the lid off the pot and pulls out a plastic satchel of milk, freshly bought from one of the camp’s government dispensaries. Other bags follow and are arranged neatly beside him. He slices the packet with a blackened fingernail and holds it steady as milk burbles into the pot. Then he opens another bag and fishes out some ground ginger and cardamom, sprinkling them into the milk. A handful of black tea and heaps of sugar follow.

‘Om Shiva,’ the sadhu mutters as he blows the grey ashes from the coals. The older sadhu runs his hands through the ashes and rubs the grit along his arms and face. Dharamgiri continues blowing, and with each puff the coals redden and pulse like beating hearts. Heat shimmers between us. I see the wavering image of the old sadhu staring at me, his ash-whitened skin blending with the steam. His bloodshot eyes look like volcanoes on the moon.

Nobody speaks. We don’t need to. It’s a very Eastern trait, one I’ve seen from the deserts of Syria to the foothills of the Himalayas. Sit and absorb the feel of your company. Share a meal or some tea. Think of what you want to ask, then ask. If you don’t share a language, you can always just sit and eat. Some of the best conversations don’t require words.

Dharamgiri places the covered pot on top of the coals, grinding it a bit to set it in place. Moving into the lotus position, he inhales
deeply through flaring nostrils. His eyes close. The old sadhu passes the chillum to his skinny friend, skipping the initiate. A tracery of smoke curls into the air.

I decide to join Dharamgiri. I close my eyes and drop my thoughts, slow my breathing and listen. Relax. Everyone is staring at me, but they’ve been doing that ever since I got to India, so it makes no difference. I hear the murmur of the pilgrims behind me. Across from me there’s a slight crackle of the jute mat as the initiate shifts position. The coals of the campfire hiss and pop. There’s a snap as one cracks and the pot settles with an almost silent rasp. The skinny sadhu is smoking again. The crackle of the burning hash and tobacco and the whistle of his breath through the tube sound loud in the enclosure.

I can’t hear anything beyond what’s happening here. The giant campground might as well not exist. I can’t hear the people thronging the roads, or the honks of vehicles as they trundle along the main streets. I can’t even hear the PA system, which gives announcements in a nonstop drone audible everywhere but here. The sadhus have created a
mela
hidden within the larger
mela,
an integral part of the festival but aloof from it.

A long, slow exhalation from my right tells me Dharamgiri is coming out of his trance state. I haven’t gotten very deep in just a few minutes of meditation, but I feel more relaxed and more in tune with my new companions. I open my eyes. The two sadhus have finished the chillum. The old man sits with his eyes shut, meditating. The younger one and the initiate watch me. I look at Dharamgiri. He nods serenely, then turns to the staring crowd, grunts and waves his arm dismissively. They melt away like water.

The receding pilgrims part for a spry old sadhu clad only in a saffron loincloth. His dreadlocks are wrapped into a large bun, a single loose coil curving over his shoulder like a python.
Expressive eyes gaze forth from a broad face. He carries an old wallet of faded and cracked leather held together with duct tape.

Dharamgiri smiles.

‘Come, sit down, we’re making chai,’ he says. He turns to me and adds, ‘This is Mauni Baba. He hasn’t spoken in twenty years.’

Mauni Baba beams me a grin that shows a row of yellow and uneven teeth. The deep creases on his face fold in on themselves like ripples on a pond. He looks like a yogic Cheshire cat. It’s the expression of someone who has learned to speak without words. It’s entirely open, welcoming, and makes me feel more at home than the chai or the chillum.

He sits at Dharamgiri’s right hand and scrutinises me with a mixture of curiosity and unabashed delight. When you’re the object of such unrestrained wonder, there’s nothing to do but sit and smile back. After a few minutes of studying each other, he opens his wallet stuffed to bursting with bits of paper, stamps, photos, old envelopes, creased and faded postcards, even a boarding pass from a Swiss Air flight from 1989. Mauni Baba picks through the mess and pulls out a tiny map of the world printed in English. He hands it to me, points at my chest and then at the map. I point at Canada.

‘You can ask him questions,’ Dharamgiri says. ‘He knows English.’

‘How did you learn English?’ I ask.

Mauni Baba elaborately pantomimes being hunched over a desk, typing furiously at an invisible typewriter, brow furrowed in intense concentration. Then he sits up and leafs through what can only be a newspaper, reading the imaginary lines with studied interest.

‘He was a journalist?’

‘Yes, eleven years in Delhi.’

‘Why did you leave?’ I ask.

Mauni Baba sits up in the lotus position, spine straight and eyes lightly closed. His features soften into such profound relaxation that I wonder if he’s slipping into a trance, but a moment later he opens his searchlight eyes and places a finger on his abdomen. He raises his hand up his chest, touching all the chakra points up to the centre of his forehead, where he mimes the opening of his third eye by spreading out his fingers like a flower petal, eyes widening in wonder. He inhales sharply and seems to grow. He beats his fist against his chest. Power. Indicating the crowd that has once again clogged the alley, he thrusts his long arm out, bony fingers spread wide as if grasping, and pulls it towards himself. He turns and mimes pulling in people from all around, drawing a large circle in the air around him. Then he cocks his head and scowls at the crowd, brushing them away with a dismissive gesture one would use with a misbehaving child. The crowd breaks up even faster than it did for Dharamgiri. He turns to me and smiles triumphantly.