All the Roadrunning

I know it has been a while. Plans changed and suddenly we found ourselves in the remote Himalayan village of Kalpa instead of the busy Punjabi captial city of Amritsar. Here´s what I wanted to say about a week ago…

Tonight I write from the village of Kalpa, located in the Kinnaur Valley of the Himalayas at a height of 9000 feet above sea level. I cannot say that I am disappointed with our decision to travel here. How can we complain? The above photo on the left was taken ten minutes after our arrival this evening, while sitting on the toilet in my bathroom. There is an even better view of the 19000 foot Mount Kinnaur-Kailash from my balcony, but this just might be the best bathroom view on the planet.

We had spent three days in Rishikesh last week, passing our time with dips in the frigid waters of the holy Ganges River, meeting a holy man who had renounced the material world after losing his wife and five sons in the tsunami, eating apple strudel and brown bread at the German Bakery, participating in the ritual of releasing small leaf baskets full of beautiful flowers into the river at sunset and waking up at 5am every morning to dozens of monkeys jumping on the tin roof of our guest house as they made their way from the forest into town.

On our final day we treated ourselves to one hour ayurvedic massages, in which the male masseuse seemed to particularly enjoy massaging my buttocks, spending what seemed like thirty minutes on that specific part of my body.

When we left Rishikesh we had absolutely no way of envisioning the thirty-six hour expedition that would follow. We traveled in four different buses; were delayed due to one busted engine, one flat tire and one landslide; spent a night in a room with the most foul smelling, nausea-inducing blankets; drank tea with a village judge; endured a temperature change from 100 to 50 degrees and an altitude change of 8700 feet; were forced to hitch hike and had time to eat only two meals.

The total distance traveled was a mere 273 miles, but it had to pieced together from town to town. In this aspect we were extraordinarily lucky, finding bus connections almost immediately upon arrival into every town. This further proved the undeniable fact that in India, you can get from anywhere to anywhere else at anytime, no matter what the geographical relationship between your origin and destination nor the time of day or night. Here are the segments of our trip into the mountains:

Rishikesh to Dehra Dun – 8am – 9:30am – distance of 22 miles – Easy ride, no complaints.

Dehra Dun to Chandigarh – 10am – 3:00pm – 78 miles – Hot, dusty, crowded and painful while sitting on an impossibly hard bench directly over the rear tires.

Chandigarh to Shimla – 3pm – 7:00pm – 48 miles – Incredible air-conditioned deluxe bus complete with Hindi movies, free bottles of water and complimentary ´sick bags´ for every passenger! Perfect for the slow meandering up the Himalayan foothills.

Shimla to Rekong Peo – 8am – 6pm – 120 miles – Although the official distance was 120 miles, the total distance on this leg was probably closer to 140 miles when one includes the distance traveled in reverse. As our standing room-only bus would zoom around blind corners in the ten foot wide semi-paved road chiseled out of the mighty Himalayas, we often met another bus or a truck coming in the opposite direction. Both vehicles would slam on their brakes and blast their horns, windshields ending up inches from each other, narrowly avoiding a head on collision. The mix of tribes people and Tibetan villagers (and of course the two of us!) would gasp as we would barely avoid, yet again, tumbling over the sheer cliff edge directly next to us and dropping thousands of feet to the valley floor. Sometimes our driver won the standoff and sometimes he lost, having to reverse a great distance until the other vehicle could pass. On one occasion our puny driver found himself in a fist fight with another driver in the middle of the road. He somehow emerged victorious despite his scrawny frame, forcing the other bus to reverse.

The bus desperately hugged the mountainsides, climbing and winding over mountain passes and descending into perfectly inspiring valleys at dizzying speeds, as tribal villages appeared in the most impossible locations. Huts and dwellings were dug into the sides of the mountains high above with no roads to reach them and no other signs of civilization in sight. A trip to the closest market would surely involve a multiple day hike. I would not want to be the person to eat the last apple or spill the milk on the floor.

When the first glimpse of the 12,000 – 18,000 foot range of Kinnaur-Kailash appeared on the horizon, the song ¨All the Roadrunning¨ coincidentally played on the mp3 player. It is the song by Mark Knoppfler and Emmylou Harris, the song that inspired this blog. And there I sat, 33 hours into the adventure, with my rear end destroyed from repeatedly bouncing up and down onto the thin plywood seat, my face covered in a thick layer of dust, my stomach furiously grumbling and my knees unable to straighten. I could not be happier as my eyes remained glued to the mind-numbing scenery on what is perhaps the most awe-inspiring bus journey in the world.

It is the heart of the great Himalayas, a magical but daunting land considered inhabitable only to the tribes people who have remained here for centuries. Traveling into this part of India is one of those experiences that cannot be understood without living through it yourself, as although painful and dangerous to reach, life-changing rewards await any traveler who chooses to enter this isolated region.

Rekong Peo to Kalpa – 6:30pm – 7pm – 5 miles – As the buses along this short route had finished operating for the day, we had to hitchhike to our final destination. However, the first car I flagged down turned out to be the Executive Magistrate of Kalpa, who not only drove us to his village, but also introduced us to his family, gave us a tour of his home and of the mini-court room located just off of his living room and kitchen.

And so that is how we ended up here.

But I must stop writing now, it is definitely time to sleep. My legs hurt. My shoulders hurt. My spine is twisted and my rear end has been bruised and beaten into mush. Although I know that the view and the pure silence and the fresh air will undoubtedly help heal the aches and pains, I will admit that the slightly uncomfortable buttocks massage in Rishikesh, would be a most welcome therapy tonight.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 5:42 am and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.