Not my expression, but one that I had the pleasure of finding appropriate on a number of occasions. I was out for a ride in the late afternoon one glorious wet season day. It had rained earlier, but now the air was clear and fresh, and the earth was humming with a warm vibrancy. Finding a small road that led up the mountain through orchards and forest, I decided to see where it led. Five bumpy kilometres later the road abruptly came to an end at a stand of tall Deodar. I killed the motor, thinking I would have a quiet moment in this idyllic place as the sun was preparing to set. Ha! I should have known better… there are very few places one can have a quiet moment in India, unless you’re prepared to trek to high mountains… and even there shepherds have a tendency to pop out of nowhere. But here I was surrounded by magnificent forest glowing in the evening light… and a quickly growing band of kids. I quickly realised I had two choices… resist (futile) or capitulate. As it turned out, the kids led me to a large tent where a group of women were sorting and packing apples that had been picked that day. I was invited in and made to sit down, given an apple to eat and we all smiled at each other, as our only commonly understood means of communication. I have to admit, I did feel a bit special being subjected to smiles from the six beautiful young mountain women all sitting in a pile of apples and giggling. The spell didn’t last long though, as we were soon joined by the local men, curious to see what a honky like me was doing up in their remote mountain forest. Everyone was friendly, just curious.I met two brothers, one of whom had managed to reduce the size of his big toe in a wood-chopping incident. I saw him fiddling with it, so I went over and had a look. Using basic English and gesticulations, he showed me how he had neatly split it in half using a weapon that was a cross between a sickle and a block-splitter. Being an open wound that he was happily trudging about in the mud with, I decided to return the next day with my trusty first aid kit.
The next day I awoke to a strange and ominous morning with the threat of impending rain looming large. Having promised to return, however, I was determined to make the rough ascent and meet the happy brothers. Feeling a sense of unusual foreboding, I rode up through clouds of flies (reminding me darkly of flies of death) keeping my lips firmly clenched. Smiling at a passing maiden on this strange morning would leave me with a mouth full of bugs to pick out of my teeth. I rode on struggling to keep the bike on the road and my mind on the emptiness of intrinsic existence… (As sure-fire a method to deal with fear of croaking as any I’ve come across.)
My fears of impending doom were soon to be confirmed, when coming to a steep and rutted corner, I got caught in a deep groove and stalled the bike, falling to one side. This had the unfortunate effect of thrusting the exposed exhaust pipe into my exposed leg – making a substantial sizzle and pop.
Suddenly I felt relieved, as if this was what the foreboding had been warning me of. A bit of pipe burn was nothing compared to sliding off the edge of this strip of slimy mud posing as a road. After applying a generous slab of antiseptic cream, I proceeded up the track cautiously, and without further drama. It was at the top of the track, in the house of the two brothers where I was being generously fussed over, that I noticed my worst fears manifest outside the window. Huge black clouds were descending from the top of the valley. Visions of being caught in torrential rain while trying to descend the slippery route had me imagining rivers of greased snot… a journey I knew I would be happier not to make. Too late to run, the rain settled in and I relaxed in to the realization that I would simply have to wait it out. My hosts proved to be very hospitable, and very photogenic, so after patching up what was left of his toe, I occupied myself taking photos of the family.
It was some weeks later, on the last stage of my journey through Spiti, heading back towards Manali, that I again encountered roads that wanted to eject me from worldly existence. It wasn’t just me either, as the bike that was in danger of being bounced to death over “roads” that were a loose assortment of rubble and rock. A good indication of the quality of these roads was that wherever possible, drivers would veer off into the dirt on either side and go cross country in preference to the kidney-jolting, suspension-destroying river of rocks that made up the National Highway. I soon found that these alternative routes were a most delicious bit of fun, and had the bike spraying up dry dust as I tore across open fields in the tyre ruts of previous adventurers. Unfortunately these came to an end too soon as the valley narrowed in again and the road became the only bit of near horizontal ground in sight.
In fact, it was often that the scenery was so spectacular I would simply pull over and try to get the vast impression of this other worldly world to imprint deeply on my mind. I knew from previous experience that photos simply do not do justice to this wildly vertical landscape, and the incredible complexity of hues in the rock, so “mind-prints” were my snaps. If I were to try and describe the colours of this landscape, I would simply be stuck with “brown”, being pitifully inadequate notation for an array of visual stimulation that was subtle and complex, muted and extreme. In much the same way as the Australian desert changes constantly to the experienced eye, while following patterns of similarity, this high-altitude desert landscape of vertical brush strokes had my visual cortex in danger of overload trying to appreciate details of perception.
The other aspect of this trip that enhanced my experiential pleasure no end, was a dead battery. Not such a big deal in most situations, here it meant that if the bike stalled or if I wanted to stop for a chai in a small mountain town (one of life’s great pleasures!) I would have to flag down a passing vehicle to start again. (Even though she has a kick-start, some battery power is required to get the old girl sparking up.) I had rigged a cable to the battery terminals so that I could easily do this, once I found a vehicle willing to participate. This proved quite humorous (read “frustrating”) if I happened to stall the bike in the middle of “nowhere”… which was just about everywhere here. Fortunately, my luck was good and I managed to get jump-starts from village tractors, army trucks, tourist jeeps, Israeli’s on Enfields, in fact anything that would pass my way at the appropriate time. Waiting for this to happen would give me an opportunity to sooth my kidneys whilst warming my cerebral cortex on the Spitian grandeur.
I found out later (in Manali) that the reason for the dead battery was simple. I had set the contact points too close and the battery would not charge. Hmmm… not setting them close meant I wouldn’t have enough power to climb the two 4500m passes that were on my way. So it was a choice, either set the bike for power (about 3 horses) and have no battery OR have a battery that charges, and the power of a half-starved donkey. I love these bikes! As it turned out, I needed the power. Not only is it steep, but also high… meaning less oxygen for the old girl to puff on.
Flogging my way up repeated switchbacks leading up to Kunzom-la (one of the 4500m passes), feeling stupidly happy (another side effect of oxygen deprivation), I hit a nice soft bit of dust. Normally not such a big deal if one has enough room to maneuver. In this case, however, with the rear-end fish-tailing and the nose heading determinedly for the edge of the road, I had one of those wonderfully surreal moments when time slows down and I saw myself launched into space, whilst pondering the implications of disappearing from the face of the earth in this remote and barren place. Before I had a chance to get too romantically involved in this fantasy, I found myself wedged on one side, at the edge of the road. The motor was still running (amazingly… it would normally stall at any given opportunity!), petrol was pouring out of the fuel cap (they never work either) and the front wheel was hanging over the edge. I quickly got up, assessed that I was more or less in one piece, and tried to retrieve the bike from its predicament. After a quick struggle, I managed to kill the motor, throw the luggage off the back and heave the bulky chook back from the brink. Inspecting the damage, I figured I got off lightly… a bent front wheel guard, a mangled side guard and a decent bruise in the fuel tank (but no puncture!). As I sat there in the dust, feeling that I had just made a major withdrawal from my karma credit card, I again had cause to contemplate roads of greased snot.
After this the rest of the journey proved (relatively) uneventful… a few river washouts that had terrified bikers coming the other way, and some delicious moments on each of the high passes scattering the last of my Grandma’s ashes. (This process was a beautiful journey in its own right, so I’ve written about that separately). Finding accommodation in Manali proved straightforward… I found the mechanic and went to the top of the nearest hill so I could roll the bike down in the morning, without having to jump-start. Back in the land of movies and pizza, I wandered about in a daze for a few days before I said goodbye to the bike and took a bus to Dharamsala.
My next trip… India to Vietnam, me thinks… by Enfield of course.
Yak Trak Blog 