Higher
It’s monsoon in the high hilltop town of Shimla, favorite retreat of the British during the Raj, the place where they escaped the heat and humidity of Delhi. I can relate. Delhi has been unspeakably hot and humid and, Raj or no, I am happy with the promise of coolness.
The rain is a clear, beaded curtain of water drops. Before, the air is heavy as an old wool blanket. After, it’s ten degrees cooler and the air is fresh as clean laundry. When the first strands slash to the ground I take my bare feet outside to savor the cool puddles. Two black-haired girls in bright sweaters crouch under a purple and a yellow umbrella, laughing as they inspect rivulets coursing down their steep lane. The hotel staff looks askance as I lift my face to the trees to feel the water from head to toe.
Monsoon time is tricky, like an eccentric uncle who promises a visit, but then doesn’t show. What can you do but wait and wonder? Here the monsoon’s arrival was announced for June 29. A drizzle showed up, and a puny, silent drizzle at that, with not even a grumble of thunder. Like petty nobility standing in for an absent duke, it’s a poor substitute, despite having its own title: pre-monsoon.
When the real monsoon arrives, days late and oblivious to the furor its delay has caused, it comes with a bang, deluging the passes, relocating scree, rock and mud onto roads distressed by a rough winter, encouraging fragile underpinnings to slip away, at which the remainder of road i tumbles into the gorge below. Wedding dates predicted to be auspicious now will be. That the bride strolls in under a gauzy fuchsia awning sagging beneath a swimming pool’s worth of water, or that bouquets of drowned pink and white gerbera daisies droop overhead, is no matter. Everyone is joyous, relieved, wet. Life can go on.
Our drive has been much tougher than we expected, as we share the road with hundreds of heavy cargo trucks and oil tankers, the latter hauling fuel to the Indian military bases that line Jammu-Kashmir. They chug at a painful crawl up steep rocky roads as twisted as cold spaghetti. We pass ten of them and congratulate ourselves on the accomplishment, relieved to be done with the big guys, only to round a corner and see ten more in the distance.
The truck drivers are so familiar with the road they could drive it in their sleep, which we hope is not the case as we toot and honk our way around one blind curve after another. They’re helpful and polite, know where passing is possible and wave us around with a flick of a brown hand outside an open window. Sometimes the driver, head wrapped in a ragged scarf, t-shirt blackened with grime, will flash a smile as we wave a thank you.
One gaily painted truck broke down, neatly blocking half the road, with a long tumble into a coursing glacial river as the reward for misjudging the space for squeezing by. The army showed up lickety-split (one benefit of having lots of bases around), to help sort out the uphill and downhill blockage.
We press on over ever-higher passes, Rohtang La at 3978 meters, then Baralacha La at 4890 meters. It’s a rattling, jarring, shattering drive, during we ask over and over as we reach a plateau: “Do you think this is the top?” Yet we know that every summit here is marked by tangles of prayer flags and until we see them we must keep climbing.
At times there is pavement, and it’s like heaven to drive on it. I can release the grab bar, roll out my neck and shoulders, search the road side for an appealing Dhaba, a roadside food shop. It’s “No,” to those that welcome the trucks; they look to permeated with diesel and oil. And it’s also “No,” to hotels. They’re too empty, suggesting a kitchen with food that’s spoiled and pans that are too cool to kill bacteria.
We stop in front of a river crossing which, by the number of people sitting at stalls looking sleepy and bored, speaks of being a bus-stop, too. Within short order we have masala tea and two chapatis stuffed with spiced potatoes, supplemented by a packet of cashew biscuits and two Cadbury chocolate bars.
By the time we arrive at our tented camp for the evening, on the windswept plains of Sarchu, I have been so shaken, rattled and rolled that I’m light-headed. Or perhaps it’s being at 4,200 meters. Regardless, it is a true joy to walk around the level grassy plain. My delight at finding large clumps of edelweiss in bloom is even greater having been told I’d see them in the Dolomites and not found a one.
Ahead, Thalang La at 5329 meters, beckons. After that it’s all downhill into Leh, where monks are dancing in masks, and the Dalai Lama has arrived to celebrate his 79th birthday. But for tonight there’s a vegetarian buffet in the dining tent, good company to share it with, and me swaddled in four layers of tops and two sets of pants, hoping that’ll be enough to keep me warm through what promises to be a bitter cold night.
