Special Lassi

by Amrita Chatterjee

  A quick tea break later, we set off again at a comfortable pace. Rigzin was an accomplished driver; he took us over the sharp twists and turns with admirable ease, never letting the nausea get out of hand. At one point, as our SUV was climbing over a steep curve, I caught a glimpse of a water body lurking on the other side.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, that’s Pangong.”

  “Really? Are we there already?”

  “Yes, look!”

  In my excitement, I missed the cheeky glint in his eye and when the lake came into our view, Rigzin burst out laughing. This wasn’t Pangong, this wasn’t even a lake. It was just a giant pool of stagnant rainwater. By now, everyone was laughing, except me.

  “The lake will come, wait. First I will show you some yaks.”

  Within a few minutes of making this promise, he drove us around another mountain to a small grassy field with a single yak lolling in the centre, wrapped in a number of fancy shawls. The yak herder was also relaxing nearby, enjoying his afternoon nap. Clearly, this whole thing had been orchestrated just for the tourists. The price for a 15 minute ride on the yak was 500, which included the herder’s excellent photography service. Unfortunately, none of us wanted to get on with this asinine activity, so Rigzin switched gears and we continued towards Pangong.

  Since I was in the passenger seat with Rigzin, I was again the first person to spot a small patch of aquamarine glittering between the ridges. Despite being a few kilometres away, I was sure that we were finally there. All of us immediately stopped talking and trained our eyes to the left. Gradually, stripping through the layers of rocky valance, we got our first glimpse of the entire lake from the cliff and felt like the scientists from Jurassic Park, who had just spotted a live brachiosaur.

  Half the drama of seeing Pangong for the first time lies in the way in which the road suddenly links to a narrow dirt track running parallel to the water. You come up from behind the mountains, cross a small iron bridge and there it is, the entire 50 miles of its Indian side. Since the brackish water hardly contains any aquatic life or vegetation, the surface of the lake mimics the skyline perfectly. The blue becomes so vivid and concentrated that you could probably dip a brush into the lake and start painting with it.

  Our shelter for the night was a small homestay in the nearby village of Spangmik. It was run by an old Ladakhi woman and her son. The woman could barely walk, but she insisted on setting up the rooms for us and tried her best to have a conversation with me in her faulty Hindi as I was the only Indian in the group. Even I had a hard time deciphering her toothless syllables. She wanted us to know that her son had gone out to fetch the groceries, so there was nothing for lunch. My only reaction to this was, groceries? Where the fuck from?

  Spangmik comprises of less than a dozen houses, all of which have been converted into homestays. There is nothing but mountains and Pangong in the vicinity. It was hard to even imagine the existence of a grocery shop in this area. The more I thought about it, the more I was dumbfounded at the level of meticulous planning that must be required to survive in such places. You can’t just wake up in the morning, see that you’ve run out of soap and put it on your day’s shopping list. Every little need has to be thought of months in advance and stored accordingly.

  With the hour hand pushing beyond three, we quickly shifted base to another homestay right next to the lake, which was occupied by a big group of japanese tourists. The four of us shared some home-cooked spicy kidney bean curry, rice and a mixed vegetable stew while enjoying the sight of the water, dotted with rafts of ducks.

  “Where do you reckon Tibet starts?” River had finished eating and was now gazing at the reddish-brown peaks framing Pangong.

  “Hmm, I think from that mountain,” Christian was bluffing, obviously. There was no way to tell where India ended and Tibet began. After all, boundaries are only for humans; birds, bees, mountains and rivers are free to come and go as they please.

  “Do you think it’s possible to swim into Tibet from here?”

  “Sure, in fact in the winters you could even drive over the frozen water and waltz right into Lhasa,” I repeated this bit of trivia that I’d heard from Rigzin on the way. The driving part is absolutely true; the waltzing into Lhasa, not so much.

  “Yeah, that would really outfox the Chinese. Damn! Why didn’t I think of it when I was there last time?”

  River and I turned towards Christian as though he had just revealed the exact location of the Holy Grail.

  “You have been to Tibet?”

  “Yes, but it’s been almost 30 years.”

  “Still! That’s impressive. How did you do it? It has become so difficult to get there these days, so many permits and bureaucratic hassle.”

  “I know, I guess I was very lucky. At the time, China had just allowed individual travellers to get in to the country and people like me, who were willing to take a few risks, went to the small towns in the northern provinces and got the travel permits. The officer who had given me mine had never seen a white man before. He didn’t know whether to refuse me or to invite me in for some tea. Of course, it would be impossible to do that now. By the way, if you can find it, you should read the autobiography of Tashi Tsering.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Tashi is a very interesting fellow. He used to be a member of the Dalai Lama’s royal dance troupe. In this book, he talks about a lot of controversial things like the rampant homosexuality amongst the monks, the feudal and oppressive nature of the theocratic economy. He also mentions that when the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet, the ones that followed him to India belonged mainly to the rich aristocracy. They also smuggled out a big chunk of the royal treasure from Lhasa, which was eventually used to fund the government in exile and maybe even the CIA, who knows! You must read it if you can.”

  Post lunch, it was time for a long leisurely walk along the lake, we set off together towards the east, where the shore was even more secluded. Once we’d come far enough, I sat down on a boulder and pulled out my diary to do some drawing. By now, I had mastered the art of sketching mountains and even picked up some fancy terminology from River like foreshortening and linear perspective. But soon enough, my head began to feel heavy and short of breath without even moving.

  “I feel a bit strange; is everyone else alright?”

  “No, I’m a bit nauseous as well.” Christian’s daughter had to put her head between her legs and take a few deep breaths before she could get up.

  “It’s the altitude sickness. Pangong is at a higher elevation than Leh. We should get back to the rooms quickly.”

  What had started out as a noticeable but benign ache at the back of my skull turned into full-blown trauma within the next ten minutes. I could barely stand straight when we entered the homestay. My eyes were blurry, I wanted to throw up, the four walls of the house felt like they were trying to squeeze me to death.

  As I tossed and turned in bed for the next few hours, I honestly believed that the end was near. My only hope of survival lay in a syringe full of morphine. But then a full moon appeared in the tiny window above my head, and the pain began to subside. In another hour, I was conscious enough to take in my surroundings. River was preparing to go outside for a walk in the moonlight.

  “How are you feeling? Would you like to come along?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. How far are you planning to go?”

  “Right there, just over that small hill.”

  From the bed, the slope of the hill looked quite unassuming with the moon hovering over its peak like a silver cherry. But even getting up a flight of stairs in Ladakh can turn into an intense cardio session, I took a while to put my shoes on. And we had to sneak out of the window because the main door had been locked and everyone was asleep.

  I forced myself to walk really slowly and take long, deep breaths while concentrating on the pebbles underneath our feet, as their loud crunching interrupted the deathly silence surrounding the lake. Not a single other soul was ou
tside except us; in the darkness, all signs of civilization were lost. We felt like we were exploring a new planet in a different galaxy. Luckily, I didn’t have to go all the way up with River to enjoy the spectacular view of the glittering lake. The cold breeze, laced with a hint of salt, had stopped me exactly where I needed to be. Had I tried a little bit harder, I could’ve reached up and plucked the moon out of the sky; it was that close.

  Nature had played dice with my mind all over again. First it paralyzed me with altitude sickness, then it cured me with this magical potion brewed over Pangong, garnished with slivers of moonbeams. Standing there, facing the lake, I could hardly recall that I had been so unwell a few hours ago. Now, the only thoughts in my head were about the years to come and about the last day of our journey. It would probably be a little anticlimactic with the two of us quietly unwinding in Leh and scribbling into our journals. But what other choice did we have? It’s almost impossible to pull a Pangong two days in a row.

  Well, almost.

  The Road is Life

  “Alright you two, take care and all the best for the rest of the journey! Maybe we’ll see each other again somewhere in the world.”

  “Absolutely. Goodbye!”

  These were Christian’s parting words as Rigzin dropped them off first near their hotel. Over the course of the safari, all of us had become good friends and the goodbye was a bit sad. I have since included him and his daughter in my extensive travel family along with the Israeli girls from Vashisht, Lucy from McLeodganj, the rickshaw boy from Banbassa, the old engineer from Lumbini, the rasta dog from Pokhara, Mr. Hump-me-tickle-my-dick from Pelling, Sonam from Khecheopalri Lake and the many other strange but wonderful people who I might just run into again someday on the road.

  A lot of my people who have heard my travel stories always say the same thing, perhaps in different words, “oh you’re so lucky! Why do we never run into such interesting people?” Usually, I just shrug my shoulders and move on with the conversation, but these remarks often come back to haunt me in the middle of the night. Is it really all about getting lucky? Or is it more about making an effort? Like putting away the headphones, shutting down the laptop, asking and responding to questions, being curious about other people’s lives, smiling. I believe that the only prerequisite for finding interesting things or people in life is to be interested; luck has very little to do with it. But anyway, I digress.

  Most of our trip’s penultimate day was spent in driving back to Leh. We had started the day with a delicious breakfast at our homestay. There was no sign of sickness and all of us were full of energy. I also finally had the chance to meet the old Ladakhi woman’s son. He was not only the manager and caretaker of the house, but also the head chef. The two of them together had served us freshly baked hot Tibetan breads with butter, fried eggs, tea and coffee.

  In the kitchen, there had been a curious poster of Greenland on the wall. River told me later that the son had put it up there. Apparently, it was his dream to go to Greenland one day.

  “But why Greenland? There are so many other more fascinating places to see in the world.”

  “Who knows? While we were having dinner last night, he said to me that he had never been anywhere outside Ladakh, but if he got the money somehow…”

  “Then Greenland ahoy?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Maybe he fell in love with some nose-rubbing Inuit girl and then dedicated his life to her pursuit.” I tried to come up with a plausible explanation for his strange fascination with a country that’s essentially an endless sheet of ice.

  “Hmm sure, or maybe he is just a weirdo.”

  “Of course, there’s always that.”

  Back in the hotel at Leh, everyone – including the apricot tree outside our window – was asleep. We took a short nap and then had dinner just after eight. While milling about the market, we came across a big group of people outside a shop that had a very interesting signboard: Would you like to cycle down the highest motorable road in the world? I actually feel a bit silly writing down the answer to such a question, but it was obviously a big resounding ‘HELL YES!’ I don’t think that we could’ve come up with a better way to end the trip if we’d planned. This was meant to be!

  We were asked to show up at the shop at eight the next morning, which we did, but we couldn’t start for Khardung La till almost 11. This happened because all 50 of us enthusiastic cyclists wanted to try out our bicycles before leaving and the two poor men attending to our demands could hardly keep up. Once the bicycles were sorted, we took more time to pick out our helmets, then the men divided us into groups of seven or eight and stuffed us into the pickup trucks along with the bicycles. The trucks would drop us at the highest point on the Khardung La pass from where we would have to cycle back down to Leh on our own.

  It took us three hours to reach the drop-off point, where the snow-capped mountains looked down at us in amusement. The men handed down our bicycles from the truck one by one. Once I had mine, I took a short break at the army-run cafeteria that marks the beginning of the trail. This cheery little teashop was buzzing with excitement due to us tourists as well as the monks from a nearby gompa and soldiers heading to Siachen Glacier. Compared to us, the monks and the soldiers seemed utterly relaxed; they went about chatting with each other with bowls of steaming hot instant noodles in their hands. The sweet cinnamon tea that I had at this cafeteria was phenomenal, which is an understatement coming from a coffee lover like me. Its warmth was enough to last me through the day. A few people had the foresight to bring along their fleece jackets and padded gloves, but since we hadn’t, all we could do was drink the tea and get going.

  “Okay, are we ready?”

  “Sure, let’s go!”

  River and I strapped on our helmets, gave each other the thumbs up and took off at a good pace.

  As we picked up speed, so did the wind and soon the miles were flying by like paper planes. I had to struggle a bit during the first few kilometres because the road was really bumpy with loose gravel and potholes everywhere. At one point, the workers were still in the process of clearing up the debris from a recent landside. Also, the brakes on my bicycle weren’t that great, they had to be squeezed with tremendous force to counter the rapid acceleration provided by the steep slope. My palms began to hurt within the first few minutes and I knew that I would be going home with huge calluses.

  However, beyond those first few kilometres, I hardly had to use my legs. The decline of the road was angled so perfectly that my bicycle seat felt like it was attached to a giant tumbling carousel; all I had to do was hold onto the handle. The road kept spiralling downwards and if I looked high enough, I could easily fool myself into thinking that I was flying. I had enjoyed the bungee jump immensely but it was nothing compared to this three-hour-long continuous free fall. River stopped a couple of times on the way to get high. I stopped only once and even then I couldn’t wait to get back on the bicycle. I had turned into an adrenaline junkie who only needed a good fix of speed, no marijuana, no alcohol. For most of the way, I rode pretty much solo, flinging my Juleys right and left at every passing vehicle, military truck, other cyclists, workers, animals and boulders. I was also singing silly rhymes, quite loudly in fact, but only when nobody was around. “Jack and Jill went up the hill to cycle down in tandem. Jack got stoned and thought he saw the world, while Jill kept tumbling farther.”

  As the distance between the bends grew longer, the frequency with which I had to apply my brakes got even lower. Gliding over these long stretches of empty road, I free wheeled into the city just as the sun was setting behind the Royal Palace. River showed up a while later, looking completely worn out, but he was also smiling from ear to ear. The pebbles and sand from the mountainside had gotten into our shoes and settled all over our faces; we probably looked like two vagabonds, but we definitely felt like two smug bastards who had just conquered the world. After depositing the bicycles and helmets back at the shop, I wanted to walk up to all
the well-dressed people sitting in the fancy cafés and scream into their faces, “oh, you think you’re having good time? Wait, let me tell you about my day!”

  But instead of accosting strangers, we ended up on a mattress in some restaurant and spent the evening staring at the last epic sunset of our odyssey.

  “Am I romanticising this sunset just because I’m leaving tomorrow or does it really look like the sky is giving birth to the universe?”

  Once again, River had come up with the perfect phrase to describe the moment. There was nothing left for me to add. And later, I fell asleep while watching River ponder over the placement of the singing bowl inside his backpack.

  * * *

  Clouds and turbulence obscured our last view of Ladakh. And the sense of an ending kept us awake throughout the flight. We landed in New Delhi at sharp ten and headed straight towards the exit. River had a connecting flight to Kolkata in another hour, so he couldn’t afford to waste any time on goodbyes.

  “Well, that was fun. Now back to the real world.”

  I knew exactly what he meant but I didn’t agree with him at all. To me, this whole trip had been the most real thing ever. How was sitting on a chair the whole day in front of a computer screen going to be more real than this? I refrained from saying anything though; an airport is not the place for such discussions. Instead, as I was looking at River’s face, I was reminded of something far more important.

  “Oh my God! We completely forget about the special lassi!”

  “Fuck! I can’t believe I forgot about it.”

  “I know! That’s some serious unfinished business.”

  “Alright, that’s it. I’m coming back to India and I’m going to find that damn lassi, no matter what it takes.”