The Summer of '14

THE SUMMER OF ‘14

By Ajit Chaudhuri

‘Bhole Baba ko milna aasaan nahin, Kabhi kashta uthana padta hai’

(It’s not easy to meet Lord Shiva, one has to face a few difficulties)

Introduction: Many of my generation would remember ‘The Summer of ‘42’, a cult American coming of age film wherein a lucky kid makes out with Jennifer O’Neale (though cricket lovers tend to associate it with India’s 42 all out batting performance at Lords in 1974). They also remember ‘The Summer of ‘69’, the Brian Adams song about a boy playing the guitar until his fingers bled. But I, for one, will also always remember the summer of 2014, when I joined the most beautiful woman in the world for a journey into the mountains.

No, for those within my readership with wild imaginations, I did not disappear into a lonely log cabin in the Swiss Alps with Madhuri Dixit, Behati Prinsloo or Sara Carbonero (if you don’t know who they are, I strongly recommend a short detour into Google Images) and a chef and housekeeper, where we took walks in the mist, depleted the wine cellar, watched the World Cup, and did a little more. It was actually much better than that! My wife and I (and, it has to be said, 46 others) made up the second batch of pilgrims that went to Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar in China in 2014 – a 1,000 plus km journey of which 202 km was on foot, across the Himalayas and back.

Not Dixit, Prinsloo or Carbonero, but the lady on my left is stunning! Photo by Saurabh Bose.

This note is not about the destination or the journey – there is much writing available on both (though little of it does justice to either, and, to be fair, it probably can’t – this area, after all, is the source of three important rivers, is sacred to four religions, is visually stunning and is, to put it mildly, difficult to reach – truly the roof of the world) – it is about what I learned in the process. Here is a short list of discoveries made during the summer of 2014.

One – I can still walk: The journey involved going up the Kumaon Himalayas on the Indian side, crossing the 17,000 plus foot Lipu Lekh Pass into Tibet, coming down the other side, and then doing the 50 odd km Kailash parikrama including crossing the almost 19,000 feet Drolma Pass. There was a hush in the group meeting at Dharchula, when we were counting the pony and porter requirement, when I said that I would use neither; I would walk, and would carry my own backpack (the government recommends, but doesn’t require, every pilgrim taking a pony and a porter). And so, I did! Needless to add, some younger blades in the group decided that if an old fart like me could do it, so could they. There were times when I regretted my madness (the first day of the return from China, for example, when we did 30 km across the Lipu to Goonji, and the 26 km we did on the day we crossed the Drolma La), but I have to say that my wife of almost 22 years was quietly impressed. The feeling was reciprocated – she too did most of the journey on foot.

A welcoming sight above Navidhang, 9 km from the top of the Lipu Lekh Pass into China! Photo by Navin Tank.

Two – China is awesome: I already knew that, after walking 6 days up the Himalayas on the Indian side, we would walk down just 3 km on the Chinese side and there would be a bus waiting for us – the Chinese have roads almost up to the border. I also knew that Taklakot (or Purang), the headquarters of one of China’s most remote counties within its most backward and remote province, would be a bustling town with fashionably dressed women all over the place, Go-Go Bars, Tea Houses and prostitutes. What nobody prepared me for was that the tap water in Taklakot would be of drinkable quality, that women would be doing everything men were doing, and that visiting a local eatery (the group hired kosher cooks to make Indian vegetarian food for the 9-day China-side of the visit, but my wife and I sneaked off for dinner in the evenings we were in Taklakot) would be such a good experience. We communicated in sign language and by pointing to what others were eating, in one place the cook came out of the kitchen when we walked in and welcomed us with a cigarette each, young girls would come up with their phones and ask to take selfies with my wife, and generally we were made to feel very welcome.

There was a level of efficiency and a quality of resources that would be unimaginable back home, as well as a smoothness of arrangements and an adherence to time (which, I am happy to say, was a quality shared by our group – to the surprise of our Chinese guides). And yet, there were refreshingly Indian elements to life – there were no such thing as fixed prices in the market, and bargaining was done using a calculator to write out a number and then passing it back and forth until an agreement was reached. And when we complained about the behaviour of the porters and pony handlers during the Kailash parikrama, the authorities just threw up their hands and said that they had been trying for years to get them to behave properly, but it was impossible and there was nothing that they could do.

Mount Kailash, as seen in the evening from Deraphuk. Photo by Rinky Chaudhuri

Someone observed that ‘thank God Kailash and Mansarovar are in China – had they been in India they would have become the miserable shit-holes overflowing with greed and dirt that our shrines have become’. I think there was near consensus within the group on this.

Three – there is much to appreciate about Hinduism: As a hardcore atheist, I was deeply uncomfortable about having to spend 24 days (I include the days spent in Delhi on MEA briefings and medical examinations) closeted with pilgrim-types. My experience on earlier visits into hills was that, in addition to being bigoted, pilgrims were dirty, selfish, and environmentally irresponsible, and avoidance was the best strategy. All those I spoke with who had done the journey previously said that the pilgrims on this one were no different, but that every group has a few non-believers who are there for the adventure, and advised that it is best to find one’s own kind and stick to them.

This advice could not be followed because it was soon obvious that my wife and I were the only apostates around. And thank God for that! I got to know everyone, and discovered a great bunch (and one of the things about a long trek is that you cannot hide your true personality) that I am proud to know.

Baba Ajitnath at Lake Mansarovar. Photo by Sanjay Manocha

From the beginning, I never felt excluded! Nobody looked at me questioningly when I didn’t know the words to bhajans, or to the Hanuman Chalisa, or didn’t know what an aarti was, or even when I sat out of the group’s havan on the banks of Mansarovar (I was called in time to eat the prasad) and bunked a visit to a temple in Taklakot so that I could watch a replay of a football game (a friend even joined me for that). Only one person asked me why I was on the trip given my obvious lack of religious belief and another, our group’s glamour doll, once expressed surprise at the contrast between my knowledge of religious matters and my knowledge of everything else (ahem!). By the end of the trip, the words ‘Om Namoh Shivaye’ were rolling easily off my tongue, and I was enthusiastically singing bhajans and whatnot. My wife is now worried that we will begin doing pooja at home.

I (and the others) like to think that there was something special about our group. For me, we were a wonderful advertisement for Hinduism – not too judgemental, reasonably respectful of each other, of other cultures, and of women, and interested in having fun and enjoying ourselves. I felt the inclusiveness of my religion here. There were Hindutva elements in the group, but they didn’t make it obvious, and there were public menaces as well, who woke up at 0200 hours to chant and pray, and who rushed to be first for food, but we soon saw the funny side of this behaviour. We also had our arguments and disagreements, but we all became good friends. Today, 3 weeks after our return, we are missing each other terribly.

Four – the more things change, the more they remain the same: Next to Lake Mansarovar was the equally beautiful Lake Rakshastal, where Ravan had done his penance to Shiva. Why did he need a separate lake? Because he was an asura, and the devas refused to share Mansarovar’s water with him. Does the discrimination sound familiar? Advocates of the perfection of those times, who are trying to re-introduce Ram-rajya, need to have a think.

Five – I learnt something about leadership: A journey such as this – large groups of not particularly young or fit people going across some of the toughest terrain in the world, at high altitudes and in inclement weather – is not easy to manage. It involves coordination between multiple agencies; the Ministry of External Affairs, who are the main organizers, the Kumaon Mandal Vikas Nigam, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Government of Uttarakhand and, on the China side, the Tibetan Tourism Authority. And yet, for the pilgrims, there were few sources of tension – we were fed regularly, we slept under a roof every night, and we pottied in closed and reasonably clean spaces that had access to water (except for Deraphuk and Zimchulphuk in China). Coordination f-ups did not, for the most part, permeate down to us.

Contemplating the meaning of life on the banks of the Mansarovar! Photo by Rinky Chaudhuri

This is because the Ministry appoints a person to lead each group, coordinate with the respective agencies, take the tensions and stresses, and get the pilgrims there and back safely – usually a mid-level government officer, who is referred to as a liaison officer (or LO). And we were lucky in our LO – we got a gem of a guy who actually loved trekking (he was one of the select few in the group who’s butts never felt the back of a horse for the entire journey) and being with people, and who had none of the airs of babudom. He didn’t have an easy time of it, there were shortages of ponies and porters for most of the journey, people’s luggage got misplaced, and pilgrims in general tend to be considerably more rights-conscious than the average Indian citizenry, but he handled us brilliantly; with calm, patience, minimum authority and maximum effect. I was particularly touched when I arrived late in the evening at Budhi, dead-tired after a long day walking with some ladies who were having difficulty (the LO had given me the job of being at the tail of the group on a day that we had no ponies), and he was waiting at the entry to the camp to personally thank me. We subsequently got to know that we were the only batch in the history of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra to have made it up to Goonji without ponies. That all 48 of us made it across and back in the circumstances that we did was in no small way due to his leadership.

Six – I can miss the World Cup and still live: I have watched the World Cup since it first came live on Indian TV, from the 1982 semi-final between Poland and Italy (2-0 to Italy, Rossi scored both). As a practice, I switch off once in four years and devote myself entirely to the game, and my friends and family know that this is not a time to die, fall sick, get married, have babies, or do anything that requires attention or effort from me. So, when the places for the journey were allotted and our dates fell entirely during the World Cup, my wife was sure that she would be doing it without me (‘I know you’ll dump me at the last moment, you b#@%y b#@?%d,’ were her exact words). Given the prospect of our 21-year-old marriage not reaching 22, I made a choice.

I know that I missed a great World Cup. I missed Algeria, Costa Rica and Columbia doing so well, England and Italy doing the opposite, Brazil getting -- (is there a word in English for what happened to them?), and a European team finally winning in South America. But, hey, as the old Kris Kristofferson number goes, ‘life goes on, and this old world keeps on turning’.

To conclude: A dip in Lake Mansarovar is supposed to rid a person of hatred, jealousy, greed, delusion and idleness, according to the legends (the absence of ‘lust’ and ‘anger’ on this list raises eyebrows). I don’t know if it applies to skeptics like me, and it certainly hasn’t thus far, at least on the ‘idleness’ front. But, according to an old friend who had done the journey some years ago, these 24 days will have strange effects in the long term – effects that are not obvious early, but effects that will change one’s life. I will wait and see and, if and when they happen, I will take them as they come.