The Long Road Back

The front gate of the Binsar Sanctuary was a mere 7 kilometers (4 miles) from our hotel and marked the beginning of a treacherous, 13-kilometer (8-mile) dirt-and-gravel climb to an isolated lookout point. Near the top, our driver made a rash turn at a speed inappropriate for the underlying conditions, and we felt the entire undercarriage of the car scrape the assortment of rocks serving as a de facto road. Our vehicle sustained some damage, and immediately began to emit loud, unnatural sounds similar to the ones made by Vik most mornings while he brushes his teeth.

Temporarily putting the car out of our minds, we took a moment to appreciate the solitude of our surroundings. Sweeping views of the imposing landscape were framed by vividly-red, flowering rhododendron trees. We then hiked 2 kilometers to a panoramic lookout point and even mustered the courage to climb half-way up a narrow, rickety and rusty sentry tower. Briefly pausing to savor the view before climbing back down, we had another 2 kilometer walk back to the car and an unnerving descent ahead of us.

Three hours later (it would have been two if not for a missed turn by our well-meaning but thoroughly-lacking-in-common-sense driver) found us in the valley resort town of Kausani. After checking into a nearby hotel, we headed to Gandhi’s ashram to pay homage to the ascendant figure in all of Indian history. The ashram was simple, but inspirational, and we caught ourselves wondering what Gandhi would think of the present-day condition of his homeland (we suspected that disenchantment was the most likely response). Before leaving, Vik made a point of highlighting Gandhi’s painstaking financial record-keeping during his days in England, and Kaberi made a modest effort to feign interest.

As seemingly the only two tourists (peak season begins in the warmer months of April and May) in the entire town, we found the only open restaurant in town for an early dinner before heading back to the hotel. Back there, we lulled ourselves to sleep by watching the single worst example of American filmed entertainment ever produced (the absolutely execrable David Duchovny/Julianne Moore vehicle Evolution).

The next morning we awoke to watch the sun begin its steady, tireless ascent over the steep Himalayas. Amazingly, we were able to view it all from the comfort of our bed. Vik opened half of one eye to sleepily take in the splendor while Kaberi labored to capture it on film from the balcony. With clear skies, we were afforded an unobstructed view of the peaks. We watched with rapt attention for more than an hour as the range slowly went from muted shades of blue and grey to brilliant hues of orange and gold.

Knowing that we wanted to get back to Delhi by nightfall (our mounting concerns over the mechanical condition of our car heightening the sense of urgency), we hit the road at 7:30 am. Our driver began our long journey home with Vik keeping an eagle eye out to ensure that we didn’t take yet another wrong turn. While Vik worried about the potential risk to life and limb as the driver screeched down the steep, winding roads, Kaberi assumed the fetal position in the backseat in a valiant effort to keep the prior night’s dinner down. She took solace in knowing that if the car went over a cliff, at least she would be in Vik’s arms. Little did she know that Vik was thinking that, in such a scenario, he’d be focused on pummeling the driver on the way down.

Vik vigilantly kept watch through the windy roads and conked out in utter exhaustion once we hit straight roads in the plains. At this point, Kaberi’s sense of motion sickness subsided and she began to take an interest in the route. Minutes later, her heart nearly gave out when our driver seemingly ignored traffic conditions to play high-speed chicken with a six-wheeler bearing down on us. Even a tightening, vise-like grip on Vik’s arm failed to wake him.

Several hours had passed since we navigated safely through the treacherous highland route, and now we were ostensibly home free on mundane paved roads. Nevetheless, in a fantastic bit of irony, we ended up getting front-ended by a backtracking horse-driven cart while being blocked in by a colorful semi-truck overflowing with sugarcane. We were no worse for wear, although our car’s front left headlight didn’t fare as well. As the driver jumped out of his seat to assess the damage and yell at the horse-cart driver, Kaberi watched in profound disbelief as Vik blissfully slept through it all. We ended up arriving in Delhi at 6:30 pm, safe and sound, and fully prepared not to set foot in a car for as long as humanly possible.

Stalking Divine Skyscrapers

After setting out on the road at 7:30 am, we headed southeast from Rishikesh to personally introduce ourselves to the Indian Himalayas. Our efforts were considerable as we made the excruciating, 10-hour journey in the Indian equivalent of a Honda Accord (a Tata Indigo hatchback).

Our route began by skirting the Himalayan foothills through the Rajaji National Park on the so-called National Highway 74 (in actuality, a dusty, congested two-lane road constipated by bullock carts, firewood-toting pedestrians and lackadaisical water buffalo). After what seemed like an eternity (but was actually the entire morning and part of the afternoon), we began to make our way east from the small town of Ramnagar, which sits just east of the Jim Corbett Wildlife Sanctuary. Within thirty minutes, we began our interminable climb to the heavens and terra firma became a distant memory.

As Kaberi slept on his shoulder, Vik grasped his seat with a vise-like grip in a futile attempt to ease his mounting apprehension. The 90-minute drive from Ramnagar to Nainital, the largest city in Uttaranchal’s Kumaon region, was fraught with hairpin curves curled on top of hairpin curves. Our driver coaxed a reluctant car up the accelerating inclines, marked by ever taller and taller pine trees. As we painstakingly tiptoed the pebble-strewn driving path bordered on one side by seemingly-bottomless dropoffs, the kilometer signs marking our progress crawled by. This drive made Maui’s Mt. Haleakala look like child’s play. The only saving grace of the stomach-churning journey (not stopping for lunch turned out to be a blessing in disguise) was the view of majestic brown peaks that stood at attention above us in the blue ether. They were to be a mere preview of the grandeur of the Himalayas.

After reaching Nainital, we barely had time to take inventory of the town’s attractive setting along a magnificent peanut-shaped lake (reminiscent of Lake Como) before bounding our way down into the valley leading to Almora. At the expense of our equilibria, our driver, now freed of gravity’s hindrance, invoked his Grand Prix aspirations and raced through the turns. Two hours and one more nerve-wracking climb later, we neared Almora.

By far, the best part of the journey was the approach into Almora. Working our way up to the town allowed us a new vantage point, and one that unsheathed the divine snowy peaks of the Inner Himalayas. Words do not do the view justice. Suffice it to say that the white mountaintops are so tall that they appear surreal, as if clouds have been pasted permanently above the horizon. It took us a few minutes to grasp the scale of these mountains – we were already more than a mile above sea level and the peaks still towered in the background.

In the next hour, we limped through Almora’s cramped cobblestone streets and stopped at a few hotels located along the town’s main thoroughfare. Unimpressed by the quality of the rooms we were shown, we decided to venture further up in altitude toward Binsar. After another 10 kilometers of inclines and sheer dropoffs, we found a jungle resort promoting mountainview rooms. As a reward for navigating a long, arduous dirt driveway, we were offered a smart, new cottage with spectacular vistas from its balcony. Vik put his negotiating cap on, and managed to get us a 35% discount (it was off-season after all) on the published rate. With our journey temporarily concluded after 12 hours in a car, we had finally earned some well-deserved R&R before exploring Binsar the next day.

While My Sitar Gently Weeps

After a brief, comfortable respite in Delhi with the Mejo’s, we prepared to catch a puddle-jumper flight to Pantnagar in southeastern Uttaranchal, which became the newest of India’s 29th states when it was carved out of neighboring Uttar Pradesh earlier in the millennium.

Uttaranchal is ensconced in India’s mountaineous northeast on the Nepal border, making it an excellent entry point for seeing the Himalayas. Our best-laid plans were quickly dismantled, however, when our inbound flight was cancelled due to inclement weather. After spending a day with Mejomama in his office, we hatched a new gambit: rent a car and driver in Delhi to take us on an ambitious sweep, starting in southwestern Uttaranchal where the Ganges rushes out of the Himalayan foothills to make its inexorable eastern march to the Bay of Bengal and ending in the elevated southeast where the stark, white peaks demand immediate reverence.

The extra day also afforded us the opportunity to grapple with India’s infamous bureaucracy. The ever-fairminded Indian Customs, Delhi Bureau had levied a $400 import duty on the repaired camera sent to Kaberi from her cousin Shanku in Chicago on the grounds that the camera would be resold in India. Incredibly, Indian Customs refused to review the original bill of sale or the shipping manifest documentation with which Kaberi had originally sent her camera home for repair. And FedEx, citing its policy of seeking to cause maximum end-customer exasperation whenever possible, paid the duty unilaterally, leaving us with the unenviable task of prying money from the cold, dead fingers of the Indian government.

We drafted an obsequious letter of appeal, but resigned ourselves to having paid a $400 tuition fee in the School of Hard Knocks. This left Kaberi to watch ruefully as all of the money originally saved on her camera purchase flew out the window in the direction of Indira Gandhi International Airport. The only saving grace was her having the Nikon back in advance of our visiting the Himalayas.

Upon venturing out the next morning, we advanced on our eventual destination of Rishikkesh at a snail’s pace. Traffic congestion and road conditions conspired against us, and it took nearly five hours to reach Haridwar (which literally means “The Gates of God”), still one hour south of Rishikesh. We stopped briefly to observe the holy Ganges River (the view was underwhelming) and take some completely-superfluous high-resolution pictures of the mediocre scenery. Upon reaching Rishikesh at 4:30 pm, we scoured the left and right banks of a city bisected by the Ganges for reasonable overnight accommodation. We settled on a clean, 600 rupee ($14) room in the heart of the Left Bank, near a variety of ashrams.

With sunset approaching, we dropped off our bags and walked toward the riverbed. As we had arrived in Rishikesh before the monsoons, the mighty Ganges was a bit enervated; the ratio of rocky sediment to flowing water strongly favored the former category. We had hoped to see a parade of floating candles on the river from sunset aartis, but only managed to spot an occasional stray diya. As daylight faded from view and the mosquito presence intensified, we retreated east away from the river. Our evening stroll took us into the heart of the Left Bank and a surprising buzz of activity.

Unbeknownst to us, we had arrived in Rishikesh in the midst of the International Yoga Festival. Unwittingly, we managed to happen upon a huge riverside congregation boasting hundreds of saffron-robed devotees. Sitting before them on a stage parallel to the river were several simultaneously-chanting-and-clapping, cross-legged dignitaries, presumably from the international yoga community. We only recognized the most central figure, a man by the name of Sri Ravi Ravi Shankar (not to be confused with the sitar-playing father of Norah Jones by the same name).

Sri Ravi Ravi is to transcendental Hinduism as the Reverend Jerry Falwell is to evangelical Christianity, and engenders a similarly-consuming effect on his multinational (and often Western) devotees. There was something charming about the scene, and the rhythmic chanting of hundreds of voices in unison was nicely atmospheric. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes later (when we heard a group of American and French disciples -- with dirty blonde dreadlocks and Birkenstocks -- loudly evaluating each other’s auras and dirty energies) that we were reminded of the innate charlatanry of the moment. Auras aside, this was nothing more than a business-minded cult of personality preying on the naïve sensibilities of a group of foreigners all too willing to exotify India.

Well, live and let live. At least we got a couple of decent George Harrison tunes out of it all.