On the back-breaking, nerve-wracking two-day journey
in a mini-bus from Manali to Leh in Ladakh (in the Himalaya mountains,
on the border with China), we Indians are a minority in a
motley crowd of foreigners. After hours of steep climbing up to 14, 000
feet on the first day, you are rapidly succumbing to altitude sickness,
but struggling against it, since everyone else seems to be all healthy
and fit.
What the hell, how can they all be
so happy and cheerful and talking and laughing? How come they all can
breathe? Idiots. The heat is killing. Dry desert mountains all around.
No human habitation anywhere. The chattering of the Korean girls ahead
is driving you mad. You have just had some Maggi noodles and biscuits
the whole day, that’s more or less what you get in the few tent stops
along the way.
Just when you think you can’t
take it anymore, you look at the Israeli woman sitting on your right.
She is reading a book from back to front. Yes, from back to front. The
back cover of the book is in the front, facing you, and the front page
is at the back.
Oh God, you have started hallucinating. Oh God, this can’t be happening.
Then you look at the Korean girl in front. She is reading a book from top to bottom. Yes, the alphabets – which are box-like squiggles – appear to be arranged from top to bottom. The crazy woman was reading a railway time table for so many hours? Then it strikes you - Oh my God, maybe you’re the one who’s lost it, you’re seeing things, they said this would happen with altitude sickness! Why oh why, do you get this stupid urge to travel to all these God-forsaken places? Why can’t you just sit in your cosy little house and watch the squirrels on the coconut tree for entertainment?
Somewhere
after Baralacha La, you start gasping for breath and blacking out. You
remember the 24-year-old boy who went trekking and died of altitude
sickness. You ask your husband to pass the oxygen can just in time.
People look at you strangely.
Later when you
have enough oxygen - oh how infinitely wonderful it is! – and you can
believe that you are not dying, everything falls into place. The Israeli
was reading a book in Hebrew. They write and read from right to left.
So their books are also structured that way. Korean is written from top
to bottom, so it appears. You remember the woman sitting next to you in
some airport somewhere who was also reading a book like this. So it must
be normal.
You relax, you’ve not lost it.
As yet. But you do not yet know what a fabulous difference taking oxygen
at that right moment made. We stop in the sudden freezing cold at
Sarchu camp, surrounded by bare pink and yellow mountains - 15 degrees
from the middle of nowhere.
The entire bus
has had a fight with different tent owners for the suddenly inflated
prices, and are perhaps warmer than you. You wear layer upon layer of
warm clothing above thermals, not much help. You have never seen the
constellations so divinely close, but you can’t stay outside because of
the cold.
After dinner, over which there are
more fights, the Irish woman sharing our tent is cursing her boyfriend
for bringing her to Ladakh. You sleep like a baby. You wake up in the
morning completely refreshed. You look around at the others and smile.
Apparently everybody else had splitting headaches and nausea and stomach
upsets! People are throwing up, bleeding through their noses etc in the
other tents. You distribute medicines. You are fit as a fiddle, even
carry a heavy bucket of water to the tent for the others, and walk
singing to the bus.
The bus is dead quiet
the entire second day. You are the only person breathing normally,
relaxed, enjoying the scenery, which is the closest you will ever get to
travelling by road across the moon.
People
thought you were weird because you carried oxygen. HA!! And HA again! It
sure feels good to have the last laugh, brothers and sisters!!
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