Disheartened, discouraged and downcast, we packed our gear to leave Machail. It was Friday, July 15. We should have been climbing higher into the mountains today, headed for Umasi La and Zanskar, and none of us could forget it. Instead, we were to retrace our steps to Kishtwar, and ultimately to Srinagar. We were a quiet group that morning at breakfast. Each of us wanted to seem a good sport, but the effort required was tremendous.
I wonder if you can put yourself in my position, and imagine the incredible frustration I was feeling. It was enormously disappointing, of course, to turn my back on those mountains that were waiting down the trail, and to resign myself to the fact that, after all those months of planning and excitement, I would not (possibly would never) see Zanskar. Certainly, if I ever do have the opportunity to go there, it will be less unspoiled than it would have been last July. Every summer, when the passes are open, a trickle of Westerners will make it in to see Zanskar. Certainly the remoteness of the area, the extreme difficulty of getting there coupled with the very short time each year that the passes remain open, will keep the flow of strangers to a minimum. But untouched places in the world are so rare! In a few years treks to Zanskar may well be commonplace, and at least for me, some of the magic of going there will vanish.
I must admit that, at the time, what bothered me the most was not the lost opportunity to see Zanskar (which is what bothers me most today), but the necessity of retracing our steps. Having seen almost nothing that we had come to see, we were facing a minimum of six days to get back to Srinagar; five days of walking, and a day on some species of vehicle from Kishtwar to Srinagar. There was no guarantee that we would be able to find transportation to Srinagar right away; for all we knew, we might have to wait at Kishtwar for a few days before something could be arranged. The soonest we could expect to be back in Srinagar, with luck, would be July 20th; twenty days of our trip gone, with almost nothing gained. That thought was a bitter one to us all. So much money and effort had been expended to get us to India, and once in India, to Machail. Rob and I had had some unpleasant times; from Bombay airport, to bad food and illness, it had been worth it because we were on an adventure. Now, instead of an adventure, what we were involved in seemed to be a botched mess. We both wished we had never come.
Have you ever felt that you were in a truly intolerable situation, with absolutely no way out? Have you ever felt sick to your stomach with anger and frustration, realizing that you have no control whatsoever over something happening to you, that you would give anything in your power to prevent? If so, you can imagine how I felt.
I began to realize for the first time how really remote we were from "civilization". There was no alternative for us, but to retrace our steps the way we had come. Oh, I suppose we could all have hired horses, but riding would have been only a variation on the same theme. There was no other way to get out, but to take that same path, which had totally lost its allure because its surprises were mostly all discovered. Had we possessed great riches, all the money in the world, we couldn't have got out of there any other way. There were no helicopters that could have swept down to carry us off, and had there been helicopters, there were no radios or communications of any kind with which we could have contacted them. I don't think I have ever before been so overwhelmed by a feeling of resentful helplessness. Nothing I could do - no pleading or bribing, no illness, injury or catastrophe - could get me out of going back down that trail. Six days! At least, maybe more. Surely, from enduring that walk back (because we had no choice), we all gained some measure of patience and intestinal fortitude. I'd like to think that I gained something from it all!
I am sure that most of the others felt as I did. Colleen, because of her knee, may have been less personally disappointed; perhaps she was secretly a little glad for our company on the route that she might have had to take anyway, but I know she felt terrible for the rest of us. Fred and Gerry may have been thinking about turning around, but I'm sure they never wished such a debacle on everyone else. Mary and Ann were, like Rob and me, on a "trip of a lifetime", so to speak; they were angry and disappointed. Nat had been on a few Mountain Travel trips. She loved trekking, and though she often talked about how she preferred Nepal and the Sherpas to India and our Kashmiris, she was disappointed too. Because she and Scot were friends, she was able to comfort him a little bit. Scot carried a double burden; he was as disappointed as we were, and in addition he felt a measure of guilt, I think. He was responsible for the trip, and there was some question in all our minds about just why our plans were in tatters, after we had come to India with a company that bragged about its careful planning and high-class service, and charged for it, too. Jim remained as cheerful as possible, but in a way he may have been more disappointed than any of us. He had been to India just the year before; he had seen Kashmir, then his trek had driven to Ladakh and he had seen that area. He had come to India again because he wanted a trek with more walking, and because he wanted to see Zanskar. So our turnaround was doubly a repeat for Jim; and even if Scot thought up an alternate trek for us, for our last ten days in India, it wouldn't include Zanskar.
As Rob and I walked along that morning, a favorite topic of conversation for a while was "when we return to India..." as we planned another trip for ourselves. Talking about it made us feel better, as though we might someday get a second chance to see Zanskar. We planned to organize the trek ourselves; we felt that we had learned enough to enable us to travel in India without an organization such as Mountain Travel. We could enlist the help of Ashraf, or Yasim, who could either come with us or put us in touch with someone reliable to handle the hiring of local people. We could carry more on our backs, and would need fewer mules or porters.
We speculated on which of our friends could be persuaded to go with us. We decided that John Gilbert, a friend from Ithaca who teaches at Cornell, would be an excellent person to have along. He is a good, strong hiker, a cheerful person, and has a sense of adventure. I thought of my former housemates in Ithaca; all three of them are physically fit, would be great company, and would enjoy India. Charlie is so busy teaching and writing though, that I imagined it might be hard for him to take a month off. Lon would be a perfect person to have along, but somehow I had a hard time believing that he would be able to find the money. Beatrice is a graduate student too, and not rich, but for some reason I could picture her coming up with both the cash and the time off, and I spent some time thinking about how much she would love the mountains and enjoy seeing the geology of the Himalayas. We planned the food we would take on our fantasy trek, the equipment we would need, as many details as we could think of - it helped to pass the time, and was a more positive thing to think about than how disappointed and upset we were.
The day we had arrived at Machail, Fred, Gerry, Rob and I had gotten lost, and we had missed seeing a little town on the route. Coming back, we had no trouble finding it. When Rob and I arrived Ann, Jim, Fred and Gerry were waiting for us, sitting on the edge of a porch, surrounded by people. Our companions were holding their packs; evidently the person who owned the porch said that they could sit on the edge, but didn't want them putting anything down.
This town boasted an attraction - a Hindu temple, one of those "animistic temples" our itinerary was always mentioning. The town was built into the side of a hill. To get to the temple, we had to climb up onto the roofs of the houses that lined the main path; but because they were set into the hill, once on the rooftops, we were simply at a higher ground level. Our "ladder" was a thick log leaning at an angle, with notches cut into it for bare feet (not really large enough for boots). "The" temple turned out to be two; one about 7 feet high, appearing from the outside big enough to hold less than ten people, and a second tiny temple next to it, little more than half the size of the first. The doors were shut, and we didn't feel free to open them to look inside, much as I wanted to! The temples were made of wood, old and weatherbeaten, with steeply peaked roofs. The outside walls were thick with relief carvings of animals and reptiles.
It occurred to me at the time, and it comes back to me now, how free some of us felt to walk over and into other people's houses. I remember other trek members peering into open doorways to see what was within; Ann, Jim, Fred and Gerry seemed to feel no hesitation at climbing up the ladder and walking on house roofs to see that temple. I always felt reluctant to make myself at home that way, and as a result, I probably missed seeing some of the things they saw. Earlier in this account, I remember speculating on why the local people we encountered felt so free to stare at us; was there no taboo against staring in their culture? Or were we so strange that we fell outside the rules for normal social intercourse? A similar question is in my mind about my companions. Certainly none of them would have walked through a neighborhood in Iowa City, or San Francisco, peering into doorways and climbing onto the roofs of other people's houses. Sounds absurd to say it! I guess, for me, the old rules still held, and I felt it would be rude to treat those people in a way that would be considered impolite in my own society. It seemed to me, since I wasn't sure about their rules, the least I could do to show good manners was to follow my own. Some of my fellow trekkers felt, I think, that if they didn't peer into a doorway in rural Kashmir then, they might never have another chance. True enough! I don't intend any criticism of their behavior. I honestly don't know if they were being rude, or not.
Nothing else of note occurred to enliven our day. We walked back over old avalanches and through deep mud; it had been raining since we passed this way the first time, and the amount of mud on the trail was truly awesome. We hiked much of the afternoon with Scot. I remember walking over an especially muddy and disgusting part of the trail and complaining to Rob. He made light of the mud, and I felt as though I were complaining about nothing. I felt a lot better later when Scot volunteered his own disgust at the trail conditions; the mud was not only deep, but also dangerous, since parts of the trail ran along steep cliffs over the river, and the mud was slippery. It also made the going harder for the mules.
Scot gave us a useful piece of advice. He warned us that walking across the old avalanches was dangerous (I didn't need convincing!), because it was possible to lose one's footing and slide into the river far below. He advised us to always unbuckle and loosen our packs when walking in such areas. It would be dangerous, probably fatal, to slide into the Bhut Nalla; having a pack on would make survival even more unlikely, and a loosened pack would be easier to slip out of if the worst happened and one of us fell. Of course none of us even came close; the snow surface was rough, not slippery, and although the slopes were usually steep, it seemed to me that if a person fell, she would be able to arrest her slide. But, just for luck, I kept my pack loosened when crossing snow after that.
Later in the afternoon we caught up with our mules, who had passed us earlier in the day; they were resting at a tea stall beside the trail, and the drivers were enjoying some refreshment. Scot was disgusted with our pony men; our camping place, the lovely grassy meadow beside the river where we had camped three nights before, was only an hour or so ahead. Scot felt that the pony men were lazy and inefficient. As usual, he was comparing them to Sherpas, and again the Sherpas came out on top. Having never been to Nepal or known a Sherpa, I could not make a comparison; but I grew tired of the criticism leveled at our staff by Scot and Nat. It seemed to me that the pony men got our gear to our camping place each night in good time, without losing anything. Sibra's meals were uninspiring, but he couldn't conjure up food he didn't have. Everyone had grown fond of Indrapol; his cheerfulness was impossible to resist. Yasim was always helpful, and Ashraf seemed competent and trustworthy. I didn't have a complaint about any of them.
Well, maybe I had one complaint; it concerned our toilet tent. Had there been no provisions for modesty, we could all have coped, I'm sure. Certainly our toilet facilities were catch-as-catch-can during the day when we were walking. Colleen told us about having the trots on the plains of Africa, and squatting beside the trail without the benefit of bush or rock. I'm sure, if it had been necessary, we could have risen even to that occasion. But the existence of the toilet tent spoiled us. That tent was a sort of Grail to us, a symbol that became important. After a day of searching out (and climbing to) rocks and tree trunks, it was so comforting to see the toilet tent set up. No climbing required! No wondering if a mule train would come down the trail at an inopportune moment! But it proved impossible to make the staff understand that the toilet tent was important to us. We always had to ask about it before it would be set up. Even Ashraf rarely remembered that toilet tent. It must seem like a small problem, and it was; but it was also irritating, to have to remind someone every night to set it up. I suppose the point is that the toilet tent was really the only complaint (aside from the food) that I had about the staff.
After the tea stall we crossed the river. Scot decided to stop for a bath, so we walked on without him, and before long Yasim caught up to us. We strolled along the shore, past the camp of the loggers and along the wooden walkways, and came to the meadow again. How different it seemed! Three days had passed since we last saw the place, and all of our careful plans had been changed. The first night we camped there, I had been so excited and happy; Rob had been wild with enthusiasm for the mountains and Zanskar, and I had realized for the first time just how exciting our adventure would be. Now all I felt was relief that one day back was behind us; but the day from Machail to this meadow was the pleasantest walking of all between Machail and Kishtwar, and although I was glad that Kishtwar was now four days ahead instead of five, I was dreading the increasingly hot, dry miles to come.
We all had little to do but think while walking along, and the main subject that interested us all was the failed trek, and the reasons for it. This topic occupied our conversations to a great extent until we returned to Srinagar, and to a degree even afterwards. I don't know if we ever really understood what happened.
The problem that loomed so large at first, was the refusal of the porters to take us over the pass. That was a convenient place to lay the blame for our failure - but why had there been so much snow on the pass? Scot had assured us that the pass was usually clear by the middle of July - but is "usually" good enough to base a trek on, when people must come so far and spend so much money? Scot told us that Mountain Travel had planned the trek, in good faith, based on weather records of the area - which had only been collected for a few years. Mountain Travel scheduled two back-to-back treks like ours; the first, the one we were on, for the month of July; the second, exactly the same, for the month of August. I wondered if perhaps Mountain Travel was trying to get the most profit it could, by trying to squeeze two treks to Zanskar into the summer months, when they could not be really sure that the pass would be open from the middle of July until the middle of August. Indeed, it was possible that by the time the second trek attempted to cross Umasi La, the pass might be closed again by early autumn snows. It seemed to me that the responsible thing to do might have been to schedule only one trek to Zanskar, from the middle of July to the middle of August, and plan to cross Umasi La at the beginning of August, when the pass would almost certainly be open.
Scot told us that, to the best of his knowledge, the snows blocking the pass were not typical so late in the year. It was true that before the recent precipitation that had fallen on us as rain, and on the pass as snow, the pass had been open. Yet we had heard from other people, including Ashraf, that often the pass was closed in the middle of July. I don't know what the truth is. I think that in India, as everywhere, weather varies a lot. It is probably impossible to predict with certainty when passes will be open, or if freak storms will close them again. Weather records in that area seem to consist mainly of the memories of people who have lived there for a long time! The weather last summer was strange in northern India; we would experience more of it before we left the country. How much of our disappointment was the fault of atypical weather, and how much the fault of bad planning by Mountain Travel, I'm sure there is no way to know. One interesting postscript to the tale, however, is that in the most recent Mountain Travel catalogue the Himalayan Passages trek, though still offered, is somewhat changed. Two treks are advertised, but the first one begins a week later than ours did, and instead of being scheduled back to back, as they were last year, the two overlap. The most significant change from our trek is that next summer's travelers will walk in the opposite direction, from Leh to Kishtwar, thus crossing Umasi La near the end of their trip, instead of near the beginning. Was the itinerary changed because of our misfortune? I don't know.
Colleen's reaction to our failure was almost funny. She was so adamant that Mountain Travel was an irresponsible company, and that they owed us reparations! Some of us were inclined to believe that at least part of the problem was, indeed, strange weather. Mountain Travel warns plainly in their catalogues that when trips are planned to remote areas, all contingencies cannot be anticipated, and though all precautions possible are taken to insure a successful trek, sometimes trips must be aborted. That is the price people must pay who want to see truly remote areas of the world. Not so, maintained Colleen! She had certainly done her share of traveling in remote areas. She said that other companies she had done business with, though less expensive than Mountain Travel and offering far fewer frills and luxuries on their trips, always prepared contingency plans. She cited an example, I think it was in Africa; a proposed jaunt to view some natural wonder had to be canceled because of a dangerous situation, so the company took them all on a flight to see something else, instead. She felt that Mountain Travel should have at least known enough about the area, before taking a group there, to know that the pass was unreliable. If they knew it was unreliable, they had an obligation to prepare plans for an alternate activity or trek. She swore to blacken the name of Mountain Travel with Canadian travel agencies when she returned home.
I agreed with Colleen in principle, and of course she had a broad base of experience that I lacked, on which to base her judgement. It seemed to me then though, and seems to me now, that even if the problem had occurred to planners at Mountain Travel beforehand, there was little they could do in the way of contingency plans. As I mentioned, we spent some time poring over Scot's maps, trying to plan a small trek in the neighborhood of Machail, or at least an alternate route back to Kishtwar. There was nothing; there existed only one way in, and one way out. There was no way to know whether the pass was open or closed until we got close to it, since there was no way to communicate faster than people could walk. I agreed with Colleen that Mountain Travel owed us something in the way of reparations, morally, if not legally; they had promised to show us all sorts of wonderful things, and we had not seen them. We all felt that way, including Scot, but policy was made by the people back in California, and Scot had no way of knowing how they would view our failed trek, or what, if anything, they would decide to do to make things up to us. All Scot could do, besides sympathize and share our disappointment, was think hard about some alternate trek he could plan for us on such short notice.
The next day we were headed for Gulab Garh, the Place of the Roses. Gulab Garh was where we had left the Chenab River for the Bhut Nalla, where we had camped on the beach by the Chenab at our first "real" camping place with our first toilet tent, the place where the horse had delivered me the day I was so sick. The distance between the meadow and Gulab Garh was short, and Scot and Ashraf decided we should walk farther than Gulab Garh. We were all anxious to return to Kishtwar as fast as possible, of course, and if we had not been tied to the slow pace of our mules, I think we could have shaved a day off the time it took to walk between Machail and Kishtwar.
I think it was this day Rob and I noticed the stone ruins of an ancient building. Three walls remained, set into the hillside. The large building stones were green with moss and overgrown with vegetation, but they had been so well put together (without mortar, as I recall) that most of the ancient structure still stood. The stones were carved with abstract designs. When we saw the building there was no one with us who might have explained more about it, so we have no idea when it was built, by whom, or for what purpose. We were both impressed by the difference between that ruin, and the buildings that the modern villagers lived in. As Rob said, the people who live in those hills now seem totally incapable of building anything as elaborate or beautiful as that ruined structure. We never saw stonework in evidence in the modern villages. I imagine it must be a similar feeling, on a much grander scale, to discover Inca ruins near villages of primitive modern Indians in South America.
No one was too sick to walk (if you discount Colleen and her knee), but a few of us weren't feeling too chipper. Rob had never recovered completely after his illness; either that or, as sometimes occurred to me, he was so depressed at our failed plans that his depression was reflected in a physical lack of energy. He felt tired, and was content to walk slowly and stop often. Since my day of being so sick I had felt pretty good; I had little appetite, but my stomach was not upset, and I had no further problems with diarrhea (I was constipated, instead). I was most emphatically not enjoying this retracing of steps, and I wanted to get it over with. I found it difficult to walk as slowly as Rob wanted to, not only mentally, but physically, since the pace he chose was just not a comfortable one for me; but I would have felt worse about leaving him behind and walking faster, so I stayed with him.
Scot was sick too; not with any stomach or intestinal disorders, but with a much more prosaic problem. He had Scabies! We decided the mites had probably climbed aboard when he slept in the hut that first night at Galhar. Ashraf and Scot had slept indoors, because there had been room for only five tents outside; Ashraf had slept on the floor and didn't acquire a mite population, but Scot had chosen to sleep on one of the cots, and we guessed that was where his little guests had found him. The mites leave itchy tunnels in the skin. We had medicine with us for the problem, Quell (Qwell?), a topical cream that would kill the little critters. Scot's problem was worse than simple itching from the mites; some of the bites had become infected, and the infection had become systemic. I think Fred was giving Scot antibiotics at this time. We all worried about every itch we felt, especially when in our sleeping bags at night!
Rob and I walked past Gulab Garh around noontime. The first time we had been there, our pony men had let the mules stray and graze in fields belonging to people who lived in the town. Ashraf had had to settle the dispute and pay a cash indemnity to the injured parties. Perhaps the bad feelings that resulted from that incident contributed to Scot and Ashraf's decision to walk farther that day. I was just as glad not to be staying there; the place reminded me of being sick. It also reminded me of leaving the Chenab River to walk up the Bhut Nalla, into the unknown. I didn't want to remember how happy I had been to follow a new river.
Rob sat down to rest on the rocks before we crossed the bridge, and I had the opportunity to look at the structure. The first time I had crossed it, on the back of the ambulance horse, I hadn't been paying much attention. It was a great bridge! The approach to the bridge on each shore was reinforced with rocks. The bridge itself was a suspension bridge, wooden and sturdy looking. It was reinforced with all sorts of cross pieces and looked like it would stand for a long time to come. Of course it was built only for foot traffic.
On the other side of the bridge we sat down for lunch on a sandy hill next to the road. I remember that lunch because two local women walking down the road stopped to watch us eat, and to laugh at us; we revenged ourselves by taking their picture as they giggled. While we were sitting there, our mules passed by. Somehow it was always funny to see our own familiar duffels tied on the backs of mules, proceeding down the trail in a slow and stately manner. It was also comforting to see that our things were still on the same trail with us!
We climbed a steep hill to reach the town of Atholi. I had ridden through this town on the horse, and remembered little of it. It proved to be bigger than Gulab Garh, and incredibly muddy. All town paths were muddy, but Atholi's were worse than most. There was a branch of the Bank of Jammu and Kashmir in town; that was a surprise! The bank office was open to the street. Inside was a man with a manual typewriter (of course), a desk, a folding chair, and stacks and stacks of forms. When he saw us in the street he invited us in for tea. Once again we refused, as we always did. I often wished I felt free to accept some of those invitations. The man in the bank became insistent that we join him, and I felt rude refusing. Possibly, like others we had met, he wanted to practice his English.
In Atholi we saw a few little dogs that looked exactly like dogs you might see anywhere in the United States; little terrier type dogs, cute fuzzy critters. We also saw some mangy, scrawny, lean and mean dogs in India, especially in the larger cities. In more rural areas, possibly because there was more food available, we saw more pet type dogs, not big and fierce, not obviously useful for herding or any other task I could think of, just little pet dogs. I certainly did not expect to see dogs like that in India; I imagined that, outside of a few wealthy families, people wouldn't have the spare food to keep pet dogs. In Atholi I also saw a pet cat; I don't remember seeing another cat anywhere in India. The two calves we saw were not as enjoyable to look at. They were just babies, huddled together in a doorway as if for warmth, and they looked sick. One especially looked barely alive. Perhaps that's why they were there in the town; whoever owned them might have noticed that they were not doing well and brought them home for nursing. Or perhaps they had lost their mothers.
Someone in Atholi ran a dye shop, because we saw skeins of some kind of yarn festooning the front of a house in town. That house looked so pretty! The countryside was rocky and arid, the houses were brown adobe and brown wood, and those brightly colored yarns looked especially vivid against such a background. Perhaps the yarn was wool. The house was too far off the road for us to tell.
Atholi was skirted on the far side by fields of corn. I saw more rice being grown in that area, than any other crop. But corn was fairly common, and I also noticed some sorghum.
We were headed for Totopani that day. Totopani, "Hot Water", was a town situated at the site of some natural hot springs. On the way past Totopani a few days ago, Scot and Fred had gone up to the springs to have a hot bath, and had met us on the beach when they came down the hill. That was the day I got so sick, and the beach where we would be camping was the spot where I had first sat down on the log, feeling suddenly exhausted and nauseated. Ah, memories!
This time it was Rob who wasn't feeling well. By the time we reached the beach he was really feeling worn out, and he collapsed on the sand near Fred, Gerry and Jim. The other women in the party had gone up the hill with Scot to have a hot bath. I was sorry I had missed them; I thought that probably Rob wouldn't feel well enough to go, and I would have to take my bath with Fred, Gerry and Jim. But the first thing to worry about was taking care of Rob. We had passed the mules again after Atholi, but as soon as they showed up Ashraf hurried their unpacking and Indrapol helped me set up a tent. I found our duffels and put them into the tent along with some sleeping pads, and Rob had a private place to rest.
Before too long Ann, Mary, Nat and Colleen appeared, climbing down the path from Totopani. They looked marvelously refreshed and had enjoyed their chance at the hot water. I could hardly wait to go! They told me it was a bit of a walk, but worth it. They also warned me that the audience might prove a little unsettling. Scot had kept people away, more or less, while the women were bathing. Perhaps Rob could perform the same service for me. I was anxious to wash my clothes in hot water for once! They described how to get to the springs - it didn't sound hard - and I was set to go. Rob, to my great relief, felt well enough to accompany me. So I packed up our dirty clothes and some soap, and off we went.
At first the walk seemed pleasant. The path was steep, but well worn. The sun was shining and we began to perspire; that hot water was going to feel great! I could hardly wait. We met Scot on the path. He gave us more precise directions than the women had; we had to follow the edge of some rice paddies in a certain direction and take a few turns, and we would see the buildings built over the springs. We walked along the paddies and jumped over streams, and I felt as though we had walked for miles, but all we saw were more paddies. Finally we came to some buildings, and we asked the people there where the hot springs were. Two children came out to act as our guides. I thought at first that they were nice, helpful children, or else they were well-trained children, and their mothers had told them to take us to the spring. I think the truth was that they anticipated a show, and wanted a front-row seat.
We wound around through some buildings and down some paths for a while; finally we reached the hot springs. We had missed the way and walked too far, and the children led us back (by the most roundabout path, it seemed). But anyway, there we were! Hot water! Scot had told us that there were a couple of springs, of differing temperatures; the hottest was used for washing clothes. There was one that was reserved for women, with a pool to swim in. Sounded pretty nice. Unfortunately the description was deceiving.
The first spring we came to was, I think, the "women's spring". There was an ancient wooden shed, covered with moss, built over an equally ancient pool filled with stagnant looking water. Algae thrived in the pool. The women bathing there kept their saris demurely in place as they washed beneath. That's quite a trick! I think I was invited to hop in and join the fun, but I decided not to take my bath there; I knew that my friends had bathed at a different place, where the water gushed out of a rock. We continued to look for a place to wash. Remember, all this time we were in the town of Totopani; everyone we passed must have known what we were looking for, since we were carrying dirty laundry, towels, and soap, and some of the people we passed followed us.
A little farther down the path we came to another spring. It emerged from the rock steaming hot, or nearly so, inside a little shed. The water then flowed outside, beneath the walls of the shed, to an area where people washed their clothes. This sounded like the spot the other women had used. I looked inside; it wasn't bad, but the water was very hot, and the walls and roof of the shed were only tokens; huge gaps between the planks helped both the air circulation and the view. In anticipation of the event, a group of adolescent boys had seated themselves on the hillside next to the roof of the shed, where they would have the best view of my shower.
I began to feel stubborn about the situation. Those people lined up really irritated me. I don't think modesty restrained me from washing, as much as stubbornness; I was determined not to provide a free show! I decided to draw a red herring across the track. Perhaps we could fool them by washing our clothes; maybe they would believe we had come only for that, and go away.
It was a great place to do washing. We waited until no one else was using the water and sat down to either side of the little stream. I think people might have found the sight of a man doing washing unusual or amusing; at any rate, we did not lose our audience. Some women watched us too, and I didn't resent their interest. I didn't see any local people with soap; they washed their clothes by pounding them under the stream of hot water, and their dishes by rubbing them with sand. They may have found our soap interesting; I wish we had had enough to give them some. One young woman who spoke some English stopped to chat. She wanted to see our watches; she had two on her arm, and it was then we learned that watches were an important status symbol. She had moved to Totopani from Kishtwar after her marriage, and she was obviously proud of her cosmopolitan background. Not many of her fellow villagers had been as far away from home as Kishtwar, and Kishtwar would indeed have seemed like a big city to someone from Totopani. Kishtwar had roads and vehicles, a marketplace, a police station, electricity sometimes - but it was a few days walk away, and few people ever went so far.
I tried to voice a complaint to her about the kids waiting to watch me take a shower. She spoke little English, but I thought she understood the problem, and she admonished our audience. She didn't have much effect though; soon she left us, our wash was all done, and I had to decide. To wash or not to wash? I decided to go for it, and I asked Rob to chase the kids away if he could. He did a great job! He climbed up onto the hill next to the shed and told them to get lost in a tone of voice that didn't need any translation. They scrammed. Since the hill gave by far the best view (the gaps in the door of the shed were much smaller than those in the roof), and since Rob could oversee the area from his perch and cast threatening glances around, I had a mostly unobserved shower. The only fly remaining in the ointment was the water temperature. That water was hot! I couldn't bear to put my head under it for more than a moment at a time. I washed by splashing myself, but splashing wouldn't rinse my hair sufficiently well, so I didn't wash it. I knew that the other women had all washed their hair, and I couldn't understand how they had managed to stand the temperature! Later I realized that, since they all had short hair, they had probably managed to rinse their heads by splashing too, never putting their scalps directly under the stream of water.
Of course Rob wanted to use the "shower" too, so he asked me to guard him from prying eyes, as he had me. I felt a little nervous about it; I am not as aggressive as he is, and in addition, those kids seemed to pay a lot more attention to men than to women. I was afraid I might have a real problem chasing them away. I need not have worried. It was so funny! No one wanted to watch! All that attention had been for me! I think Rob felt a little insulted. I suppose those kids had seen plenty of men taking baths, but few women - certainly Western women rarely happened by, and the local women seemed to take baths with their clothes on. Not a soul that I noticed even peeped in the general direction of the shower shed. Well, I would have been happy to trade my popularity for Rob's obscurity any time. He even managed to wash his hair.
It was a long, hot walk back to the beach, and I felt pretty disgruntled, for several reasons. Before we had gone far, I was all sweaty, and wondering what good the bath had done me. My hair remained unwashed. I felt guilty for dragging Rob on such a long walk; he wasn't feeling well, and if he had known how far we had to walk, I don't think he would have come. If I had known, I wouldn't have asked him. The only benefit seemed to be our clean clothes.
Back at the tents, our camp had attracted a crowd of onlookers. Once again Ashraf made a point of warning us to leave nothing outside our tents that night, for fear it would be stolen. Rob and I went into our tent to rest for a while. For privacy, we had the fly zipped down; I was brushing my hair when I noticed a man squatting down outside, bending way over so he could look under the fly and into the tent. I mentioned to Rob that someone was looking in; Rob had lain down to rest, but he was out of the tent in a flash. I have rarely seen a person move so fast; one minute he was lying on his mat, the next minute he was chasing that man, who hurried away. Rob complained to Ashraf, who spoke to the offender and to other people who were standing around, but really, there was nothing to do but put up with the attention. They were just very curious about us.
The staff had boiled up some big pots of water for washing. Fred had been up to the hot springs once before, with Scot; he felt it was too far to walk, and the water was too hot, and he, Gerry and Jim had stayed down on the beach. They washed up with the water heated for that purpose. There was plenty of water, since several of us had washed at the spring and didn't require any, and I obtained enough to wash my hair at last. It was interesting seeing Totopani, but I think if I am ever in that neighborhood again, I will heat water on the beach and forego the walk up the hill.
That night was the first time I remember having potassium permanganate solution available for rinsing our hands before eating. We all washed our hands frequently with soap, but once person after another had been feeling unwell. Sibra was careful to boil water and clean utensils thoroughly, but another plausible source of unfriendly bacteria was our hands. We used our hands for climbing during the day, we touched and picked up things, and using an additional method for cleaning our hands seemed like a good idea. Potassium permanganate is an oxidizing agent. We hoped it would kill some of the bugs that the soap failed to wash away. I think from then on we had washing solution outside the tent to use before every breakfast and dinner.
Next day we headed for Sasho, and the government bungalows there. Since we had walked farther than Gulab Garh the day before, this would be a short day. You might wonder why we didn't just keep walking. It was not easy to find a camping spot. After Totopani, the river gorge grew increasingly precipitous. We were getting back into the region of walkways built out from the side of cliffs, because there was no ground to walk on. There was certainly no place to camp! It was difficult even finding a spot to use for a toilet. Also of course we needed water; so did the mules. From now on the river would be too inaccessible most of the time, far below us, to use as a water source. I spent some time on different occasions while I was walking along, just looking for a spot where I could camp, if I had been in the market for a camp site. Much of the time, unless I wanted to string a hammock from a tree, there was no place possible.
Today we came to a place I had been thinking about ever since we turned around - that long, steep slope I had been so grateful to be descending instead of ascending a few days ago! There was no getting around it. It was just as steep and nasty as I remembered. This time I did see mules on the hill, and they really had to work hard to make it up the slope with their loads. So did we! Our burdens were much lighter than theirs, but we lacked their quadrapedal drive.
Since the day when I was so sick, since Gulab Garh on the trip out towards Machail, I had felt all right. But I had been constipated the whole time; this was the sixth day, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Even though I was eating very little, I was eating something, and where there is income, there must be outgo. That problem was emphatically solved for me by some friendly Indian microorganism who settled in for a long visit; my little buddy first made its presence known today. From this day on, I would have diarrhea every day until after we left India and arrived in Great Britain. In a few days I got used to it, and it really wasn't too much of a problem; but those first days were a little rough, and some days I felt quite run down.
I remember at one point this day, Rob and I were walking along by ourselves, and we stopped to sit on a cliff high above the river. It must have been several hundred feet down to the water; the Chenab looked like a trickle, and far ahead we could see the tiny track of the "highway" we were on. We took out Rob's beautiful binoculars; they were Zeiss binoculars that he had bought for himself in Zurich. We looked for our companions on the trail ahead, then we watched a bird for a while. It resembled an eagle, or perhaps it was a hawk; it was definitely a large raptor of some kind. The arresting thing about the bird was that it was white! Or nearly so - perhaps it was very pale creamy gold. We watched it for as long as we could see it, and I envied its free soaring above the river, as we plodded towards Kishtwar in the heat and the dust.
Sasho was where Colleen, Gani and I had briefly gotten lost, at the end of the day Rob had to hike when he was so sick. Coming in the opposite direction, we found it without trouble. Rob and I were both feeling unwell, and we walked along at a slow pace, so we were the last to arrive. We passed Colleen bathing in the stream by the road; it was the same frigid stream that ran past the bungalows farther up the hill. Her knee had been hurting, and I guess she decided to take a break before the stiff climb up to the bungalows; as long as she was resting, she thought she would get her wash out of the way.
One benefit to being the last ones to arrive was that the tents were usually set up, and often tea and a snack were waiting for us. So it was this time. There was only room at Sasho for one tent to be pitched; Rob and I had had the only tent last time because of his illness. This time, to be fair, two other people got the chance to sleep in a tent; Fred and Gerry were the lucky ones. Scot and Jim slept on one porch, Nat, Colleen, Ann and Mary on the other, and Rob and I slept inside the women's building, on the floor. By this time Mary found herself afflicted with Scabies too, and most of us were reluctant to sleep inside the buildings for fear of picking up an infestation of mites. I was convinced that Scot had caught his from the cot he slept on, and I believed the floor would be safe. Just to be sure, I spread ponchos on the floor under the sleeping bags.
I remember dinner that night for two reasons. First, I remember that we had slices of cabbage with a poached egg on top for supper. We were almost out of food; our supplies had never been intended to last for so many days, and Sibra was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Few things he could offer seemed at all appetizing any more, and my taste buds had grown a bit numb. Anyway, since I would just lose whatever I ate pretty quickly after I ate it, it didn't seem to matter much whether I ate or fasted.
The second thing I remember about dinner was a serious discussion about what we were going to do. We would arrive at Galhar next day; that was the last stop before Kishtwar. We would need a place to stay in Kishtwar, and transportation back to Srinagar. If we wanted to plan another trek, we would need Mrs. Kumarr's help, and the sooner we could get word to her, the better. Someone needed to get to Kishtwar faster than the whole group could, and at least arrange for a truck to pick us up at the roadhead and get us to Kishtwar with all our gear. Ashraf volunteered to go; I suspect he felt that it was his responsibility, and he was certainly the best person for the job. He planned to leave early in the morning.
Our last full day of walking dawned at last. I felt such a grinding, oppressive sense of tedium; there were few things in the world that I wouldn't have preferred doing, to walking from Sasho to Galhar. But it was one day closer to Kishtwar; at that point I couldn't stretch my imagination far enough to imagine being back in Srinagar again. Kishtwar was my goal. This day proved a little more interesting than I had feared. The first time we walked this way, I had been so concerned about Rob that I had noticed little about our path. I saw a lot more today.
The most interesting sight along the trail that day was a stretch of the trail itself. For a while, more than a mile I would guess, the trail tried to become a road. Serious earth moving had gone on, and although the road was not complete, what had been done looked far more like a road to me than anything else for at least sixty miles ahead. It was so strange! In the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a narrow dirt track before and behind, this rudimentary wide rocky road existed, built up, buttressed with stone walls, but very unfinished - and from the looks of things, not likely to be finished in the near future. I found it hard to believe that I could have missed this prominent feature of the trail a few days ago; at first I thought we were following a different road! I suppose my previous inattention to what was around me was a measure of how concerned I had been about Rob. It would have taken a big helicopter to get any heavy equipment in to that spot, so I suppose the work must have been done by hand. Had the English begun this road? Had the Indian government worked on it, attempting to ease the way for the military during the conflict with Pakistan? No one could answer our questions.
That long day was hard on Rob, who again wasn't feeling well, and it was hard on me because of my unremitting diarrhea, but it was hardest of all on Scot, who had become a lot sicker overnight. We caught up with him about midday, at the river crossing where Rob had tried to snatch a nap the first time we walked this way. Scot had stopped to have tea at the tea stall there. I was alarmed by his appearance; his face was terribly swollen, and when I felt his forehead, I thought he felt feverish. He was obviously sick, but my offer to switch packs with him (his was a lot heavier than any of ours) elicited an indignant refusal. With our umbrellas spread between us and the broiling sun, we trudged on down the path, and in time everyone reached Galhar.
We speculated that evening about what the next day would hold. Ashraf was somewhere ahead, but out of touch; would he be able to hire a truck to pick us up the next day, and transport us and our belongings to Kishtwar? Would we be able to stay at the government bungalows again, or camp somewhere near town? Would Ashraf find a vehicle to get us from Kishtwar to Srinagar? As you can imagine, we all found these questions intensely interesting, and speculation on the answers, though fruitless, was impossible to avoid. Speculation was fruitless, that is, until the note arrived from Ashraf! Miracle of miracles, while we had spent the day walking from Sasho to Galhar, he had walked all the way to Kishtwar - and arrived early enough to find someone who was going to Galhar to carry a note back to us. The public bus went from Kishtwar to the bridge before Galhar, so people traveling to Galhar didn't have to walk the whole way, if they could catch the bus. A truck would meet us after the bridge. Everything was arranged. Our confidence in Ashraf had been well founded indeed.
Next morning our group was tired and unenthused, but anxious to be off, to walk the last miles and get this miserable backtracking business over with. Before we left, Fred insisted on examining Scot, who was looking worse despite the antibiotics he had been taking. Fred listened to Scot's heart and expressed worry; he heard irregularities in the heartbeat, and he thought it might not be a bad idea if Scot were to hire a mule or horse for the day's walk. Scot refused to consider it. He was a person with a well-developed sense of pride, he was our leader and the toughest one among us (except perhaps for Ashraf), and I suppose it was out of the question for him to do anything but continue to walk.
It occurred to some of us to wonder how the original trek would have worked out in light of Scot's illness. The walking we were doing was a lot easier than climbing over Umasi La, and at a much lower altitude, too. If Fred was concerned about Scot's heart at this low altitude, it was conceivable that Scot might have run into some real difficulties if we had gone on. I had grown fond of Scot, and I have to say that if it were in my power to choose, I would vastly prefer our failed trek to the possible alternative of Scott being very sick in Zanskar. Fred was making noises about sending Scot to a hospital in Delhi, and we were all worried for a while. Fortunately nothing so drastic was needed; Scot continued to take his medicine and in time recovered completely.
Of course the morning seemed long, since we were anxious to get to where we were going but we weren't sure how far we had to walk. We expected to see the bridge around every turn in the trail, and that constant expectation made the bridge seem farther than it was. I remember one curious episode. Rob and I were walking alone, when we encountered a road crew, complete with heavy equipment. We met and talked with the man who was supervising the work; as I recall he was a retired engineer. Friendly fellow. We walked farther, and stopped to look at some heavy machinery lying by the side of the road. There were men around who had been working with the machinery. Rob asked them a few questions, and they walked along with us for a while when we set off down the road. I remember feeling very uncomfortable around those guys, for some reason, and I think Rob felt the same way. Not too far down the road we caught up with Scot, who immediately began to tell us about meeting some men along the way. It appeared that he was referring to the same men we had met. Scot said that he felt like he was being set up; they asked him if he had anything to give away, and he thought they were going to jump him. They had asked to see Rob's watch, and perhaps we were lucky that nothing happened.
It was certainly a rare experience for us to feel threatened in India. That was the only time, so far as I know, that any of us ran any risk of being bothered; and the threat may have existed only in our minds, since nothing directly hostile was said to any of us. I suppose India must possess her share of unsavory characters, and I imagine our expensive gear might have tempted some of the people who saw us. It would have been easy, for someone who was prepared, to hit one of us over the head (often one or more of the group walked alone), steal her gear, and push the victim over a cliff. Scot said that every year trekkers vanish in the mountains, and he surmised that at least a few of them meet just such a fate. Sad thought. I can only base an opinion on my own experience though, and I came away from India with such a positive impression of the people that in the future I would not hesitate to walk in the mountains again. I think many of the people we met would have stolen something if the opportunity presented itself, but only if the theft could have been carried out without detection - and certainly without violence!
The walk was hot and seemed long, but around noon who should we see walking down the road towards us but Ashraf! Rob and I sure were pleased to see him. I could have hugged him. He told us that we had only a little way to walk, a mile or so, to where some of our group were waiting with our hired truck. He walked on down the path to check on the rest of the group - especially on our equine companions. Rob and I trudged along and sure enough, before long, we came around a bend in the trail to see our friends waiting in the shade of some scrubby trees.
We had to wait for a while, at least an hour, perhaps more, and while we waited Jim read us a story. I don't remember the name of the book. In the chapter Jim read to us, the author recounted the adventure of coming to Dal Lake for a visit. He told about his search for accommodations - he ended up in an old hotel on a spit of land in the lake, instead of on a houseboat - and about many amusing interactions with his hosts. The story was funny and Jim proved to be an excellent reader. I was content to relax against the bumper of the truck and listen.
This truck appeared to be a big improvement over its predecessor. Rob looked it over and pronounced it fit to travel; its tires weren't too bald, its springs were in one piece, and its fuel line was suspended a safe distance above the road surface. It even boasted two residents; a mother and baby goat. I guess we all found the thought of traveling with two goats less than inviting, but our fears were premature; after a while a man boosted the goats out. I was afraid they might have left momentos of themselves in the bed of the truck, but all seemed to be clean and routine when the mules finally arrived and we could load up and head out.
While we were waiting for our mules to arrive, several local people gathered around us. The spot where we were was the last bus stop, and the people were waiting to catch the bus that was expected from Kishtwar. One young woman was waiting with her sick baby. The child had a deep, hacking cough. I remember thinking that if I had seen that baby in America, I might have wondered what was wrong with it; but since I was seeing it on the road to Kishtwar, I had to wonder if it would live. Quite a difference. When the bus finally arrived, a few people got off, and those who had been waiting got on. People just piled in, and when they ran out of room they sat on the roof. I felt profoundly grateful that we weren't traveling by public bus! Give me the bed of a big truck any day.
We were a dirty, dusty, tired, disreputable looking bunch when our gear was finally loaded into the truck and we could go. No sitting up on the roof for me this time. This was a different kind of truck, the upper seat was not available, and in any case I felt a remarkable lack of enthusiasm about viewing the countryside. All I cared about was getting back to Kishtwar, to a good bath, a decent meal and a toilet. It felt real good to sit down, and move along with no effort on my part. Dust, heat and bumps were just the price we had to pay for effortless transportation back to civilization.