Shortly after my GCSEs and the relief of finishing them, I traveled with other students from Cokethorpe School to India on a World Challenge Expedition, an experience of a lifetime that I won't forget. This involved a project in a local Primary school and a trek to Deo Tibba base camp at 4800 metres, and for everyone in the group a crash course in traveling rough.
Getting there and its Problems
It was early July, and as we sat amongst our baggage, sprawled across the stage in the school theatre, the cold, nervous air of anticipation was brushed aside by the swinging of the metal door. Twisting round, I noticed as James, my friend, entered sheepishly from backstage left.
"Alright James?" I couldn't understand why he looked so miserable. He replied with a low, huffed, angry tone,
“No. Not really.”
“Why not? You should be anyway because we’ve got to sort out how we’re going to pack this tent we’re sharing.”
“Yeah, well I might not be going to India.” He glanced around to make sure no one else was listening, “I haven’t got a visa.”
A moment of shock ensued
. “What? But you can’t have just forgotten you’re visa.” But he did, and no manner of meetings with the headmaster or alternative plans could change the verdict: He wasn’t coming. End of.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard. The one person who I’d spent the past two years anticipating the trip with, carol singing at Christmas with to help raise all that money, the person who’d said farewell to his parents, and sat with the luggage he’d prepared all morning, excited about the adventure ahead. Even those in our group who didn’t really know him were devastated.
And so began the first problem on our journey and we hadn’t even left school, but when we did, we were ready to represent world challenge and, as Mr. Stuart reminded us when a few took the chance to spend group money on cheap cigarettes later on in the trip, school, on our three week trip to India. The second issue didn’t hesitate to arise too long afterwards, however, when we were sat on the bus and realized we’d left the toilet hole digging shovel behind. The real cherry on the cake was me being burdened with the task of team leader for the first two days. What a great start…
After hopping off the bus into a huge crowd of people at Heathrow, I knew I was in for a testing evening. This was confirmed by the following hours of racing round the airport, arguing over whether or not to use the electronic check-in and making head counts every minute to make sure nobody had boarded the next flight to Cambodia. Typically, I discovered I’d gone down with 'Delhi-Belly,’ as it’s known, before even getting to Delhi. The worrying, stress and mayhem clearly hadn’t boded well for my stomach, feeling it rumble as I took my seat on the plane in a small corner by the window. It was further worsened by the notion of no return when the plane lifted off the ground.
Initially however, as I rested in my lonely, yet comfortable domain in a cosy corner of the plane, I considered myself blessed with a well-deserved, relaxing night in the air until an elderly Indian woman sat next to me. Not that I had any problem with that, but you could’ve cut the tension in there with a knife after the shocked look she threw me when I offered her a starburst and her eventual hesitant and abrupt reply spurted out, “No!” There were other reasons as well; Not only was she was utterly terrified of my inhaler, but since she was sat on the aisle seat, she had to stand up whenever I needed the toilet. The fact that her fragile, elderly bones prevented her from taking less than ten minutes to stand up, and the fact that I needed the toilet a lot after that chicken curry did not go down well together. Not only this, but for every passenger there were TV screens in front which you could watch movies on. What I couldn’t stand was that somehow she’d managed to put a film on she clearly didn’t like, but didn’t know how to turn it off, so she spent the rest of the night with the film blaring on distractedly. Not that I could’ve communicated with her and asked her to turn it down either after our already tense relationship at this point of the journey…
Having therefore got barely much, if any sleep at all, morning came around, and after opening the window shutter, I caught my first glimpse of the Desert Mountains of Pakistan, not unlike the wet ripples of sand you see at the beach. I was supposed to be team leader, although I didn’t have a clue how I was going to lead the group through Delhi. The thoughts ringed through my head: ‘I can’t do this. I’ve never even been out of Europe before.’ I almost hoped we wouldn’t actually arrive in Delhi and just land somewhere else. Yet inevitably the time came, and as the patches of fields widened, the rivers and dirt roads becoming evermore visible, the wheels thudded down on the Indian airport runway.
After making it past the arrivals desk, the pounding stress in my head awoke fresh and ready to rise from its short night’s rest when my group, tired and hungry, began to whinge about food and water. In addition, I needed to find reasonably priced taxis we could catch to the tourist centre. So forgetting about Delhi’s notorious humidity, I was shocked by the skin-stretching, excruciatingly sweat-ringing heat, blasting in my face as I left the complaining group inside the building.
The following hour of arguing, chaos and running around the airport in a vain search for provisions was finally ended when I made sure everyone was tightly packed up in the tiny, sticky, black and yellow taxis, and ‘risk assessment Dave,’ as he was known on this occasion, had checked the taxis to make sure they were safe enough and not missing a wheel. I knew I was in the ‘real India’ when I sat at the back of the taxi and reached behind me for the typically non-existent seatbelt, while the taxi driver casually stopped and got out of the vehicle in the middle of a main road.
‘The real India’ however, as I came to realise on the least to say, turbulent drive to the Chanderlock tourist building on Janpath Street, has a much darker, more sinister side to it behind the colourful, traffic mayhem. I’d never before experienced, and therefore imagined the effects of culture shock, but the sheer, stark, bare poverty of the place, and the fact I’d only ever seen the third world on television made witnessing it in person all the more unreal. Glimpsing the hundreds of thin, agile and almost primitive male bodies at work with picks on the roadside and lurking under the bridges, followed by the mother and child begging for rupees, I was fed constant images of the Indian way of life. The most upsetting incident came to me while approaching a roundabout with no road lines, where loud jumbles of tuk-tuks were being guided round by a police officer with a whistle. I almost jumped out of my skin at a sudden banging of the window beside me. To my surprise it was a little girl, no older than seven years old, trying to sell us a plastic toy plane. Once our driver had shooed her off, I proceeded to watch in horror as she childishly toddled on, innocent and oblivious through the roaring traffic.
Our arrival at the tourist centre was met by many hours waiting beside the transport booking office while we split up to buy provisions and, most importantly tried to find out where part of our group was who’s taxi driver had inevitably got lost en route. The loose stomach motions I’d experienced on the plane at this point becoming evermore frequent, our lost taxi driver by some miracle eventually found his way to us, blaming his mistake on a ‘wrong turning’ at a roundabout. Leading our returned group members to where we’d dumped our bags, which passing schoolchildren had repetitively tried to steal, I came across the rest of our team admiring the apparent ‘cuteness’ of a pack of wild chimps around us, banging and jumping on cars and chewing electrical wires. I, on the other hand didn’t personally view the creatures as ‘cute’ when I approached the nearby bin to throw away some lunch litter. This is because, on seeing a mother chimp sitting on the bin, feeding her baby crisps from a packet, I was forced to chuck my rubbish at the bin from a distance after she hissed at me with her sharp, bare fangs- I got the message pretty fast, fearing a chimp attack on my first day in India.
Beginning fairly well, the overnight bus journey from Delhi to Manali in the north contrastingly ended up the worst form of transit I’ve ever experienced in my life: As we all hopped on to the curtained coach, the blasts of air-conditioning which countered the immense exterior humidity was by all means a godsend. But my stomach was rumbling…
On our way out of Delhi, I glanced down through the window beyond a lake where a clump of wooden shanty houses were clinging to the shore- I was fascinated by my first glimpse of a slum, watching from the comfortable confines of the tourist coach as a child ran with a bucket towards the polluted water. But the night was approaching, and my stomach was still rumbling…
So stopping for a break at a service station an hour’s ride north of the capital, I made for the toilet at great speed, failing to realize two major things once locking myself inside the cubicle: The first thing being that the ‘toilet’ below was merely a hole in the ground, a ‘squatter’, and the other thing, however, being much, much worse- after doing the business, I scanned my eyes around the bare cubicle, and came to the consequently horrific conclusion that there was in fact no toilet paper! Panicking, I fumbled hastily through my pockets, my next thought being; ‘should I?’, whilst glancing thoughtfully over the piece of paper in my hand which had on it written; my learning outcomes for the expedition. It had to be done. What other option was there? At least I learnt to carry toilet paper around with me for the rest of the trip.
But the bowel torment didn’t end there. After catching a few hours of precious, peaceful sleep, I awoke to the motion of the bus coming to a sudden stop on a steep hill. The terrain was notably different from the flat, semi-arid south, and, despite the fact it was night time, the multi-coloured lights from distant buildings on the mountaintops were utterly compelling. I found it harder to get to sleep at this point, but eventually I removed my mind from the discomfort of the rumbling bus, and managed a short dose which was soon broken by yet another juddering halt outside a service station. Stepping out into the crack of dawn, we marvelled at a great pine valley, the fierce water and the thousands of towering trees, slowly lighting up before our drowsy eyes. Planted beside us was a prayer flag, often used by north Indians to spread goodwill across the countryside. And what a vast, rich countryside it was. We had reached it-the Himalayas.
But, as always, I hadn’t the time to marvel. I needed to find a toilet again, and fast. So having descended the stairs down a hill which lead to a toilet, I discovered the foulest most vile-scented room I had ever experienced in my life. Throughout the course of the trip I got used to such horrific odours, particularly whilst having to use the school’s hole in the ground, but this being my first day, my feelings towards this place were that of revulsion, similar to the feeling you would have before getting sprayed by a skunk. I later found however that my consequent refusal of the opportunity to use this toilet would become very, very regrettable in the near future…
As a child, whenever I travelled in the car with my family on holiday, there was always the constant urge to ask my parents; ‘Are we there yet?’ over and over again. This urge returned when it soon began touching cloth, and I could no longer bear the load. I would be having an accident any minute sooner. So Dave, lending me some toilet roll, asked the drivers to stop the bus. They did after a few painful minutes, but on the side of a cliff. As I made my way down the bus aisle, the teacher pitifully looking at me as you would towards someone walking to their death, I staggered behind the bus, clutching my stomach as I came across a stream flowing down from the cliff. It dawned on me at that moment that I had no choice but to climb half way up the stream, squat on a boulder and present my lower body to the oncoming traffic while I proceeded to release the churning substance within me. Pale- faced, and feeling the worst I’ve ever felt before, I returned afterwards to my seat on the bus, wandering how on earth I was going to survive another three weeks in India, and how things could possibly get worse. But they did…
It was when the driver then had immense trouble trying to kick-start the tourist bus, and the bus broke down after making it a mere two miles, that my sanity was teetering on the edge. While we waited on the roadside for another bus to approach, I considered fainting. After getting off a shoddier, even more turbulent bus at the heavily congested town of Manali in the Midday heat, and realizing we had to walk miles uphill to find a hotel, I considered dying.
My stress and tiredness levels had become so incredibly high by this point, that by the time we sat down for lunch at the Mayur restaurant, central Manali, I physically struggled to stay awake and prevent my head from falling in the curry before me. With the exception of dinner in the evening, I fell into the closest I’ve ever been to a coma once in the Zarim hotel room. To the astonishment of the other boys sharing my room, I apparently sat up while asleep exclaiming as a zombie would; “Take me to the island.” Save this slightly disturbing occurrence however, I woke up the next morning, completely refreshed, and reborn almost. In addition, my immune system must have strengthened tenfold with the lashings of non-purified water and deadly bacteria I was consuming at ease for the rest of the trip.
The success of our arrival days in Manali gradually arose as we became accustomed to the Indian way of life; the constant haggling from drum sellers on the street, and the people’s considerably more relaxed, ‘as fast as you can’ attitude towards road safety. Yet as we awaited transport to take us to Haripur, our destination for the primary school project, our uncertainty seemed to glide across the mountains like an ominous cloud.
Meet the Kids
Haripur Primary School, unlike the majority of primary schools, and unlike many buildings I've come across in my life, was conveniently situated half-way up a mountain. I thought in fact, whilst sitting in the luggage truck with Mr. Stuart as it turned off the main road at the town and struggled violently up a steep, bumpy dirt slope, that our in-country agents had got our expedition itinerary wrong, and that we were being dropped off for the trek instead. That said, when we finally came to a halt outside a dull square block, and entered a small dirt playground through a rusty black gate, (which I later realized was of absolutely no use at all in stopping the children from coming in and out of the premises given their tendency to just leap over the fence as means of passing through,) I knew we were at the right place.
Stretching our legs, which had suffered from severe cramp on the journey there, we dumped everyone’s backpacks beside a 'protective’ (metre high) cement wall in front of a sheer slope overgrown with cannabis and apple trees
. A few months before the expedition, I remember someone who’d done this kind of project before telling me with excitement; "the Kids will just swarm around you the moment you enter," but I didn’t get that impression at first. I felt more like a wanted cowboy entering a stand-off in a Wild Western movie; A few children took to hiding in the dark and simply glaring with suspicion, whilst one tall, brave kid with dark, wild eyes and a red sweater ran to drink some water from the tap before plucking up the courage to say; “Hello,” and dash away again.
After unloading the truck, we were greeted by the headmistress, a middle-aged woman who seemed to look at us in an; ‘Oh, it’s you again’ kind of way. It appeared world challenge groups were regular occurrences here. In fact we even had to paint over their murals they must have spent days working on…. But I suppose that’s life. I bet some ‘helper’ has already sloshed some white paint over my mural by now.
We all nearly broke the circle of small plastic chairs as we sat on them in the classroom. I got the initial impression, as the friendly cook went around offering us delicious green-coloured tea in a glass, that they were making a genuinely kind gesture. But I couldn’t help but think it an attempt to soften the blow when the head dictated to us a massive and obviously unaffordable list of decorations and furniture they wanted us to buy for the classroom. I don’t know how generous the previous group were, but either way, they must have had the wrong idea of us.
The evening came, and once everyone had unpacked their sleeping bags on the top floor of the classroom, we all lingered unsurely on the balcony outside it
. It was only when I headed up the metal stairs that I heard from the slope the Indian boy with the red sweater from earlier shouting; “Apples!” as he was climbing the apple trees with his friends. But before I had time to respond, he’d chucked an apple in my direction with such an immense force that I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t caught it. I threw it back, and then everyone swarmed into the playground… It wasn’t long before all the expedition members joined in, and our first real contact with the children finally came with the wildest, most exuberant and energetic piggy-in-the middle match I’ve ever played.
I try not to be philosophical when talking about India, because I’m sure what I’m about to say is something so many charity workers, hippies and the like have said before: But their enthusiasm and happiness was endless- The particularly enthusiastic kid in the sweater (who told me his name was; “Jamal,”) took me aside for an arm-wrestling match, which we played twice, and I, embarrassingly, lost… twice. As I kneeled down for the third round, all the kids tickled me onto the floor, bundling on me and laughing as though their impoverished, bleak community and existence on the mountainside didn’t matter. Having seen it first hand, it was as though the fact that they had hardly anything in life made them enjoy the simple things like this all the more
. Are they better off for it? Are they, in this sense, even richer than us in the west? Perhaps.
The following Friday morning we began our mammoth task by painting the base layer of a downstairs classroom. If I thought this was tiring, then I had a surprise in store. On my first break, Jamal came up to me asking; “Boxing?” Not being able to disagree and let him down I replied hesitantly; “OK.” Of course the fight which ensued wasn’t real ‘boxing,’ more a version of hardcore sumo wrestling where we dragged each other to the ground. Thankfully we moved on to the piggy-back rides, which, despite almost killing me, were far less violent. It was all fun and games playing with them, but there was one problem; once you started they never stopped. So that night, as a calm retreat from the daily mayhem, I played cards with our teacher and other group members. At one point when it was my turn, I was kneeling forward to get a whiff of my trousers, which strangely gave off a strong scent of Jamal. In my seemingly random comment; “I smell of that Indian kid,” everyone dropped their cards in bursts of laughter.
Saturday was stressful, if not eventually fulfilling. At the start, there were many arguments over the few brushes and paints at hand, which didn’t help my attempts to create the artistic masterpiece of a tuk-tuk on the wall. What could be done when everyone resorted to brush theft and the oil paint took forever to wash away without lashings of white spirit? The answer; nothing. But after a while we learnt to share, (sort of) and made the classrooms look as good as new
.
Sunday was even more stressful, and no way near as fulfilling. I never understood how someone could be as warm and kind as our cook, Pintu, who never failed to please us with endless curry, tea, and coffee. But when he bowled a cricket ball in my eye, I didn’t have a great start to the day. Not least to say the cutting of my toe on a metal bar, the denting of my shin on the metal stairs, and worst of all the fact that team leader Dave had gone down with a chronic illness, which made my complaining seem pathetic in comparison.
And then there was the ‘boxers’ situation… Just outside the school, Mr. Stuart summoned me to the spot where a sodden pair of Lonsdale boxers lay crumpled on the grass;
“George, you said you wore Lonsdale boxers, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but”
“And you’re the only one in this group who wears them?”
“Yes, that may be true, but these can’t be mine, they have a different pattern.”
“George, I doubt any Indian here will be wearing a pair of high-branded boxers. They must be yours. Just pick them up and throw them away.”
So as I picked them up and carried them round the building, I noticed the stomach-churning, cus-cus/ curryesque substance within the pair
. Well, at least the day was an experience…
Despite waking up early on Monday morning, we felt safe in the knowledge that we’d completed nearly all of the work. That was; ‘in the knowledge’ however… It isn’t difficult to imagine to being told by the Head Teacher that, despite hours of washing off oil paint and packing away equipment, he desires a new coat of white paint on the porch. Great…
I won’t ever forget the afternoon celebration with the school. It began with us, (the world challenge team,) sat in a circle eating lunch. To avoid eating just curry, (which was nice but at that point it was getting on to the tenth time this trip,) I decided to take some bits of cucumber and carrot one of the teachers was offering around. I didn’t know why nobody was accepting any at first, until I was warned by one of team not to take any as they were covered in ‘non-purified water.’ But there was a dilemma; the teacher handing them out seemed genuinely disappointed. It was like the time my Gran went especially to the supermarket to get me one of those disgusting cinnamon swirls with currents. I’ve never liked cinnamon or currents, particularly when they’re swirled together, but out of sheer politeness, I forced with much shuddering something down my throat that wasn’t that healthy for me anyway
. With a similar lack of choice here, the teacher now appearing more and more like an Indian version of my Gran, I had no option but to take a handful of cucumber. The fact that I didn’t get ill once after that made the cautious yet extremely ill Dave seem a bit miffed.
After lunch we had to cramp together as the staff and schoolchildren entered. A few minutes of silence passed until, surprisingly, the headmaster rose and began singing a traditional Indian song for us. This was a nice gesture and all, but I can’t quite imagine my headmaster doing the same thing; the idea of going into the assembly hall one day with some foreign visitors there and the Headmaster serenading them solo would create cause for concern. Eventually all the schoolchildren started dancing and really getting into it, but an unexpected proposal ensued; they then expected us to start singing. At first we started mumbling some highly westernised pop music, trying to avoid hymns as a lot of them sounded too nationalist. (Then again, none of us had a clue what the Indian songs were about. The lyrics could’ve been; “Ha-Ha! I stole one of your boxers and threw up in them” and we would never know.) All the same I knew something had to be done about it- so remembering the lyrics of ‘your song’ by Elton John, I stood up and released my voice to the rest of the room
. It went pretty well in the end, especially with people joining in at the chorus, even though it didn’t have much relation to India. Then again, with the first verse beginning; “It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside…” what with Delhi-belly the similarities aren’t hard to miss…
Tuesday came around with one last sweaty, sandy night sleeping in the upstairs classroom, and soon enough we were standing by the bus stop, (which wasn’t exactly a stop-more like a tuft of grass,) in central Haripur ready to be taken back to Manali. Eventually a timid, slightly Chinese-looking kid who I hadn’t noticed at the school decided to wait with us to see us off. The tears pouring from the girl’s eyes were inevitable as they stood around him taking farewell pictures. Jamal, the wild-eyed red sweater kid, then came storming towards me, grabbing my arm like I was an action-man figure and shouting like one of market vendors in Manali to get a picture with me. I didn’t have much choice in the matter as I posed for the shot, but I also had to beckon the slightly Chinese kid into the shot as I didn’t want him feel left out. Looking back on the photo however, at Jamal’s devilish grin and then at the slightly Chinese kid’s uncomfortable looking face and strained posture, he seemed slightly unsettled. And I don’t blame him either. If some Indian adolescent had stopped me on my way to primary school to get a farewell photo with him I’d be a bit on edge.
A Moment in Manali
Arriving back in Manali felt much like a return home. Unlike like my first arrival there, where I was fighting an epic battle to control my bowels, I felt comfortable with a now fairly familiar setting; The high street bustling with textiles shops, drum and saphron sellers stalking us, and the long, stinking holes in the middle in of the road where labourers, desperate for work would chip and chizzle away around the sewage pipes in need of repair. Almost as if to say; "I've got a better job than you," the policemen stood triumphantly in their uniforms as they guided wild, disorderly Tuk-Tuks and military jeeps around the roundabout.
Even the freezing cold shower at the Zarim hotel was a luxury compared to the tap I’d used back in the school playground- I would be scrubbing my hair and armpits with chocolate-flavoured shower gel while the children would watch with curiosity
.
The next morning on Wednesday we got up ready to start the acclimatisation (preparation) trek, which was apparently 12 kilometres around the valley surrounding Manali. I’ve always had a fear of walking long distances in groups. It might have come from when I was younger on holiday with my family; We used to go on these long walks, particularly when visiting friends as it seemed apparent there was nothing else to do, and after a while I would get tired; yet despite my cries for “stop!” everyone else would just walk on, and this is what I feared might happen this time. However much I trusted my schoolmates not to completely leave me behind, I could imagine them being slightly annoyed if I didn’t catch up.
So, to be fully prepared, I looked on the hotel menu to see what fibre-filled breakfast I could order with my tiny ration of funds. I chose the 'Jam Tost,’ which in the end was a questionable, tasteless jam on a chewy, tasteless toast. Hardly authentic Indian cuisine, but it seems the Indian’s don’t have much to say for themselves in the way of breakfast. It’s just curry, naan and more curry with a bottle of cobra to cool it down. If that were really true, maybe that would explain the carnage on Indian roads; all they consume from morning to evening is spice and alcohol.
The acclimatisation trek, despite seeming to go on for a long while, ran more smoothly than I thought it would, and having regular ‘sit down’ breaks under shelter from the blazing sun made it more bearable. This leads me on to explain why I was reluctant about the trek from the beginning
. If it’s bearable, and something you have to endure, then why do it in the first place? That’s the dilemma of opinion I was toying with throughout the trek. (After all, you have a lot of time to think deeply when walking 12 km.) You could either go for the enthusiastic, ‘all for it’ attitude that makes you feel as though you’ve conquered your inner-self by achieving the physically draining goal you set out to achieve, or take the; ‘what idiot would go through horrible, cold, windy conditions to go 4800 metres up a barren mountain?’ viewpoint. You could even question what I was doing in India in the first place! I remember reading an article criticizing public school kids going on expeditions (like me) which asked why people should help fundraise them and that the idea of helping children in a school or orphanage was just an excuse to go on holiday. The truth is, travel has to have a purpose, and whether or not you think spending a year mowing my Granddad’s lawn to raise funds for helping Indian school kids on a life changing journey was a good or bad idea is up to you I’m afraid. I pondered deeply on this thought until I almost lost track of where I was and nearly got flattened by a passing truck.
When we stopped at a sweet shop to buy some food at about half way, things didn’t quite run so smoothly; I went in and purchased myself a bottle of mountain dew which I was planning on drinking triumphantly when we reached base camp on the real Trek. That was all fine, except when one of the guys on our expedition, Gabriel, bought several of these disgusting spiced-flavoured wine gums, and he, usefully, discarded the small packets on the ground… Some of the girls on our expedition, however, who evidently weren’t in a great mood, started having a go at Gabriel, demanding that he pick up the discarded packets immediately. Gabriel stubbornly refused, and so began the heated moral argument between Gabriel and the others; “India is a wasteland anyway!” “But you’re still contributing to pollution, even with wine gum packets!” But that wasn’t the frustrating part; the argument only ceased an hour later when we returned to the same sweet shop. And why did we return to the same sweet shop? To buy more disgusting spice-flavoured wine gums? Oh, no. We returned because, during the hour-long debate, we had taken the wrong route and got lost… My patience was wearing as thin as my remaining water supply.
We made it back to Manali in the end. It’s as though, despite the extreme heat and tedious arguing about wine gum packets, we eventually put ourselves in a zone. Feeling a sense of achievement, I purchased a pair of prayer gongs the next time we headed into town which supposedly gave you ‘good will’ every time you gonged them. I managed to barter down from 700 to 400 rupees, while the other guys who’d seen me buy it boasted they could’ve bartered it down to 200 rupees, and that I’d been ripped off. But, as a morale principle, I didn’t want the shopkeeper to get a bad deal as the antique shop she owned was small, out of the way and my prayer gongs seemed pretty authentic and original at the time. Then again, the fact that they were surrounded by about twenty other prayer gongs in the same pattern and on the same shelf suggested they weren’t exactly hand-made by some wise Tibetan priest in the Himalayas.
Thursday was uneventful yet relaxing, gathering provisions for the trek with our cook, Pintu, and sharing snacks in the hotel lobby while playing the card game Slam; The winner of the game is basically whoever slams the right card first, but it was nearly impossible not to argue over who slammed the right card first and to say I made a few enemies while playing would be an understatement. It was a recipe for arguing, in a time and place where the least thing we wanted was more arguing.
My mouth was on fire that night after eating the hottest chilli I’ve ever consumed. Like all spices it was deceptive in the way I could eat a lot of it without any initial impact, but wait another twenty seconds and you could’ve compared my mouth to the gates of hell. So, to cool myself down and enjoy a pre-trek treat, I bought myself a brownie cake shake and a single espresso shot from a contrastingly luxurious café on the high street called ‘Honey Hut.’ The caffeine rush, however, stopped me getting much sleep that night.
Even the freezing cold shower at the Zarim hotel was a luxury compared to the tap I’d used back in the school playground- I would be scrubbing my hair and armpits with chocolate-flavoured shower gel while the children would watch with curiosity
.
The next morning on Wednesday we got up ready to start the acclimatisation (preparation) trek, which was apparently 12 kilometres around the valley surrounding Manali. I’ve always had a fear of walking long distances in groups. It might have come from when I was younger on holiday with my family; We used to go on these long walks, particularly when visiting friends as it seemed apparent there was nothing else to do, and after a while I would get tired; yet despite my cries for “stop!” everyone else would just walk on, and this is what I feared might happen this time. However much I trusted my schoolmates not to completely leave me behind, I could imagine them being slightly annoyed if I didn’t catch up.
So, to be fully prepared, I looked on the hotel menu to see what fibre-filled breakfast I could order with my tiny ration of funds. I chose the 'Jam Tost,’ which in the end was a questionable, tasteless jam on a chewy, tasteless toast. Hardly authentic Indian cuisine, but it seems the Indian’s don’t have much to say for themselves in the way of breakfast. It’s just curry, naan and more curry with a bottle of cobra to cool it down. If that were really true, maybe that would explain the carnage on Indian roads; all they consume from morning to evening is spice and alcohol.
The acclimatisation trek, despite seeming to go on for a long while, ran more smoothly than I thought it would, and having regular ‘sit down’ breaks under shelter from the blazing sun made it more bearable. This leads me on to explain why I was reluctant about the trek from the beginning
. If it’s bearable, and something you have to endure, then why do it in the first place? That’s the dilemma of opinion I was toying with throughout the trek. (After all, you have a lot of time to think deeply when walking 12 km.) You could either go for the enthusiastic, ‘all for it’ attitude that makes you feel as though you’ve conquered your inner-self by achieving the physically draining goal you set out to achieve, or take the; ‘what idiot would go through horrible, cold, windy conditions to go 4800 metres up a barren mountain?’ viewpoint. You could even question what I was doing in India in the first place! I remember reading an article criticizing public school kids going on expeditions (like me) which asked why people should help fundraise them and that the idea of helping children in a school or orphanage was just an excuse to go on holiday. The truth is, travel has to have a purpose, and whether or not you think spending a year mowing my Granddad’s lawn to raise funds for helping Indian school kids on a life changing journey was a good or bad idea is up to you I’m afraid. I pondered deeply on this thought until I almost lost track of where I was and nearly got flattened by a passing truck.
When we stopped at a sweet shop to buy some food at about half way, things didn’t quite run so smoothly; I went in and purchased myself a bottle of mountain dew which I was planning on drinking triumphantly when we reached base camp on the real Trek. That was all fine, except when one of the guys on our expedition, Gabriel, bought several of these disgusting spiced-flavoured wine gums, and he, usefully, discarded the small packets on the ground… Some of the girls on our expedition, however, who evidently weren’t in a great mood, started having a go at Gabriel, demanding that he pick up the discarded packets immediately. Gabriel stubbornly refused, and so began the heated moral argument between Gabriel and the others; “India is a wasteland anyway!” “But you’re still contributing to pollution, even with wine gum packets!” But that wasn’t the frustrating part; the argument only ceased an hour later when we returned to the same sweet shop. And why did we return to the same sweet shop? To buy more disgusting spice-flavoured wine gums? Oh, no. We returned because, during the hour-long debate, we had taken the wrong route and got lost… My patience was wearing as thin as my remaining water supply.
We made it back to Manali in the end. It’s as though, despite the extreme heat and tedious arguing about wine gum packets, we eventually put ourselves in a zone. Feeling a sense of achievement, I purchased a pair of prayer gongs the next time we headed into town which supposedly gave you ‘good will’ every time you gonged them. I managed to barter down from 700 to 400 rupees, while the other guys who’d seen me buy it boasted they could’ve bartered it down to 200 rupees, and that I’d been ripped off. But, as a morale principle, I didn’t want the shopkeeper to get a bad deal as the antique shop she owned was small, out of the way and my prayer gongs seemed pretty authentic and original at the time. Then again, the fact that they were surrounded by about twenty other prayer gongs in the same pattern and on the same shelf suggested they weren’t exactly hand-made by some wise Tibetan priest in the Himalayas.
Thursday was uneventful yet relaxing, gathering provisions for the trek with our cook, Pintu, and sharing snacks in the hotel lobby while playing the card game Slam; The winner of the game is basically whoever slams the right card first, but it was nearly impossible not to argue over who slammed the right card first and to say I made a few enemies while playing would be an understatement. It was a recipe for arguing, in a time and place where the least thing we wanted was more arguing.
My mouth was on fire that night after eating the hottest chilli I’ve ever consumed. Like all spices it was deceptive in the way I could eat a lot of it without any initial impact, but wait another twenty seconds and you could’ve compared my mouth to the gates of hell. So, to cool myself down and enjoy a pre-trek treat, I bought myself a brownie cake shake and a single espresso shot from a contrastingly luxurious café on the high street called ‘Honey Hut.’ The caffeine rush, however, stopped me getting much sleep that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment