Mountain Tales Part I

                         THE ABANDONED CHILD


The days passed in a haze of hash. Chillum followed joint followed bong followed chillum. Old Manali was already becoming familiar enough to warrant some semblance of home. With one main street winding up the mountain and a handful of tucked-away shortcuts that wove past marked guest houses, tattoo parlors, and bakeries, it would be hard not to quickly familiarize oneself. I began to make friends - or at least friendly acquaintances - and the way I couldn't go anywhere without bumping into people I knew was a warm reminder of Santa Fe.

My four-twenty had been a successful celebration, if not markedly different from any other day in Manali. A bhang lassi to begin the day, freshly garnished with some dope leaves plucked from the garden right next to my feet, was so damn delicious as to be a bit of a challenge not to finish right off the bat. Yet after my hallucinatory experience in Gokarna I'd learned to be cautious and take my time with them.

After a day of wandering around trying to find Americans to celebrate with, I eventually huffed my way all the way up the road to Pao, which was Snowman's favorite hang-out. I'd run into the guy numerous times, and though he'd always been friendly and happy to see me he was always hung over and drinking and bursting out into HURNHURNHURNhurnhurn-ing laughs through a haphazard non-memory of the night prior. His stories always ended the same way.

"I don't like remember, HURNHURNhurn, right, but apparently I got in a fight with that guy from Sweden, HURNHURNhurnhurn... Whatever, I was drunk, he'll forgive me, right? HURNHURNHURNhurnhurn."

 I still liked the guy. He was just like a pit bull in human form, panting and drooling and woofing and running around all excited and happy until suddenly, for no apparent reason, he rips a hole through someone's jugular vein. You can play with him and watch his comically-klutzy slapstick with glee, but remember all that muscle under the flesh, and never turn your back for a second or give him a reason to disagree with you. As long as you tread carefully, he's a good doggy.

Pao was full, with not a girl in sight. The place was chock-full of cock. Not all bad people, though. There was Flet, a Swede who ran a guest house and made electronic music, Qank, a Canadian with enviable Ali-Baba pants, and Poot, a Liverpudlian who was adamant I should vote for Ron Paul. Snowman was there too, of course, passing a chillum to Machine, the twinkly-eyed head-waggling dude who ran the place. As always, the place looked covered in decades-old dust, thick like an old library in a forgotten mansion. A shelf of books sans-covers hung crookedly near the entrance, and miscellaneous art covered the faded green walls: my personal favorite for its absurdity - a vision of two Avatar faces with a swirling-caped Batman in front; some not half-bad watercolors of scantily-clad models; and an oil painting of Ganesh sitting atop a brightly-colored semi-truck, mouse at the wheel, covered in images of cannabis leaves and smoking reefers. Snowman had traded Machine his snowboard for that last painting. I hung out with the group of guys until the wee hours of the morn and stumbled my way home, getting lost and falling off a little cliff in the process, bruising my bum something awful.

Pao wasn't my favorite place. I liked the art and the owner, Machine (whos menu was thicker and more promising than any other in town) but I was spending much more time at Shesh Besh, hanging out with a group of folk in the back room, smoking and playing games, with movies or Indian television going in the background. When I'd first arrived there'd been a little kid on the scene, who I'd assumed was the offspring of an Indian guy I'll call Wince and the Slovakian girl he was traveling with, Frizsz. As I'd learned one night, however, that wasn't the case.

"Is that guy yours?" I asked after I'd thrown the giggling kid around a bit and he'd run out of earshot. Wince shook his head and sighed, and I realized I'd broached A Subject.

"No..." Wince leaned over the table and spoke in a low voice. "His mother, she asked me to take him, take care of him, but I do not know where she is now. She said she would call, she has not called. I would not mind, but it is strange thing, no? He is not mine."

"Wait, his mom just left the kid with you? Did you know her very well?"

"No, I do not know her. I meet her in Goa. She is from Puerto Rico, and she asked me to take the boy for only few weeks, I said yes... But is fucking expensive, man, he is eating all the time, and I am have not so much money. Is difficult, no?" He leaned back and exhaled a cloud of smoke. I was baffled, and didn't know what to say. I really dug the little dude. He was one of my favorite kids I'd met on this trip, super-intelligent, like five years old and already speaking English and Spanish and Hindi, always laughing and running around and being friendly. 

"But... but that kid's awesome! I can't believe she'd just leave him with some random dude. No offense, not to call you a random dude, obviously you're doing your best under the circumstances, but fuck, you are a random dude! What was she thinking? What a bitch!"

He chuckled. "What a bitch."

"Do you have any way of contacting her at all?"

He shook his head and winced again. "No, no..." He sighed. "She is supposed to be here three days before."

"Three days ago?" He nodded. We sat in silence for a while as we contemplated the circumstances.

Next to us, as usual, came the sound of Gammon's sarcastic British exasperation as he pushed Sleeploop's hand aside, correcting his move in Backgammon. "No, fer fuck's sake, three and five, there and there."

"Ah, yes." Sleeploop, as usual, was unruffled by Gammon's apparent surliness. Hailing from Rome, Sleeploop was usually to be found at Shesh Besh, often sitting with Gammon and maneuvering red and black discs from pointed tip to pointed tip. One day I'd started sitting with them whenever I walked in, and though at first I didn't understand the game, it was strangely soothing to watch the roll of the dice and the sliding or tapping of the pieces.

Wince coughed and leaned in again. "Actually, you know, normally I would never do this, it is not my way, but with the difficulties in taking care of the child and not knowing what to do now, I would ask you one favor."

"Ah cha," I said, squinting in sudden suspicion.

"I have some good charras, good quality, cream, you know? Cream? Normally I am never selling, but I am thinking the mother has not returned and I do not know if she will, and I am needing some extra cash."

I began to burst out laughing, tried to hold it, and burst out tittering instead. If this whole thing had been a hashish-pitch, it was the most ridiculously in-depth excuse to try to sell charras I'd ever heard. "Sure, dude, I'll take a look at your stuff. How much are you selling it for?"

"Fifteen hundred." He winced again. "Is good price, very nice stuff, fucking silver, man..." He pulled some out and handed it to me. I unwrapped it, pinched off a piece and squinted at it. It looked aight. Not the best I'd seen, not even close.

"I'll give you a thousand," I said. Wince winced so hard, that's when I thought of his nickname. The abandoned kid ran up to me and burrowed his face in my side, hitting me with soft fists, trying to get me to throw him around some more.

"My friend, please! I have told you, no? This very difficult for me, I am not knowing what to do. Fourteen hundred."

"Twelve." I stood up, picked up the kid, and started swinging him around by his wrists. He screamed with delight. "Twelve or I drop the kid!" I laughed to show I was joking, hoisted the kid up and gave him a smacking kiss on the forehead. Then I dropped him to his feet and he ran off.

"Thirteen, my friend. Thirteen very good." Wince didn't look pleased.

"Aw, hell. Thirteen-five. Why not? Just for the little dude's sake. Buy him some candy." We shook on it. Diablo, the little devil puppy who lived at Shesh Besh and earned his keep by looking adorable as he ripped holes in customers' pants and flesh, ran for the kid and they entwined in a whirling mass of furry and fleshy limbs, playful yips and squealing laughter intermingling perfectly with the restaurant sound-system's pounding dubstep.

The mother did eventually pick the kid up, or so I'm told. He stopped being around anymore, anyway.




                         PUB DANCE


As usual, I was hanging out at Shesh Besh. Sleeploop had graciously granted my request to teach me Backgammon, but was teetering dangerously over the point of patience as I pondered my next move. Simple mathematics had never been one of my strong points. If it wasn't for my friend The Last Princess, whom I'd shamelessly copied off of for most of high school, I would never have made it past ninth grade. Thinking in sixes instead of fives was even harder, even though I eventually learned that the points on the board and the subsequent dice rolls made it instinctively simple and aesthetically comprehensible. Timidly, I pushed one of my faded, chipped red wooden disks a tentative eight points, where it lay pitifully uncovered near a massing army of black opponents.

"What you do?" demanded Sleeploop. He shoved my pawn back to its original position. "Five-and-three. Here and here. See?" A different red disk had marched bravely forth, to be followed-up and protected by one of his companions.

"Oh, yeah," I said. Since Gammon had left, Sleeploop had certainly filled his gameshoes. "Thanks." He rolled the dice and instantly broke my ranks, protecting himself and making it nigh-impossible for me to make it home. Shit. I rolled again and began to move, but Sleeploop stopped me.

"No. You must roll again, it is... eh... not to be on top." One of the dice, though clearly reading six, had landed upon one of my own disks, apparently rendering it uncountable. I rerolled. Shit. A one and a two. Literally nothing to do. Sleeploop rolled double-sixes and promptly slapped three pairs of disks back to his home, crowing at my expense.

"Aw, fuck, you bastard!" I laughed.

 At that point the restaurant's mascot-dog Diablo suddenly darted out from under my feet, yapping to greet a new arrival. He was a British chap who for some reason I always thought of as Gustav. He had that kind of face. Not fat, per se, though certainly overweight; droopy under the chin yet somehow managing a square jaw at the same time. At first, frankly, I thought he looked like a bit of a twit. Though as his humor ran fast, dry and sarcastic, as befits a proper English bloke, I realized I'd misjudged him and even grew properly fond of him as the night passed. I hadn't spoken to him much, but he seemed at ease amongst the rest of my normal Shesh Besh crew.

"Allright, then?" Gustav greeted us. Sleeploop briefly looked up and nodded a salutation before returning his gaze to the board. Gustav took a seat and immediately pulled out a supply of charras and tobacco, which he began working into a smokeable mixture even as Sleeploop passed me the newly-lit spliff he'd just concocted. I took a heavy drag and unthinkingly reached for the Backgammon board. Incredibly, I made what was actually a good move. Even I could see that. And I could tell I'd done well by the fact that Sleeploop never corrected it. I sucked further on the paper-cylinder and passed it to Gustav.

"Bom," Gustav acknowledged, taking a deep drag. He coughed. Fuckin' hell," he said, "this is only the third anything I've smoked today."

"What?" I cried, mockingly taken-aback. "It's eighteen-thirty! What you been doing all day?"

Gustav laughed. "I've been sleeping actually, no lie. Saving up energy for the party, aren't I? Are you going?"

"A party?" Now Gustav had my full attention. "What kind of party?"

"Oh, you know, they have it every week, really. At Johnson's Pub, halfway to New Manali. Know it?"

"Oh yeah, I've seen that place. Actually I went in there the other night when I was pining for my ex girl, but alas, nothing to be found but booze and ugly solitude. What time does the party start?"

"Ten o'clock. But they usually kick everyone out by one in the morning."

That was early. But still, real dancing? I hadn't gone out to a dance party since I left the States, more than two months ago. In fact, just a day earlier I'd been saying to someone-or-other how much I wanted to go dance. Once again the universe was providing exactly what I wanted, irregardless of whether I believed in its benevolence. If there was a God, he definitely wasn't the believe-or-die arrogant bitch worshiped by the Christians. If dancing was a-happening, a-dancing I would go.

At around ten thirty, I began the fifteen-minute walk down the hill to Johnson's Pub. It was raining slightly, which I loved, being from the desert, and I was listening to my iPod as I strolled. Something about the texture of the damp night air, in combination with the mountain wind circulating the trees around me, dissolved my self-consciousness and I felt giddy and electrified. The Squirrel Nut Zippers were playing in my headphones and the wondrous jazz caused me to almost float down the road, my feet occasionally tapping the pavement as if to make sure I hadn't drifted off into the heavens.

Suddenly and almost without my bidding, my body began to whirl joyously to the music only I could hear. I bowed exuberantly to confused dogs, jumped up and clicked my heels at a passing barrel of monkeys, and positively skipped around a herd of bored trundling cows, who didn't care. Two or three times the blare of a horn made me turn my head in time to catch a car full of grinning Indian faces pumping their fists at me or giving me a thumbs up. I felt awesome. The shuffled-songs in my pocket switched to Zap Mama's triumphant tribute to self-confidence, "Miss Q'n", and the perfection betwixt the vibration in my ears and body synchronized and left me a helpless victim of my rhythmic movement down the road.

Eventually, huffing and puffing and realizing I was barely a third of the way there, I stopped to rest against an uprooted tree when yet another blaring horn squeezed around my headphones. I looked up to catch Gustav and an unfamiliar face waving at me from the rear window. I ran up.

"Hello mate! Fancy a ride?" asked Gustav.

"Lovely! Cheers, mate," I said, clambering inside. The stranger turned out to be the Asian-Canadian kid Qank I'd met on 4-20, who I barely remembered. The taxi bounced off down the road.

"Looking forward to the party, then?" Gustav asked.

"I dunno, what's it like? You've been before?"

"Yeah, I go every week. Well, I spend the weeks moving between here and Parvati Valley, usually. They throw lovely parties in Kasol, you should come to one. Real trance music, good acid, good cocaine, psychedelic lights... This is just at a pub, with music, and sometimes there's girls."

"Only sometimes?" I asked.

"Oh, don't worry, I know some girls who are coming tonight. Lovely ladies! But be prepared to have yer bum grabbed by some Indians, of course."

"What else is new?" I laughed. In a country where a lot of relationships are still put together by parents with economic ulterior motives, there is frankly a lot of unnatural gay shit going on. Unnatural because these dudes aren't gay, they're sexually-deprived straight men without a feminine outlet, which renders them rowdy, rambunctious and randy. It's not too out-of-place for some dude to grab your ass (my friend Cortez had his pinched by a cop, of all people), or try to rip off your clothes (especially on Holi), or to try to grab your balls (like that sadhu in Pushkar). As I've said before, I empathize. If it was me, if I was completely denied any type of sensual stimulant other than holding hands with other dudes, you wouldn't e'en want to leave your sheep around me, I'd be so damn horny. My inner Irishman would come out.

We made it to the bar, but were so late that Gustav had to use his well-known-status to call to others who would let us in. Once inside, it was vaguely disappointing, but not altogether a waste of an evening. It kind of felt like being at the VFW in Santa Fe before Dirt Girl came on and actually made people dance. I sidled my way to the bar, and to my astonishment noted they had tequila on the menu! Tequila! The drink of my homeland! Probably some pathetic Indian-imitated concoction, but nonetheless unavoidable. I ordered a double. To my surprise, they brought out a bottle of my old friend Jose Cuervo. Not bad for a pub halfway up a winding road in the Himalayas!

I danced. Not many other people did, but I did. Some cute girls were dancing, too, but sadly my personal method doesn't hold well for partners. I can contra-dance with a caller to some good fiddle tunes, but if electronic music is playing I just gotta flay around like an epileptic and hope I don't punch someone in the face. Regardless, at some point I opened my eyes enough to realize I was surrounded by girls, and all the other guys were glaring at me in jealousy. One particularly gorgeous, sultry girl was directly in front of me, as if she'd been trying to dance with me while avoiding my flailing arms. She noticed I was looking at her and leaned close.

"You're the only guy here who's really dancing," she said. I glanced around. True, all the other dudes were pulling that I'm-gonna-stand-here-with-my-beer-and-nod-my-head-awkwardly thing most guys do. I smiled at her and bowed.

"Sorry I don't really know how to dance with people, or I'd ask you to join me," I said.

"You just dance. I'll be here."

I danced. When I'd open my eyes she'd be right in front of me, either lost in the rhythm or watching me and grinning like she'd seen a pony take a shit on a snail.

When the night was over, we all stumbled towards the waiting, impatient taxi drivers. I was glad I was with Qark and Gustav and didn't have to walk the 2 kilometers back home. I watched her weave her way to the other taxi, when she suddenly turned. "I have to say goodnight to my dance buddy!" she slurred. We stumbled towards each other, clashed, and awkwardly hugged, before getting in our separate taxis and going on the complimentary journey back up to Old Manali.

"Shit," I said to myself. I was so caught up in just dancing, I never even got her name.



                         ACTUALLY, NO ACTUALLY

One day I got word that my ol' travel buddy Actually had appeared on the scene, two villages away in Vashist. Though we made plans to meet the following day, I had no particular plans and felt quite like wandering aimlessly in the mild rain. I decided to go wander around Vashist, which I hadn't checked out yet, and see if I bumped into her. Either way, I concluded, a nice high walk in the rain. Poifect.

I set off through the beautiful nature park leading to New Manali. I loved this path, the moss-covered boulders strewn about amidst the mammoth pine trees, and I tried to walk there at least once every couple days. If you followed a discreet little trail of painted white rocks instead of the main concrete pathway, it took you alongside the river all the way to the new city, and to what was frankly my favorite thing I'd yet seen in India: a tree growing out the side of a steep cliff face, grabbing tensely at the side of the trail with all its might. Its roots had created almost a perfectly circular rim around a ten-meter drop, the main girth of the trunk directly across from the edge. If you were careful, you could walk all the way around that mossy, wooden rim back to where you started.

Personally, I think they're cool, but after you've seen a couple dozen temples, they are all the same. What really gets my bewildered-noodle going at the majesty of beingness is natural stuff, like mountains and rocks and trees. I'm still pissed at myself that I didn't go to Hampi and see the crazy ethereal boulders whilst it was still cool enough down South. Oh well. Next time.

 As I entered the park, ducking through a jagged hole in the barbed wire fence rather than pay the 5 rupee entrance fee, I was immediately greeted by a sadhu who'd presented himself to me the day before. With a wide grin, he took my hand and shook it.

"Hallo my friend!"

"How's it going?" I kept walking and he quickly turned to hurry after me.

"Very good, very good. Where you go? New Manali?"

"Naw, I'm gonna walk into New Manali and then get a rickshaw to Vashist."

"Vashist!"

"Yeah. I just learned that one of my good friends, Actually, just arrived and I want to just go walk around and see if I happen to run into her."

"You go Vashist?"

"Yeah... I go see if I find my friend. In Vashist."

"I come with you?"

I hesitated. I kind of just wanted to walk around alone in the rain and see if I ran into Actually, but hell, why not? "Sure, ok." He fell into step beside me.

"Vashist, everyone know me in Vashist. Everyone know me. Everywhere everyone know. I am famous!" He grinned, blackened teeth under reddened lips. "All India, you go places, they know me. I am whole world famous, yes."

"Cool, dude, I know a lot of people around the world too."

"You want smoke?"

"Yeah, allright."

We sat by my favorite sight in India - more spectacular to me than the Taj Mahal or the floating white mansions of Udaipur, and even competing with the Karni Mata temple of rats - that wondrous tree gripping to the trail. The sadhu cocked his head in curiosity as I edged my way around the periphery to kiss the bark of the main trunk. I came back, and he began to load a chillum of straight charras, no tobacco in the mixture at all. After imbibing and sharing the stuff, obviously mushed together with all kinds of incense, the sadhu produced a near-empty pint of whiskey, which he gulped at with vigor. It was barely ten in the morning.

Ah hah, I thought. One of those sadhus, is he? He offered me a sip. Fuck it, if this guy's gonna follow me all the way to Vashist, fake lil' sadhu that he is, I might's well go for the ride. I took a small sip and handed the bottle back to him. He downed the remainder, threw the bottle over the cliff, where I heard a tinkle of shattering glass, and stood up briskly. "Chale."

Off we went, following the white stones which I'd accompanied myself with but with which the sadhu seemed unfamiliar. Yet he wouldn't shut up about how used to the place he was. "I know so many peoples in Vashist, you will see. I am famous! I show you many guest house, restaurant, all the best, they give you good price, Indian price. With me, you see. Get out of the rain, get good price on food. Very good. You come with me."

"Word, dude," I said, "but I'm actually looking forward to walking around in the rain. Where I am from, desert, like Rajasthan, yes? So I like rain. I want to walk in the rain, shanti, no hurry, maybe run into my friend. No guest house, no restaurant, just walk in rain, ok?"

"Yes," he replied confidently. "I show you best places. You come with me, no problem."

"Listen, thanks for the smoke down and sip of whiskey, but I am going by myself, understand? You can come with me if you really want to, but I am going wandering aimlessly, in the rain, and don't want to go anywhere in particular. OK? Just walk in rain. No guest house. No restaurant. OK?"

"Yes! Yes! I know all best places, no problem!"

I surrendered to the communication breakdown, knowing whatever path the sadhu wanted to take, I'd be going wherever the hell I wanted. I pulled a joint from my pocket. "Smoke?"

"No my friend! Only chillum! I am no smoke cigarette! No tobacco, no joint, nothing but chillum!"

"OK. Well, sorry I don't have anything else." I lit up. A familiar face appeared along the pathway, Asian-American like me. At first I thought it was 18-year-old Frothy and wanted to hide amidst the boulders, but realized it was Qank, the Canadian I'd met in Pao on 4-20. We shook hands and I handed him the joint.

"Hoy hoy," I said.

"Yo," Qank replied, inhaling deeply, "goin' to New Manali?"

"Naw, actually, I'm going to Vashist. I just learned my friend Actually is there and I wanna go walk around in the rain and maybe bump into her, maybe not. I just feel like a good rainwalk."

"Hah, Vashist is a piece of shit just like Old Manali, but feel free," said Qank.

"I'm WhiskeyDick," interrupted the sadhu.

Obviously, that's not his real name.

"Do you want to come with us?" WhiskeyDick continued. I glanced at him with curious disapproval.

"Yeah, ok," said Qank. He about-faced and began to walk with me and WhiskeyDick. He smoked nearly all of the joint before handing it back to me, I noticed, 'mm-hmm'ing and 'yeah, right'ing everything the little sadhu was saying, interrupting and not listening.

"India is number best country, all so much spiritual in everything," touted the sadhu.

Qank snorted. "Huh, yeah, dude, so much spirituality in poverty and filth everywhere, right?" He grinned at me. I furrowed my brows back at him in puzzlement.

We got to New Manali and I hailed a rickshaw. "My friend, you pay," said WhiskeyDick confidently. I felt quite irked. It's one thing to not say anything and enjoy the ride, which I was going to pay for anyway, but another altogether to straight-up shift payment onto me like I'm his bitch. I put it down to another communication failure and said nothing. Qank followed my former advice and soundlessly sidled into the rickshaw.

It was a very bumpy ride, even for a normal Himalayan rickshaw venture. Down the mountain, across the bridge, up the other mountain. Only about 6 kilometers altogether, but my bum felt like I'd gone on another camel safari. We neared the village center and hit a traffic jam of cows, rickshaws, goats and taxis. It was drizzling a little outside and I nearly jumped out to walk, but the jam suddenly cleared and the driver was able to drop us off right in front of the amazingly carved temple marking the hot spring entrance. I leaped out of the rickshaw in joy; Qank and WhiskeyDick were more reluctant.

"Ha, man, this sucks," said Qank. "It's raining. Fucking stupid weather."

"It's barely drizzling, c'mon," I replied. "Let's walk around a bit."

"Naw, let's find a restaurant to hang out at until the rain stops," said Qank. WhiskeyDick nodded enthusiastically and grabbed his arm.

"Yes, yes! I know many good restaurant!" cried WhiskeyDick.

"I kinda wanted to walk around in the rain and see if I happened to bump into my friend Actually," I began, but the others had already begun discussing which restaurant to visit. I rolled my eyes and chimed in. "How about Rainbow, I heard they were good." It was called 'the place to be' in Lonely Planet and I was hoping it were true.

It wasn't. It was completely deserted.

"Oh well," I said, "let's walk around in the rain!"

"Dude, fuck that! It's all cold and wet," whined Qank. "Let's go hang out somewhere and smoke some hash." Eventually I conceded to follow WhiskeyDick and Qank to a local place for tea, where the little sadhu loaded another chillum.

"Please, sir, may I have one chai?" asked WhiskeyDick. Sure, I nodded. He motioned to the waiter and I unzipped my bag to pull out my vest (it was getting kinda cold). WhiskeyDick noticed the bottle of whiskey I'd purchased earlier, for use in tonight's ventures.

"I can have sip of whiskey?" he inquired. Why not? I'd sipped his, and he'd smoked me down. I proffered him the bottle, which he gulped at two or three times, downing at least a third of the bottle.

"Woah, dude!" exclaimed Qank, "It's like not even noon yet!" The little sadhu grinned and began to stuff the whiskey bottle into his shoulder bag. "Can you believe these 'spiritual' guys?' quirked Qank.

I swiftly nipped the bottle from WhiskeyDick's fingers. "This is for me and friends tonight." He clasped his hands pitifully, scrunching up his face in anguish.

"Please, sir, one more sip!" he cried. Qank snorted into his chai.

"Dude, it's still early as hell and you already downed a whole bottle earlier! Fucking chill out!" I said. Qank looked at me and rolled his eyes. I zipped up my bag, whiskey inside, and tried to ignore the little sadhu, who'd ordered an omelette and was attacking it with relish. He offered me a bite, which I declined. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to go and fucking walk in the fucking rain and maybe run into my friend Actually. I wasn't planning on having a whiny entourage around. I turned to Qank. "Listen, no offense, I really came up here to just walk around in the rain and try to run into my friend Actually. You don't have to come; I know walking in the rain isn't everyone's thing, but I really want to right now, so I'm going to go do that and you're welcome to come if you want, but if you don't, don't."

"Naw, I'll come, dude. Why not?" I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Honestly, I kind of wanted to walk around by myself at this point, but hell, that being the case I should never have let WhiskeyDick follow me in the first place. My fault. I stood and pulled some cash from my wallet to pay for the chai. "Kitne?" I asked the restaurant owner. He stood silently for a second, mumbling under his breath as he calculated.

"Sixty," he finally said.

"What?" I cried. "For three chais?"

"Three chais, one omelette," he replied. I turned to glare at the sadhu, who was licking the last bits of egg from his plate.

"The omelette wasn't mine." I said. WhiskeyDick looked up from his vertical plate, shock and hurt in his eyes.

"Sir, you pay for my omelette!" he cried.

"You asked if you could get a chai, you didn't say anything about an omelette. You didn't even ask me. Hell no I'm not paying for your omelette."

"You must pay!" Did he really just say I must?

"No, motherfucker!"

His eyes widened pitifully. "Please sir, I have no money..."

"Well, you should've thought about that before buying an omelette, huh? If you'd have asked me, maybe, maybe I would've bought you an omelette, but you didn't ask and I'm not paying for it. You can't just expect people to cover your bills because you're tagging along after them after you invited yourself. Sorry." I handed the restaurant owner the money for the chais and shrugged an apology. He waggled his head in return, and I left the restaurant. I just wanted to start walking already, but at that moment Qank recognized two passing hippies and we stopped to exchange salutations. This gave WhiskeyDick enough time to work out some kind of compromise with the restaurant and rejoin our company. I glared at him, but he grinned back, very consciously oblivious.

Qank's friends made their excuses and meandered off. Qank and Whiskeydick looked expectantly at me. "Is this little fucker still with us?" asked Qank. WhiskeyDick grinned at him. "So, where we going?"

"You follow me, my friend, there is waterfall! This way!" The sadhu made off, away from the city square. I stayed where I was.

"No, dude, listen... I don't want to go to a waterfall, I don't want to be shown any sights, I want to wander, aimlessly and probably in circles, just boringly around the village for an hour or two. You can follow me if you want to follow me, but I am not following you anywhere. Ok? Understand? No problem?"

"Ok, no problem!" he cackled. "No problem!"

"So," said Qank,"where are we going?"

"I don't know!" I almost exploded. "I just want to walk around!" God damn, why didn't I insist on coming alone? There was an uncomfortable silence for a minute.

"This way, very nice!" cried the sadhu. He began to bound away. Fuck it, I thought, and trailed behind. Qank shook his head and followed. WhiskeyDick led us on a merry green path which was, in all honesty, quite beautiful. Trundling over little streams and bridges, passing goats and little shacks and Nepali children playing and giggling. Every restaurant or guest house we passed, however, WhiskeyDick would begin reciting its merits and trying to get us to go inside, ignoring our increasing frustration with his lack of tact or shame.

"Nope!" I began to interrupt every time he opened his mouth.

"Sir, here is very nice guest-"

"Nope!"

"I know good restaurant, just over-"

"Nope!"

"Want buy some good charras? Just this way, my friend-"

"Nope!" Qank began to chorus the world along with me. The little sadhu wasn't put off at all, and continued to trot briskly along in front of us, stopping abruptly whenever a potential sales-opportunity presented itself. We came to a gateway leading to a courtyard, at which point the sadhu was just vanishing around the next bend. Qank and I exchanged a look and without saying a word, ducked into the courtyard and up the stairs, where we crouched on the balcony.

"Fuck yeah! We ditched that little ass," said Qank.

We silently watched the cricket game below for a while.

"So," I eventually said, "this your first time in India?" One of the usual questions. Traveler-small-talk usually consists of the following: where are you from, how long have you been here, is this your first time, how many times have you been, where else are you going, where else have you gone, etc.

"Ha, yeah, and probably the last," he said.

"Really? Why? This is the best country in the world!" I said.

"Psssht. Not for me. I fucking hate it here. It's so noisy and trashed and ugly..."

"It's too vivid?" I chimed in, in a tribute to the Tom Robbins character Switters.

"Yeah."

"But, we're in the mountains!" I cried. "It's hardly even India at all! It's like... almost sanitized up here." I almost spat the word, ugly as I've always found it.

"Meh, I can't wait to get back to Canada. I'm done with this place."

At that moment, WhiskeyDick somehow located us. Seemingly oblivious to our attempt to ditch him, he bounded up the stairs and sat down next to us with a plunk. "Ah, you like cricket?" he said, glancing at the game below.

"Yeah, cricket's aight," I halfheartedly responded.

WhiskeyDick looked longingly at my backpack. "My friend, please, one more sip of whiskey?"

"Allright, fuck this," said Qank. He stood up and moved intimidatingly towards the little sadhu. "What's your problem, bro? You can't have his whiskey. We don't want you following us anymore. Go the fuck away."

"Woah, dude, chill," I said. "He's a little annoying, but you don't have to get all pissed." Qank held up a hand.

"I got this, dude," said Qank. He took a step towards WhiskeyDick and pushed him. "Fuck you want, bro? Huh? Fucking leave us alone!" He pushed him again.

"Dude, cut it out!" I said. Poor lil' WhiskeyDick looked shaken.

"You wanna fight, you little fuck?" said Qank, pushing him again. I blinked, turned, and walked down the stairs, began to speed-walk down the path back into Vashist. I wanted no part of this shit. Who'd have thunk that between a Canadian and an American, it would be the former to escalate an annoyance into a fight?

"Yo, dude, wait up!" came Qank's voice from behind me. "What you running away for? Why you walking so fast?"

"That was fucking stupid," I called back. He caught up to me, and looked a little taken aback.

"What? I got him to leave. You scared? Why you running away?"

"I don't want to be around either of you stupid motherfuckers right now. Why the fuck were you trying to start a fight?"

"Hey, I was just trying to help you out..."

"Yeah, well, I don't appreciate your help. Escalating shit doesn't fucking help, especially in India. You're just acting like an asshole. Yeah, he was annoying, but that's no call to start pushing and shoving. Leave me alone." I started walking away, mumbling. "All I fucking wanted was to fucking walk in the fucking rain and maybe fucking run into Actually... "Qank hesitated, than followed me.

"Hey, sorry dude, I just wanted to see if it would help..."

"Yeah, well, it didn't. Fighting never helps. Idiot."

We walked wordlessly for a while. The tension began to settle and we started talking. For some reason, it seemed my chiding of Qank had increased his respect for me, and he no longer pessimistically put-down every subject that came up. I actually began to like the guy. Eventually I realized we'd joined an unfamiliar path, which was heading down the mountain towards the river. The rain began to pick up. Even I was getting sick of being damp. Ok, fuck this, I thought. Failure of a mission. Oh well.

I stopped next to a steep incline and kicked a rock over the edge, watching in tumble down until it came to rest in a pile of garbage with an audible tinkle of breaking glass. I turned around.

"Let's go back to Old Manali," I said. And we did.

Amurrrrrkunz in Manali

Vivid dreams slowly gave way to consciousness, vanishing from my perception like sifted flour, leaving only a residue of disconnected, fleeting images. A giant wave, a floating garden, tinkling laughter like elven wind chimes... my sluggish brain quit its feeble attempts to link them into any sort of logical narrative as I opened my eyes and took in my dismal room. A ray of sunlight cut through the dust, illuminating my crumpled magician's coat where I'd unthinkingly discarded it in my delirium the night before. Actual warmth penetrated the atmosphere; in my slumber I'd even tossed aside one of my blankets. No pain remained in my stomach, and through the night the bleeding, opened callouses on my rectum had sealed. It was like the day before had been a mere nightmare, a feverish hallucination, or simply hadn't occurred. Except, of course, for the yellow, potato-shaped stain still ruining the white sheets of my second mattress.

I rolled over, avoiding it, and sat up. I felt remarkably fit. Okay. Let's pack up and move to Old Manali, shall we? Get the fuck out of here before they realize what I did to their bed. I threw my few possessions into my oversized rucksack, collected my passport from the front desk, and split as quickly as possible, my jaunty and hurried pace down the road a striking juxtaposition to the anus-clenched zombie-walk of yesterday.

Too lazy to attempt the trek with my huge bag and, despite today's well-being, still a little cautious about being caught shit-pants-ed in the middle of the street again, I got blatantly ripped-off by a rickshaw-wallah for the three kilometers instead. I regretted nothing. The sun illuminated the fertile greenery all around; kingly pine trees, reminiscent of Californian redwoods in their immensity, sprouted from the mountains like dozens of giant, prickly-bearded chins; groups of colorful hippies strolled amiably among Indians, Nepalese, Tibetans, dogs and cows of all ages; above, peeking over the pines like a mischievous four-year old playing Hide-And-Seek, the classic white-glazed Himalayan-postcard summits were just visible, wisps of sentimental clouds drifting picturesquely among them as if aware of their legendary majesty.

We crossed the river. Strewn hither and thither along the banks and boulders were assorted ropes strung across the tumbling current, with lines of honeymooning Indian couples waiting their turn to harness up, cross halfway, and be bounced invigoratingly up and down by the grinning zipline-wallahs. Whoops of exhilaration from the girls echoed amongst the steady roar of the river and occasional horns from cars and buzzings from rickshaws. The buildings of Old Manali, mostly guest houses and restaurants with names like "Chill Out", "Drifter's Inn", and "Hotel Relax" sat above, dotted alongside the twisting mountain road, with plenty of trees and grassy paths extending between them.

I watched carefully for the sign to Rainbow Guest House, the one touted at me from the Nepalese guy the day before, and located it about halfway up through the town, whereupon I directed the rickshaw-wallah to stop. As if waiting for me, the guest-house's owner stood at the driveway entrance, arms folded across his grey woolen sweater-vest. A look of distaste lay over his face in a scowl, though a twitch at his lips made me unsure whether it was in jest or not. He unfolded his arms with some theatrics and shook a finger in my direction.

"You said you would come yesterday, one hour! I wait for you two, three hours." He squinted and raised his eyebrows at the same time; they vanished beneath his colorful, brimless hat, sending both a look of exasperation and good humor. A good trick, that.

I'm going to call him Cappy.

"Yeah, dude, sorry. My stomach erupted like Vesuvius yesterday and I was doubled over in pain pretty much all night. I wanted to come, but I was afraid of painting the streets yellow. It sucked. I can show you the laundry I need to do if you don't believe me." I heard a stifled laugh from the rickshaw-wallah behind me as I untangled my bag and stepped free. He gunned his motor and took off in what I would've thought was an impossible U-turn, killing the engine almost immediately to coast back downhill to New Manali.

Cappy's expression didn't change. "You said one hour. I wait three hours. Now I give room to someone else. Full book. Why you not coming yesterday?"

"Well, like I said, I guess I was trying to mimic the geyser at Yellowstone and I shat my fucking pants. Bed too. You're lucky I wasn't staying at your guest house. Jeez, I'm sorry, fuck, I'll find somewhere else." I began to leave. All at once, Cappy's scowl melted into the smile that had almost been there the whole time, and his laugh echoed down the street, causing a pack of feral dogs to glance over in minute curiosity and a little Tibetan girl to slip on a cow patty.

"Ok, ok my friend, ok," he said, still laughing, "tonight you stay at my friend house. Nice place! The Isreali, he will leaves in three, five days, no problem. Then you come to my place. OK? No problem. Come with me." He grabbed my arm and led me across the street and up a delightful little uneven road, shadowed by a great green cliff cut with a little stone path. For the first time, I noticed that every single patch of weeds covering the landscape contained at least one, usually many more cannabis plants, growing cheerfully and plentifully. They seemed to be amicable neighbors with stinging nettles.

We went up the hill and I checked in to his 'friend's' place. As soon as I'd lay down my bag, Cappy leaned in close and whispered to me, "Don't tell that you move to my place after. OK? Just you and me between." Yeah, yeah, I know. I rolled my eyes at him, smiled, and nodded. He grinned back and clapped a strong palm on my shoulder. "What you think, my friend, you like something? Hash?"

I couldn't avoid a rueful smile as I admitted that, actually, the events of yesterday had overshadowed my intended drug-purchase. Without skipping a beat, he reached into his pocket and produced with a flourish a plastic bag with a hard little black blob, which he immediately broke open to display the faint green tinge inside. He held a lighter to it for a second or two and held the smoking ornament to my nose. I shook my head.

"Naw, sorry, dude, I don't have a sense of smell. Never have. I lost it when I was way little, after banging my head too many times." I reached out and took the morsel. "Looks nice, though."

It did indeed. Much less crumbly, much more compact, and with a creamier, greener inside than anything I'd seen up until this point on my travels. It appeared Manali lived up to its reputation. "How much?" I asked.

"Two thousand," he said confidently. I whistled.

"Damn, dude, I haven't paid more than like eight hundred since I got to India!" I lied. I'd been flagrantly ripped off when I first hit Varanasi. That motherfucker charged me two grand also. And I'd later been informed it was obviously cut with cow manure. I mean, really. At least cut it with incense, like everyone else does, which still fucks your throat up like you'd gargled razor blades but at least you're not literally smoking shit.

"My friend, this very good quality," said Cappy. I studied it like I was a pro, and though in truth I was still very amateur at judging hashish quality, it was easily better than anything I'd yet procured and ingested. But still, Jesus, two thousand?!

Rupees, of course. Not dollars. Jesus. Forty bucks, people. For ten grams, or a tollah in, ahem, street lingo in India. Yeah. I'm a gangsta. And, being a gangsta, there ain't no fuckin' way I'm going to pay forty fucking bucks for ten grams of some of the best hash in the world. Do I look like a chump?

"OK," I said. I pulled the two grand from my pocket and exchanged it with Cappy, who grinned, saluted me, and sauntered off. I shut the door.

Shit.

Why'd I do that?

Fucking twenty meters away there was probably cheaper hash for sale. I could probably ask at the damn jewelry shop and nab some cheaper shit. And probably better. Fuck.Stupid Hoku. Oh well. Forty bucks. Still cheaper than the States, and it's actual straight-up legendary Manali hash, like the dude in Varanasi had claimed with the cow-shit. Now I need some cigarettes, some papers, and a lighter. It hath beguth.

I got the munchies after a while. I was nicely baked and found myself wandering aimlessly. Almost everyone on the street nodded and smiled at me in passing, and a handful of people pursed their lips and arched their eyebrows in approval at my attire (I was currently clad in my curled, pointed shoes, a houndstooth bowtie, Diamond-patchwork Ali Baba pants in all manner of color, and of course my pimp new magician's coat draped stylishly over a black-and-white checkered shirt) and, nodding, met my eyes with a simple "Nice," to which I would grin and bow thanks. Nearby my guest-house was a parking lot full of children in maroon school uniforms playing cricket, with a drowned puppy lying mournfully disregarded at its entrance. I made a note to return with my camera for a shot of the dog's corpse. A little further up the hill, I noticed a sign for a restaurant called Shesh Besh: Fresh and Funky Restaurant, with psychedelic art all over the walls and numerous hippies smoking joints at the tables. It piqued my interest.

I drifted through the gate and down the steep driveway, and noticed I was grinning like an idiot. I had, in truth, been smiling at people all day, quite content and happy to be in Manali, but now that I was high the silly paranoia kicked in and I began to wonder if people thought I was smiling because I was high. Shit. They know. The smile left my face abruptly, as if it had suddenly remembered a previous engagement. I sat at a sunlit table.

Right there in front of me was a folded backgammon set with a cheerful mouse hand-painted on it. The slogan read 'Keep Smiling Always.' My delighted countenance returned.

"I like Manali," I whispered to myself.





Over the next week, I settled into a comfortable routine. Within a day I'd moved to Cappy's guesthouse, right on the river, with a field of apple trees, yellow flowers, and marijuana plants leading right up to the dancing current. I had a genuine hot-water shower - my first in India, a nicely-sized room, and a private balcony overlooking the field and river. The courtyard was always filled with children playing cricket, volleyball or tag, and Cappy's wife was usually at work on her amazingly crude handmade loom, weaving incredible garments with fresh goat or rabbit fur. I'd awaken, smoke a joint to myself and roll another to take with me, go for breakfast at either Shesh Besh, The Beat Bums (a brand-new cafe run by a couple, with a lending book library and actual, honest-to-goodness beef hamburgers) or Dylan's Roasted and Toasted (a cafe known for it's Bob Dylan-theme, with good pancakes, chocolate chip cookies, and real fucking coffee. Some of these places literally put fucking Nescafe in an espresso machine for a latte. Don't get me started), use le internet, and go walking. I quickly discovered the National Park between Old and New Manali, a gorgeous trek that leads one through the pines and mossy boulders along the riverside instead of trudging up the steep, ugly concrete road.

The weather was pretty dismal: rain and more rain. As a result, I found myself reading a little more than a book a day to accompany my numerous solitary joints. I contemplated things and found, to my surprise, that I'd gone through a foundational philosophical shift of some magnitude almost without realizing it. Growing up surrounded by old hippies who'd traveled to India over and over in search of spiritual fulfillment, who'd all gained gurus and delved deeply into the rigors of their own consciousness, I suddenly realized my own interests lay in nothing of the sort, and indeed hadn't for years. No particular profound notion overtook me with this realization, nor any feeling of resentment or wish for rebellion against my upbringing. It was simply interesting to note that, quite easily and out-of-the-blue, I could disregard the entire notion of 'spirit' without altering my worldview in the slightest. Except maybe that it gave me one whole less thing to worry about.

As the days passed, I leisurely attended to my few necessary productive activities. I got my laundry done, sewed my Due Return patch and a few others onto my magician's coat, purchased a chillum, a stone, a cleaning stick, and safi material from a little stand, took the plastic wrapping off of my mattresses so they wouldn't rustle when I moved, and rearranged my little room to better suit my character and feel more homely - a false nose hanging here, playing cards there, etc. The only thing missing was friends, and I realized with a start that I needed to meet some Americans in the next few days or I'd have no one to share four-twenty with.

Luck, as always, was with me. The next morning I trudged up the now-familiar hill to The Beat Bums for a full English breakfast complete with pork sausages, to find the place chock-full of Americans. Well, three of them, to be exact. Two pimply lads shoveling food into their mouths and subsequently spewing it over the table as they strove to interrupt one another, and a disinterested, dreadlocked hippie in the corner, who was pouring thoughtfully over a fashion magazine and occasionally toking the joint hanging from his fingertips. I sat next to the younguns, at the only seat available.

"Yo," I interrupted after a particularly violent tornado of chewed egg flew from the mouth of the Asian-looking fellow next to me, "you American?"

He nodded, raising a glass of water to his still-overflowing mouth and somehow washing the sludge down. "Yeah, dude, fuck," he spewed.

I'm going to call him Frothy. His blond friend, sitting across from him and attempting to construct a spaghetti-milkshake within his jaw, I'm going to call Rrist.

"Word, me too," I said. "I'd been looking for Americans to hang out with, being as it's 4-20 the day after tomorrow." Despite their lack of table hygiene, I forced a smile and held out my hand, which was ignored. "I'm Hoku."

Frothy nodded like he'd already heard and didn't care, only to throw a food-filled rant across the table over the voice of his friend Rrist, who'd been quaffing about how glad he was to be in a city that wasn't overrun with poor people.

"Fucking right? Like thank God and shit. Motherfucking India, man, I'm fucking psyched for the mountain, though, shit, the slopes and the -"

" - all shitting in the street and they don't even give a shit and they don't even have toilet paper with them, how the fuck - "

" - fucking hit the powder and we should've done this the whole time instead of volunteering at that stupid fucking -"

"- HA HA HA HA a fucking stump for a leg!"

I nodded to myself. Oh yeah. That's why I usually don't seek out Americans.

My food arrived. I began to eat and politely tried to shield my plate from their exuberant mastication. Frothy motioned to the dreadlocked guy in the corner, who I hadn't heard so much as a peep from.

"Anyway," said Frothy, turning his attention towards me in a torrent of chapati speckles. I discreetly covered my baked beans on toast. "We're leaving tomorrow, fuckin' no four twenty for us, but that guy," here he jerked his thumb towards the hippie, "Snowman, he'll fucking be here. Shit. He's from Colorado. I can't believe I didn't bang that babe in Rishikesh..." He was talking to his friend again.

To their, uh... credit?... these kids were young. Maybe that's an excuse. They spoke with annoying voices that sometimes cracked like fine china if they got too excited. Their bodies bounced up and down as they spoke, like yipping puppies who hadn't been housetrained. As if finishing a sentence was an illustration of incompetence, the lads fell upon hesitating periods or innocent commas in a flurry, flourishing their newly-formed opening syllables like broadswords. With the added casualties of the menus and magazines spattered with gory remains of half-chewed morsels from their snoutlike lips, the scene didn't half resemble a battlefield. It was exhausting just to watch. Rrist went to the bathroom, and I stood and crossed the room to greet the Coloradan, Snowman.

"Hey," I started, "you're from Colorado?"

He ignored me, or didn't hear me, his eyes dancing greedily upon the magazine in his lap and the spread-eagled, almost-nude model Photoshopped there. I stood awkwardly for another second or two, then sat on the couch. Jimi Hendrix wailed from a nearby speaker into my right ear.

Oh well. With nothing else to do, I grabbed the mixing bowl off the table and pulled out my hash and lighter; I began to roll a joint. At least I could smoke down the way cool couple who ran the place and browse the remaining books in their library. I'd just finished a series of moving short stories by Saadat Hasan Manto about the Partition of India after the British pulled out, and the bloodshed from both Hindu and Muslims against their neighbors in the subsequent carnage. I was looking for something a little lighter. Like Chuck Pahlaniuk.

Suddenly, the dreadlocked Coloradan let out a whooping bark of a cough, making me jump. He thrust the magazine toward me. "DAMN motherfucker, she's the hottest fucking thing I've ever seen, right? RIGHT! HURNHURNHURNhurnhurnhurn..." He trailed off into another guttural laugh. I studied the image. It was a sexy, typical airbrushed model, splayed out in front of a tree. Blond hair. Eyeshadow. Completely unoriginal, without a trace of her own face. She could've been anybody. I nodded appreciatively and handed the magazine back. Snowman ripped a piece of paper out of his notebook and stuck it between the pages, next to the model's perfectly Photoshopped neck. "I'm making footnotes, HURNHURNHURNHURNhurnhurn!" he said. I nodded again.

"So," I tried again, "you're from Colorado?"

"Yeah, you? HURNHURNHURNhurnhurnhurn." What a guy. What a sense of humor. I liked him, though. Anyone who can laugh just answering a straightforward question must be pretty happy. Or drunk.

"New Mexico. We're neighbors! We should chill for four-twenty."

"Aw, shit, four twenty! HURNHURNHURNhurnhurn. When is that shit? HURNHURNhurn."

"Uh, the day after tomorrow."

Frothy had come over in curiosity and grabbed the magazine from Snowman. "Shit, man, you think she's cute, shit, there was this girl in Rishikesh, shit, man, like damn, she was fucking HOT my brother, allright? Like smoking hot, like damn. She looked like this but like way hotter, like so much hotter, although, ha ha ha ha, it was fuckin' hard to tell at first 'cause she had short hair, you know what I'm saying, like shit - "

"I've always considered girls with short hair cute," I offered. Not that anyone was listening.

"- but she was fucking fine, my brother, like damn, if she hadn't had that short hair she would look exactly like this model, only, like way hotter, you know what I'm saying..." Frothy went on like that for a while. Now there was no food in his mouth, he wasn't quite spattering the walls, but his seemingly endless monologue barely left room for breath and I noticed a white foam coalescing at the corners of his mouth. I shuddered and resisted the urge to hand him a napkin. His buddy Rrist came back from the bathroom, his wrists flopping lamely about his hips.

"Oh, shit, that looks just like -"

"I know, right -"

" - that girl in Rishikesh, right, fuckin' Ver-"

"Veronica, only she - "

" - only she was way hotter."

" - way hotter."

"Way hotter."

Thus agreed, they simultaneously downed the rest of their milk. What weird kids, I thought. Was I that loud and interruptive when I was their age?

"Hey," I said. "How old are you?"

They wiped their mouths with their sleeves (finally, I thought, in the case of Frothy) and chorused, "Eighteen."

"Uh huh," I said. Made sense. Snowman caught my eyes and rolled his. We exchanged a grin. Fuckin' eighteen year olds. Turned out they were rich little spoiled eighteen-year-olds, too... just my favorite kind of person. Though I would be remiss if I hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity. They insisted on showing us their rooms, barely bigger than mine though connected, for which they were paying fifteen thousand rupees a night, smoked us down numerous times, and gave us some acid, although it did nothing for me but leave me with a body high lasting all night that prevented me from sleeping.

Rich kids may be rich kids, but they're also rich kids.

Shitty Times in Manali.

I woke up in a completely unfamiliar state. I was cold. I was fucking freezing. What the hell? For almost two months now I'd barely been able to tolerate a sheet over me while sweating under the too-slow fans of various hotel rooms, and now I was cold? Screw this. I should've stayed in Rajasthan.

As I shivered myself awake, I realized that it wasn't just the temperature keeping me from comfort. I was lying in a sticky puddle of some kind, soaking my pants and shirt and the mattress below. Great, I thought. I must've had a sex dream. Wish I could remember it, 'cause judging from the size of the puddle it was quite a good one. I rolled over, thankful for the clean, dry, second mattress plunked up against the first to create the illusion of a double-bed. Then I glanced back.

My original mattress was stained a kind of ochre-yellow, the middle of the drippy puddle still a centimeter or two deep despite my body no longer creating a depression for it to collect in. Eww fucking eww. I'd actually shat the bed. I shat the fucking bed. I'm twenty-four years old and I just fucking took a shit in my bed.

I can't believe this.

As I stood up to lurch to the bathroom to grab some toilet paper, I realized that I was feeling incredibly shitty.

Figuratively, I mean. Physically. And literally.

On top of being wet and cold, my stomach felt like I was about to deliver that kid from Pakistan who was born with six legs who's been in the news a lot lately. I stumbled over my backpack, heaving and gasping, and fell onto the toilet just in time for a geyser to erupt from my rear. A second spurt threatened to lift me off the seat and slam my helpless body into the hot-water heater above my head. An unstoppable fury of yellowish liquid gushed from me in a godlike torrent, unrelenting and unceasing, heedless to my eventual desperate prayers and sobbing pleas.

This went on for about ten minutes. I could go on in great detail about the contents of what emptied themselves from me during that time, but I think I've gotten scatological enough for everyone by this point. Apologies for my obscenity. However, if it's painful to read about, rest assured that living through that particular layer of Hell was much, much worse. By the time the remains of my badly-digested foodstuffs had slowed to a mere trickle, the flesh around my asshole was raw and red and burned like someone was holding a lit pack of cigarettes to it. Wiping that sonofabitch left me whimpering like a beaten puppy. I turned on the shower to wash myself and screamed as I realized the hot water heater was merely decorative. I gently cleaned myself as best as I could, shivering, crying slightly and feeling pathetic and awful, before pulling on three layers of clothing and gingerly limping to the door, each step sending sharp pain into both my tummy and my nether orifice.

I needed warmth. Wincing and goose-stepping down the driveway and around the hill, I deliriously looked around. I was out of it. I could have sworn I'd just stepped onto the Isle of Wight, in England, where my mother lived. There were Indians walking around, sure, but on the whole they were much lighter-skinned than the general populace of Rajasthan or Uttar Pradesh, and plus, they were all wearing sweater-vests and carrying umbrellas. It was raining slightly, the nippy wind reddening my cheeks and tearing up my eyes. Was I sure I was still in India? Where are the cows? Those dogs over there, they're wearing collars. They look well-fed. Holy shit, that dude's even leaning down to pet them. And he's not doing it really hard, with a stick.  Where am I?

Disoriented, each step burning my butt and gurgling my guts, I nearly got run over by a rickshaw. Oh good. I was still in India. Just down the street from my guest house, luckily enough, I found a little store selling long johns, gloves, scarves, undershirts and other little necessities for keeping oneself from freezing. I pulled on the additional layers in the toilet outside, took a deep breath, and tried to collect myself. I felt like I had to go to the loo again but I was terrified of the force of my excretions splattering all over the Indian-style squat toilet, so I clenched my perineum as best I could and walked, stiff-bodied and uncomfortable, back to my guest house, where I barely managed to fall back onto the toilet before another rumbling vibration of squelch exited me.

Fuck, I gotta do the laundry, I thought to myself. What the fuck? How could I even have anything left in my stomach to spew out? All I even put into it yesterday was, let's see, half of that shitty sandwich... was that it? Oh, yeah, I also had that really gross-looking lamb in Chandigarh. That shit was nasty. Probably the lamb.

And. And. Oh, right... I also had half a non-alcoholic beer when the bus stopped, and uh... a quarter-pint of whiskey. And a quarter-pint of rum.

That probably didn't help.

I wanted to check out Old Manali today, a twenty-minute walk or five-minute rickshaw ride. Despite my lack of well-being, I preferred the idea of walking even with my arse on fire. So I cleaned up, dressed warm, and set out. Manali was gorgeous. Huge pine trees made me feel at home; the path wound next to a beautiful river. Clouds danced through the peaks, clearing just enough now and then to glimpse the majestically towering white peaks of the classic glacier-capped Himalayan mountains above.

Halfway up the mountain, As I gauged it, I was stopped by a Nepali dude touting his new guest house. I liked the guy, the place was 200 rupees a night, in Old Manali where I wanted to go, so I promised to meet up with him in an hour. He told me that I wasn't even a quarter-way up the path to Old Manali yet. At that point, I was reaching the end of my comfort. I needed to eat something, put something solid and healthy in my poor stomach, so I about-faced and strolled back into New Manali.

That's when it happened. A shudder butterflied its way through my bowels, signifying dangerous tidings. Oh, please, no, I said to myself. I clenched my buttocks, to no avail. The shuddering buzzed lower, then lower still. And out.

I'd just shat three pairs of pants at once, in public. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I slowly turned and continued my walking-mummy impersonation back toward my guest house, repulsed at myself and at the drips running down my legs. I realized I had no idea how to get back. I hadn't thought to store that particular nugget of wisdom in my brain when setting off. I went down the only street I recognized and tread slowly up and down the same path over and over again. Fuck, I thought to myself. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Dead end. Different path. Different dead end. Fuck fuck fuck. I've been going up and down this same fucking street so long the shit on my legs is dry. Fuck fuck fuck. I squatted by a parked car and started crying. Why was this happening to me? Well, probably because I ate shitty food and washed it down with too much mixed liquor. But you know, like in a pathetic, woe-is-me kind of way, why was this happening to me? Why, God, why?

Eventually I found my way back again, washed again in cold water, and put on the last of my clean clothes. I really needed to do laundry, bad. I went to the reception desk of the hotel to see if they had a laundry service, but there was actually a sign up that said "Wash Clothes No Allowed," so that was useless. I found a pharmacy and picked up anti-diarrhea pills and soothing lotion for my raw ass flesh, and by that time it was already getting dark. I went to a Chinese food place and ordered nice, soothing soup and lemon-ginger-mint tea. I was feeling incredibly sorry for myself and lonely. I wanted friends. I wanted a hug. I wanted someone to bring me tea and tell me everything was going to be ok. I wanted to go home to my cold, dark hotel room with soiled sheets, curl up on the clean mattress, and have myself a damn good cry.

I went home and did exactly that.

The Rocky Road to Dublin. I Mean Manali.

I'd taken the bus ride from Pushkar to Ajmer so many times now it was almost boring. As the bus wove and bounced its way up one side and down the other of the small mountain separating the towns, my knees automatically adjusted to every bump and sway of the vehicle as it turned, stopped or accelerated. I almost didn't have to hold on to the railing any more. Standing, cramped, in a mass of sweating bodies, we passed the all-too-familiar sights: the women and children balancing enormous bundles of wood on their head walking between towns; the advertisements hand-painted on the rocks for various guest houses (my favorite: Hotel Pratful Palace); the temples; tentative Indian couples nervously holding hands on the spiraling, cement overlook perched amidst the stone near the mountain's top; the barrel of black-faced monkeys grooming each other and occasionally fighting; the dogs lying blearily in the sun, and the cows, cows everywhere. The bus lurched and pulled onto an unfamiliar road. The buses from Pushkar to Ajmer and back seem to deposit their passengers almost at a whim; also, sometimes the fare is ten rupees, sometimes it's twelve, and sometimes it's fifteen. Occasionally I don't get charged at all.

Suddenly, the bus lurched into reverse and began going backwards, the wrong-way down the street. Slowly, haltingly, we reverse-avoided beeping cars and trucks, and then U-turned and began to head back the way we'd come, before jerking into a strange dirt road leading seemingly nowhere. Perplexed, I looked around. The faces on the bus were eager.

We trundled onward through the darkened narrow streets, squeezing around turns that I was sure were impossible, avoiding concrete pillars and walled courtyards by less than an inch. The ticket-taker was throwing himself on and off of the bus every few meters to guide the busdriver, screaming "Chalo chalo chalochalochalo!"

Occasionally there was a jarring screech as he misjudged, delighting the passengers, who were grinning and laughing and standing up and pressing against the windows to watch the seemingly-impossible task handled. The left rear tire went off the road and the bus lurched precariously, finally righting itself, to much general applause. I tapped the shoulder of the gentleman next to me.

"Uh, excuse me," I asked. "Where are we?"

He grinned and pointed out the window. "Old town."

"But, erm, we are going back to the main street, right?" He waggled his head and turned back to enjoying the ride. I considered getting off the bus and hailing a rickshaw, but at that point we'd left any other traffic far behind us and taken so many turns I didn't know where the hell I was. To my relief, we eventually turned back onto the main street and continued the journey. No one had entered or exited the bus the whole time. I guess everyone on the bus had simultaneously decided we were going on a little tour of Old Town for fun, or something? Maybe we'd been ahead of schedule and had time to kill. I don't know. We finally got to the main bus stand (after another two or three likewise detours).

I pulled myself out of the window to avoid the line to the door and hopped into the street. A rickshaw skeeted around me, horn buzzing like a cacophonous swarm of mechanical bees. I looked around and quickly found my bearings - woefully amazed that I could, having been here so many times - and set off in the direction of Mangilal tailors. I hoped the damn coat would fit, was fit, and rocked. I hopped the ramshackle remains of a demolished building, littered with piles of garbage waist-high, and clambered over them. Mangilal's was a strange sight; a giant glass building plastered with images of models in stylish attire, a mere glance at the place suggesting imposing wealth and power, yet the quickest way to get there was to climb over this ruined building and trash piles. India all over.

I hopped the second wall, slipped a bit on a cow patty, collected myself, and entered. Without even acknowledging the men in suits standing around to help customers - I knew the drill by now - I walked straight to the Employees Only section, pulled open the door, and skipped up the stairs. The polite old gentleman in charge of the place stood and warily shook my hand.

"I was expecting you on Saturday," he said, a slight tinge of scolding disappointment in his voice. I shrugged.

"Yeah, sorry, I got caught up writing my blog and I even caught the bus all the way here to Ajmer, but then I realized it was nearly 8 o'clock already so I had to just catch the bus right back." That had sucked.

"But I was expecting you Saturday," he continued, as if he hadn't heard me, his eyes filled with shame, as if I were a wayward son of his who'd disgraced the family name, "and we are open until 9:30. And you did not come also on yesterday." He said this pointedly, as if I'd been a bad, bad, boy, and motioned for his assistant to collect my coat.

"Sorry. Someone told me the bus quits running at 8 and I did not want to pay for a rickshaw back. And the general consensus in Pushkar was that you'd be closed on Sunday." I flashed him an apologetic smile, which went unreturned. The assistant produced my coat with a flourish and helped me put it on.

Sweet. Very nice. I looked pimp. We'd argued for days about the width of sleeves on my coat, and he'd finally acquiesced to an extra inch of wrist room, but unfortunately and unrequested, had made them longer as well. They stretched almost to my fingertips and just looked as if I was hiding something in them already. Oh well. I'd get some other, cheaper tailor elsewhere in India to shorten 'em.

"Perfect," I said. "Absolutely perfect. Thank you. How much do I owe ya?" I was sure that they'd upped the price a bit for all of my tweaking. The assistant scrambled off for the bill, but it was surprisingly two thousand rupees cheaper than they'd originally said. A mistake? I tried to hide my shocked smile of enthusiasm as I opened my wallet and peeled some five-hundred rupee bills off the sizeable wad of cash within and handed them over.

"You come over the wall?" The elderly man asked.

"Aw, yeah, you were watching me, huh?" I grinned and nodded proudly.

"You should not do that. It is dangerous."

"Nah, it's not dangerous. It's way more fun than walking all the way around," I said.

"Someone could follow you, rob you. It is dangerous. Go around," he said with a glare. I frowned dubiously at him. It took less than 20 seconds to walk across the open lot of the destroyed building, and I was in full light and full view of everyone on the street the whole time. Not exactly a mugger's ideal zone.

"Uh, ok," I said. We shook hands, both pleased that our business together was finished. He invited me to come back any time I needed a tailor, quite unconvincingly I might add, and I responded "Of course," with the same inward 'yeah-right'. I left the store, quite happy that I had my coat and could now leave Pushkar, and climbed over the wall and the piles of trash, ignoring the elderly tailor's parting advice.

"Hey," said a voice. I turned to see a couple scrawny adolescents walking slowly toward me, holding a knife. They threatened me with it and slashed at my cheek, leaving a bloody gash, and, crying, I opened my wallet and with a grimace took out my debit card and cash- 

Oh, wait. That didn't happen. I hopped the wall and joined the chorus in the street, thrilled to have a magician's coat, wonderfully happy I was at last continuing my journey.

The train to Delhi was relaxing and peaceful. I had a lovely sleeper bunk without the hellishly-cold AC, and the eight-hour journey would take place as I slept. Then, wake up in Delhi catch a five-hour bus to Chandigarh, which I knew next to nothing about except that it was in Punjab. It sounded pretty dull from the travel guide, but I figured I could bum around the city for half a day, eat some tasty Punjabi food, and then catch the ten-hour evening bus to Manali from there so I arrived nice and fresh in the morning. A sound plan, I thought, and drifted off to sleep. It went smoothly. I arrived in Delhi at five AM, caught an almost immediate bus to Chandigarh, and arrived at ten-thirty, ready for breakfast.

Chandigarh freaked me out. It was so.... clean. It didn't feel like India at all. Where are the cows? I thought to myself as I watched the passing streamlined, tree-lined avenues through the smeared dirty bus window. Where are all the people? There were little bits of trash here and there, and a few piles gathered together, but it looked like someone was actually going to do something about them. Weird. The buildings were spaced far apart from each other, as opposed to being built on top of each other, and surrounded by high, tasteful walls. It seemed vaguely imposing and bereft of welcome. Or life, for that matter. I shook my head. At least there were liquor stores around, so there would be no necessary twenty-minute ride to Ajmer for reasonably-priced intoxication; and oh yeah! I could eat meat outside of Pushkar! Dead things! Awesome.

I caught a rickshaw to the most interesting-looking attraction in the city: Nek Chand's Rock Garden. Apparently this dude Nek Chand had a bit of time on his hands, and began to collect discarded bottles, tiles, rocks, glass, concrete, sinks, electrical waste, etc, from abandoned half-demolished building sites around the city. Like a true gangsta, he recycled all this stuff into 'his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani' in hidden spot in the city's surrounding forest, despite the fact that the site had been designated as a land conservancy and his work would, therefore, be illegal. It didn't faze him. He spent eighteen years fashioning these items into a twelve-acre complex of linked courtyards, filled with statues and sculptures. His life's work was discovered by the government in 1975 and set to be demolished, but public outcry in favor of the rock garden eventually overturned that decision and it became an established attraction.

Entering the garden, at first I was disappointed. The walls were kind of cool, made up of thousands of tiny little rocks all stuck together, and it must've taken ages. Occasional stone bumps rose from the walls and floors at regular intervals, catching your eye in various guises. You'd swear you saw a humanoid shape glaring at you, and then it would turn out to just be a strategically placed rock. It was aight. But ultimately it was just walls with protruding shapes.

As I kept going through the labyrinth of stone passageways, however, it got cooler and cooler. You could see Nek had improved his technique over the years. Now there were figures, looming, staring, grinning with joyous expressions. Some had two heads, some more, some less. Patchwork tiles covered everything, and I eventually found enormous, man-made waterfalls, splashing out of the rockwork and dripping enchantingly around twisting ropes of stone that resembled tree trunks or vines. It was like something from Carrol's Wonderland, and just got more and more spectacular as I kept moving. Bridges, columns, towers, little houses, waterfalls, figures, sculptures, faces, animals... they all seemed woven into some kind of wonderful dance that had been frozen at its most epic moment, the mirrors and shards of glass glinting at me as if inviting me to join in. I was impressed. Good going, Nek.

After a couple hours of wandering the Wonderland, I stepped outside and decided to walk back to the bus terminal. It was still early. I had plenty of time. The sparseness of the buildings and the vast spaces between them had made the town look huge as I first rolled in, and forgetting to check the overall size on the map in my travel guide, I'd hired a rickshaw unnecessarily. Oh well. Walking would be nice. I passed a liquor store and bought a quarter-pint of rum, which I sipped as I strolled back through the enormous, beautifully maintained rose-garden, which boasted over 1,500 varieties. Marijuana plants grew like the weeds they were alongside the little stream running through the garden. I threw on some headphones and rapped along with Biggie as I meandered through the garden, finishing off my rum and hesitating about what to do with the bottle. Anywhere else in India, I'd just throw it, but Chandigarh was so clean... But amazingly, I found an actual trash can some paces later.

It was nearly time to board the bus as I returned to the terminal. Pleasantly tipsy, but far from drunk, I bought another quart of whiskey this time, as well as a sandwich from a little corner store. I got on the bus and began to read "Senor Nice", Howard Mark's sequel to his smash-hit autobiography "Mr. Nice", which I'd picked up in Varanasi. Marks was a dope-smuggler from Wales who'd got busted in the late eighties for bringing in thirty-tons of hashish. He'd worked for MI6 and the Mexican secret service while selling hash to the IRA. The tagline from his first book went: "He was Britain's most wanted man, He has just spent seven years in America's toughest penitentiary... You'll like him." And I did. I'd also read his second book, "Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories," which was a collection of his favorite drug writings from everyone from Hunter S. Thompson to Aleister Crowley.

When I'd bought "Senor Nice" from a bookstall in Pushkar, the guy working there had gotten very excited. "Howard Marks! I know Howard Marks!" he'd exclaimed.

"Yeah, he's awesome. I think a movie just came out about him," I had said, half-listening. The man hadn't let go of my hand.

"He has come to Pushkar. He likes Pushkar. Howard Marks, great man. I am good friends with Howard Marks!"

"Uh huh, sure, dude," I'd said. Everyone claims top have met the rich and famous in India. I'd shaken his hand off and reached for my change.

"No, sir, believe me! Howard Marks! He was here! Look!" He'd spun me around and forced me over to the wall, where there was one solitary picture: sure enough, Howard Marks, grinning, wrinkled, Rolling-Stone face, joint in hand, with his arm nonchalantly around the shoulders of the bookseller, had been standing in this very spot.

"Holy shit, dude, you do know Howard Marks!" I'd exclaimed, astounded and a little jealous. The bookseller had swelled with pride and pointed to the floor behind us.

"He smoke with me, right there. Great man."

All these stories about dope made me wish I hadn't left my last spliff as a present for the little dude at my last guest house, who'd obviously been crushing on me. Oh well. I stretched out as much as I could in my bus seat, opened the window, and let the kilometers roll by. Soon I would be in Manali, amidst some of the best hash in the world.

The luggage rack on the interior of the bus ended just above me, while the exterior rack hung on the bus’ roof less than a meter over that. The window was big enough, and I was getting bored. I’d been getting on buses way too early since arriving in India, which meant either grabbing myself an actual seat or standing in the aisles. The most fun way to do it is to wait until the whole bus if full, so you have to swarm with the rest of the mob up and onto the roof. I hadn’t ridden on a roof since arriving in India, and it was getting to me. I swung myself out the window, to the shock of the person sitting next to me, and clambered onto the roof, where I basked in the wind and sense of freedom. Being the only one up there, I got the immediate impression that this wasn’t a roof I was supposed to be on. Yet it was cozy, and built with being up there on whoever’s mind. 

I realized that if this was my chance, I should film it. I scooted over the side of the roof and back through the window into my seat, unzipped my backpack, pulled out my video camera, and climbed back up before anyone could say otherwise. I filmed myself happily spouting off joyous and extremely witty tidings which were unfortunately rendered incomprehensible over the sound of the wind. After a few hundred meters, the bus slowed down and stopped. Okay, time to go back in then, I suppose. I swung for the fourth time through the window to be greeted by a sea of grins, all turned my way. Even the ticket-taker was smiling as he slowly pushed his way toward me.

“OK, I won’t go back up there again. I promise,” I said. He shook his finger at me in a mock-scolding. I bowed. He chuckled, and we resumed the journey. I settled back into Howard Marks’ post-dealing days and his search for the Welch connection to South America.

I looked up from my book at some point, startled out o my engagement by the sudden loss of electricity in the bus as it hit a particularly nasty swerve. Outside, it had grown dark. With a start, I realized that the slow increase in side-to-side, up-and-down motion of the bus over the past few hours had been due to us entering the crazy, legendary road up the beginnings of the Himalayas towards Manali. I remembered as a child the insanity of the bus to Laksman Jhula, and I used the vivid imagery of that memory often in attempting to describe India to people:

“So, you’re on this kind of junkyardy bus, right, with people literally everywhere, crammed in like sardines, and also sitting on the roof and hanging off the sides, going up this crazy, windy mountain road covered in potholes and rocks and all kinds of shit, and it’s just nuts. The road doesn’t even seem like it’s big enough to even fit the bus, right, but this is a fuckin’ a two-way street. And you like look up and see another bus or like a semi-truck even heading right at you, and you’re like, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, and your bus kind of inches over to the left, right on over to the edge of just a sheer cliff dropping down hundreds of feet. And you’re just like, oh my god, I’m gonna die, but all the Indians aren’t even phased, of course, and the bus drivers just wave at each other and tootle on the horn (actually, ‘tootle’ is the perfect word for these horns, cause they don’t just go ‘honk’ like American horns but they go like TEEdleDEEdleDEEdle and all kinds of other ones) and then they fuckin’ go past one another and one of your bus’s wheels literally goes over the edge of the cliff and I swear, you can look down sometimes and see these fucked-up remains of other crashed buses down there, and you really think you’re gonna die, but you just gotta trust that you’re gonna make it, and of course you do, and when the bus stops the driver pops the hood and the whole engine is held together with rubber-bands and duct-tape. True story. Fuckin’ India, man.”

That description was based on hazy childhood memories of busing up the mountain - and like all good stories contains a degree of hyperbole - yet I was surprised to grok that the description was ultimately accurate, with one crucial added factor I’d somehow forgotten about: the bus drivers all think they’re Dean Moriarity. They bomb up and down those mountains at speed, almost like they’re on speed, careening around the sharp turns like they’re playing Mario Kart. I put my book away. I didn’t need any other entertainment.

I was a little miffed at myself for taking the night bus, now. I kind of wished I could see the great big drop and the growing mountains. But even under the darkened sky, you could see it was there. Little twinkling lights like grounded stars shone from the peak across from us, and they went down, down, down. The edge of the road was also visible bounding away right beside the rear tire, and even shrouded in darkness it was very apparent how steep and long that fall was.

As we ascended the mountains, more and more people got off at villages along the way, and people began to move about the cabin and stretch themselves out on the seats, shutting their eyes and trying to ignore the impossibility of sleep on a ride such as this.

I did the opposite. I stood in the aisle and grabbed onto the luggage racks on either side, then swing upside down and stayed that way for a good long time, grinning ear to ear and madly jerking this way and that like a bat on a roller-coaster. The ticket-taker grinned at me and waggled his head. Two guys sitting near me laughed and thumped my back when I re-righted myself.

When we stopped for chai around two in the morning, they shared a biri packed with hash with me. It was much stronger than the stuff in Pushkar or Banares. In return I offered them a swig of whiskey, which one accepted and one declined. We conversed as much as possible in pidgin English, then rejoined the little group standing around a small fire, adding cardboard. A little Tibetan girl who's face was swollen from some kind of burn on her left cheek grinned at me and we played peek-a-boo and run-away-from-the-monster for about half an hour. The ticket-taker offered a swig from his whiskey bottle. The sky began to lighten slightly. We reboarded a different bus, a little more crowded, for the last leg of the journey.

When we arrived, two British guys who'd been on the second bus seemed to know where they were going as they were immediately approached by a rickshaw driver and gave him an address. I sidled up to them.

"Hey, mind if I share a rickshaw? My name's Hoku. Where you going?" I asked. They told me. "Is it cheap?"

"Oh, yeah, fantastic price." I shouldered my bag. Another rickshaw driver grabbed my arm. "Please, sir, just around corner, very cheap! Three hundred rupees!"

A mocking laugh burst out of me. "Three hundred! Dude, I haven't paid more than two hundred rupees a night, like, anywhere."

"Ours is three hundred," said one of the British guys. A moment of silence.

"Two hundred OK, please sir!" I waggled my head and followed the rickshaw guy, who as it turns out wasn't a rickshaw guy. The place really was right around the corner. A light drizzle was misting my face, clouds drifted gently in front of the shadow of the mountain. It was nice. I checked in, downed the last sip of my whiskey, and went to sleep.

Push That Car!

Since the rain, I haven't been as angry at Pushkar. The rain helped sooth me and realize how very much I'd allowed my predispositions to clot up the emancipation that's a by-factor of being in the present. Since the rain, I've also been inspired for the first time in ages, finally catching up on my blog, practicing magic, and writing some heartfelt if sloppy hip-hop.

This evening I'm to once again take the bus into Ajmer to attempt to pick up my coat, but I'm finally resigned to the fact that it would be a bigger waste of time and money to leave here with a useless jacket than to spend a few days further to ensure I have a technicolor dreamcoat capable of achieving the impossible. Resignation is really the wrong word; what I feel is more of a relaxation, whereas merely a few days prior I felt as fatigued as a soldier after a useless compromise.

Yesterday I awoke still giddy over the simple fact that I'd performed magic the night before. Nothing leaves me with more satisfaction - or more of a notion that I'm doing what is required of me by my inner sense of direction - than mesmerizing strangers through the art of legerdemain. Lowly sorcerer though I am at present, my tricks limited by my lack of years of practice, I feel a deep soothing well up from within me whenever I perform the simplest of miracles. This is the force that apparently hooks all magicians. The looks on their faces. The need to aid that particular stimulation with guidance and good humor, some physical shock or torture thrown in for good measure, and to hook the skeptical in the sheer bewildering nature of it all. Best of all is if you can hook the skeptics, which, when one is not run amok by one's own nervousness, is laughably easy to do. "It's easier to dupe a clever man than an ignorant one," famously wrote Robert-Houdin, "the more he is deceived the more he is pleased, for that is what he has paid for."

Pleased with my own performance, and still having a small bottle of rum half-full, not to mention a hash-stash that was more than adequate, I proceeded to read and practice tricks for most of the day, venturing as normal into the heat only when my grumbling stomach could wait no longer. As twilight neared, however, I felt a sense of regret that I'd continued in my pattern of ignoring the town and decided to take a walk around the lake, which I'd yet to have done. I'd spent all my time in the very market I despised, and blaming the town itself for being full of tourists. Silly bastard. I set out, and came soon to the closest ghat. I took off my shoes as customary and slung 'em into the nearest empty 'Place-for-shoes-keeping,' then descended the stairs.

The full moon hung above the temple-gouged skyline of the lake, tall staffs rising majestically out of shadowed domes reaching for the stars; in the near distance, an ascension of bright white lights curling around the mountain framed the stepped path leading up to the Saraswati temple, which in the darkness very much resembled a stairway to heaven or an alien force-field leading to a larger ship. A dead or dying tree's sillhouette, it's base surrounded by a circle of  polished stone, pure white in the moonlight, cut across the moon's reflection in the water of the nearest bathing pool, stone and rectangular, separated from the main lake only by a thin wall of stone in my vision. About halfway around the ghats, to my right, some sort of puja was happening.

This was nice.

I walked toward the puja and through it, the light somewhat blinding after only the moon's illumination. People were descending the steps in groups, washing themselves in the water and offering up a prayer. Before them, almost floating on the water but for the thick stone steps connecting, sat another gorgeous, imposing white temple, decked out in flowers. Likewise awash with flowers were the floating candle prayers I'd seen before in Varanasi. Kids were playing in the water, too, and running back and forth giggling or angry, playing games and settling scores in between the barefoot bodies of the solemn yet beatified adults, who largely ignored them as easily as they did the cows, dogs and birds, occasionally aiming a halfhearted kick at them all, children and beasts.

The rest of the lake's perimeter was quiet, a few leafless trees' silhouettes looking like something out of an early Tim Burton movie as the shadows of their branches loomed across the snow-white stone walls and around the numerous domed tops of surrounding temples. Halfway around the lake, I came upon a group of sadhus squatting on the steps further up, bare-chested and wearing only tattered orange skirts. They waved me over.

As I approached, one of the sadhus, with a disarming, enormously friendly grin, dropped half a banana in my hand. It looked as if it had been chewed in half, skin and all. I myself have eaten bananas this way, actually preferring it to the skinned version (something in chewing the texture is helped by the leathery strands of the skin), so I chomped on it merrily. The sadhu looked at me sideways. He took the banana from me and, as if showing a three-year old or an imbecile, showed me how to peel it. He squinted at me.

"Uh, yeah..." I said. "Thanks." I palmed the rest of the banana and discarded it at the nearest moment, all the while pretending to continue chewing. "I actually prefer them this way."

We walked down to the waterside and they all began began bathing. I positioned myself alongside them squatting on the edge, and splashed the water about my head, face, arms and legs. Then we squatted back on the ghats and another of the sadhus offered me a biri.

"Word," I said. "Thanks." We smoked in silence for a while. The rest of the sadhus began to peace out, and motioned for him to join them, but he waved them off good-naturedly. After a while, he began to speak earnestly to me in Hindi, and I grasped vaguely at some stuff.

"Uh, I'm from America... no, I'm not Japanese, from America... Hoku. HO-KU. Yeah. Hoku.... and you? Ap Ka Nam Kya Hai? Oh, cool... What?.... Sorry, I don't understand... uh huh... What?... Sorry.... yeah, no..." The conversation was getting away from me.  He gestured vividly with his hand.

"Sex? SEX?" he practically yelled. Oh.

"Yeah, dude, sex is nice," I began, stupidly and tentatively. "You haven't had sex, right, being a sadhu and all... You? Sex? No?"

He shook his head. "No sex." He looked half-ecstatic and half-crestfallen.

"Uh... how's that?" I ventured lamely. "Is nice?"

He nodded vigorously. I thought he might snap a vertebrae. He frowned. Something was on his mind. "Sex? Girl?"

"Erm... yeah, I've had sex with a girl. More than one. Uh. Yeah. It's nice." I knew Indians were, especially at present, extremely interested in the whole Western attitude towards sex and how it might just potentially be better than being unconsentingly married to whomever your parents think is right for you, or being without it all your life. But I didn't really know what to say, not yet having had this conversation with a sadhu.

"And... boy?" he asked.

"Not really... I mean I guess I had a threesome with one of my best friends one time..."

"Boy?" he asked again.

"Yeah, he was a dude, but the other one was a girl, and well, the dude and I didn't really do much..."

He leaned over. "Penis?" he asked.

"Uh... landava!" I exclaimed, unable to think of anything else to say. He grinned and pointed at my crotch and repeated his question. "Yes. I do indeed have one. And it works and everything!" I was taking this in good humor, despite being slightly uncomfortable. He reached out and grabbed at my crotch. I grabbed his writst. "Woah, dude... no offense, but I'm like not attracted to you." He looked sad and motioned towards my crotch again. "No. Sorry. Not your fault or anything. I don't want."

"Please?" he asked, almost begging. I felt almost sorry enough for the dude to let him touch my penis. Shit, why not? Aw, shucks, buddy, if I was completely unable by my culture to touch a woman, or a man, to never get laid, ever,  I'd be gagging for it and pleading with all kinds of tourists to take me, let me touch 'em, whatever.

Maybe not back in Santa Fe. All you'd get there is fat white Texans. Not exactly my style.

Nor was this guy's. I pitied him. And if there's one thing that turns sexuality off, besides being the wrong gender for one's particular preference, it's being pitiable. He scooted next to me. He tried to lean his head on my shoulder. I stood up. "Sorry, dude, but I'm gonna go get some food."

"No hurting!" he gasped. I shook my head.

"Naw, no bad feelings. No hurting. I just don't want. Good luck, though."

"Please!" he cried. Poor little miserable blighter. I wondered briefly if it was some Indian gal in a wet sari, saying the same things with the same desperate manner, if I would go for it. Hell naw. That kind of vibe is just plain unattractive. Poor little sexless sadhu. I reached out to shake his hand.

"Nice to meet you, dude," I said. He grabbed my hand and pulled it towards his own crotch. I pulled away. "Dude, no! I said no and I mean no! Sorry but please piss off." I began walking away.

"No hurting!" his voice followed me. I turned around.

"Naw, man, no hurting, but you very-bad need work on your game," I said, and continued on my way. I still felt picked up and energetic, the full moon rippling slightly in the water to my left, monkeys hooting somewhere on my right, and I decided to head for a pleasant-looking array of lights on the edge of the lake, obviously a restaurant of some kind. I felt peaceful.

At least someone had tried to get into my pants tonight.

The place with the magical-looking lights from the lake was a downer. Ugly white people. I split. Shit, I'm gonna head back to Baba's, I thought, maybe there'll be some folk who remember me as the magic guy and wanna see more tricks. Baba's was full, and lacking rain, it was full of pre-ordained groups. I sat at the barren table in the midst of the groups and opened my book, a zombie novel which, segregated as I was, made me self-conscious. I wished I'd brought a magic book or something so someone would talk to me. New people arrived at the group nearest my table and a woman asked me if I minded the children sitting with me.

"Not at all," I said.

It's funny how often I end up at the kid's table. Which is usually more fun, and where I fit in the best. I said hi to the two little German girls, each around 9 or 10, but they seemed very self-conscious, so I turned back to my book and ordered another beer.

"Excuse me," said a voice. I looked up to see a cute British girl bending over me. "What book are you reading?"

"Uh, Handling the Undead. It's by the guy who wrote Let the Right One In, which was awesome..."

"Yeah, my friend recommended it.to me. May I read the back cover?"

"Sure." She did so, intrigued.

"It's really good," I said. "Although it's starting to kind of get preachy about the existence of a soul and Heaven and stuff, so if it ends like that I'm going to be really pissed off, 'cause it's got great potential up till now..." She shot me a sharp glance of distaste and walked back to her table, where her boyfriend was waiting for her, his face wrinkled in a glare cast in my direction. I settled back into my book. Literally not thirty seconds had passed when -

"Excuse me," said a voice. I looked up to see an even cuter, tattooed girl bending over me. "What book are you reading?"

You're fucking kidding me. Zombie novels, guys, that's the way to go.

This gal didn't scoff mockingly at my distaste in Christianity's presence in a zombie novel, so I said I'd give it to her when I was finished, in about 20 minutes. She resumed her place in the multitude next to me. The kids were still ignoring me. Eventually they all stood up and left, the woman interested in zombies giving not a backward glance in my direction. Too bad for her, I'd only had 4 pages to go.

A gentleman near my dad's age, a little younger, balding, with dorky glasses that enhanced the obvious laugh-lines around his eyes, was looking worriedly at the full tables. I knew I had more room than anyone. I gestured they should sit with me. They proved to be incredibly pleasant folk, so that the conversation and laughter didn't ease between us at all, and the final four pages of my book remained unfinished. Everyone I've met from Spain has been exceedingly joyful and welcoming. I can't wait to go there.

Actually, it's about time for me to go and hopefully purchase my finished coat. If you'll excuse me.