WIN a sTAY AT THE GRAND HYATT GOA THE LAST WORD IN TRAVEL th INDIAN EDITION OCT-NOV 2016 | 150 Anniversary Special WHY WE 6 TRAVEL Sakshi Malik Manu Joseph Siddhartha Mukherjee melinda gates Suketu Mehta SANDIP ROY AGENT OF CHANGE PRIYANKA BuildingCHO bridges,P notRA walls PC on US politics & film 242 RAVEL F E T O W R ADVENTURE a river of stories Manu Joseph treks the frozen Zanskar River in Kashmir and finds there is magic, beauty and humour even in the most arduous journey. Photographs by Olivier Föllmi 243 Frozen river, brown cliffs and other trekkers: this is a world that is 244 quiet. In places, a fluid strand of the river roars and vanishes below the ice 245 e says magic is a himself as a creature with the upper believed to have formed close to lazy way of telling a half of an ass and the lower half of a 1.5 billion years ago. In their youth, story. It is reasonable, Tamil software engineer. But a moment those mountains may have stood then, that he would later, a more aesthetic, classical image thousands of metres high, but now have quarrels with came to him—of the upper half of a they are mere mounds or city pebbles. supernatural tales, muscular man and the lower quadruped Is this the fate of all great mountains? like The Famished Road by Ben Okri, body of a horse. That was how he learnt Centaur is going from the tip of Hwhich opens with these words: “In the he was Centaur. India’s oldest mountain range to its beginning there was a river. The river Centaur was passing through a youngest, the Himalayas, which are became a road and the road branched out period of strife, the astrologer said. believed to have formed about 50 to the whole world. And because the road “Is it then an inauspicious time for million years ago. was once a river it was always hungry.” him to be walking on a river?” Leh is a tiny human settlement in How can a river become a global “There is no such thing as the Himalayas, about 11,480ft above road, and how can it be hungry? As inauspicious,” the astrologer said. sea level. The air is clear, the sun harsh, in sports, he says, doping should be “There is only time.” the day lit like afterlife. Centaur feels condemned in literature, too. But there The walk is known as the Chadar as though his eyesight has improved. are times when even a person like him Trek. ‘Chadar’ means blanket in Hindi. The eye sees great distances in Leh and accepts that magic poetry may describe A trail on a blanket of ice over the what it sees are vast flatlands and desert an irrefutable reality. A truth that can moving waters of the Zanskar River mountains and many hues of brown. A be framed by a poet’s hallucination has in the Ladakh region. That is what it notice in the tiny airport dissuades new to be exquisite—or terrifying. At the is. If the ice is not well formed on the arrivals from any exerting activity. It moment, what he feels is terror. He is river, the blanket is deceptively thin in reminds him of an unfamiliar fatigue in about to walk on a road; the road was places and one may fall into the cold his chest, as though he is in the embrace once a river. waters. If the ice is obviously thin, the of a large, invisible woman. The fatigue In the winter, the rivers of the trekkers have to walk on the walls of grows as he reaches the hotel in the Himalayas freeze. There is one that steep cliffs to reach the firmer parts of heart of Leh, a tourist district that is becomes a narrow, serpentine road of the river. On some stretches of the river, filled with cafés and shops on narrow ice. Beneath the ice, the river trickles, the cliffs are too steep for humans to lanes, most of them shut for the winter. flows, gushes, but the surface is hard walk on, so they have to wait for days Somewhere an ice hockey game is and the mountain people who live before hard ice forms. According to a underway; two girls with long, flailing near its banks have learnt how to walk legend, if a couple makes love on the hair glide with the boys. on it. And they walk great distances Zanskar, the ice on the river would not In the modest hotel, a small team for mundane reasons. Sometimes they be thick. Centaur has faith in the ability of trekkers is assembled on the lawns, burst into a run even though they of women to abstain from sex in almost drinking hot tea. Among them are two have time for everything. They carry extraterrestrial conditions, but he does men who suspect they are alphas. They enormous things on their backs or in not trust men to be wise. are an uncle-nephew pair separated a sleigh on which, among the utensils A week after Centaur realised he by less than 20 years, who possess the and vegetables, sit their children, who was Centaur, one cold night in Delhi, absolute Punjabi confidence in their have blood-red cheeks as though as he shuddered beneath four layers of assumption that everyone is interested they’ve been slapped. The snow clothing, he checked the temperature. in their anecdotes. All conversations are leopards and foxes, too, know how It was 4ºC. In the Zanskar region, the about their previous and future treks. to walk on the ice road. temperature can dip to -30 at night. After Chadar, they say, they are flying He has, after not much thought, The freezer of his refrigerator is at -18. from Leh to Srinagar to snowboard on decided to walk on the frozen river for What tropical Centaur had agreed to the slopes of Gulmarg. eight days. Much can go wrong. Because was a walk inside a gigantic freezer for The uncle is in his mid-forties and the road was once a river, it would be several days and nights. He wondered has a large paunch, which should always hungry. if he should abort the walk. He needed reassure everyone that adventure need When he told his wife about the an honourable reason to cancel the trip, not be the privilege of the fit alone. walk, she took him to see an ancient like a fracture or a relative’s death. Everyone calls him Mamu because astrologer. Is there a fault in his stars, But there were no misfortunes, and that’s what his nephew calls him. Mamu Masterji, that indicates death by this morning he sits in a packed flight manufactures crankshafts in Aurangabad, drowning? Or by falling hard on ice, to Leh, a town in the Ladakh region where he lives. His nephew is Bhanja, perhaps? Such mishaps have occurred of Jammu & Kashmir. This is his who imports chemicals. Bhanja, who is on the river. The old sage, wearing a first trek. bearded, stylish and lean, with a mop of shirt too large and billowing trousers, As the plane soars over Delhi, he silky hair, is in his late twenties. He is made some rough charts and said, as can see a small ridge below. The Delhi asthmatic, but the condition does not though stating an obvious fact, “He is Ridge, just a few metres high, is the dissuade him from long arduous treks. half-man-half-horse”. Across the table, final, tame end of the oldest mountain He once walked to Stok Kangri, one of the half-man-half-horse imagined range in India, the Aravallis, which are the few summits in the Himalayas 246 247 that can be reached without rock- The trekkers would carry only a daypack ashamed, because he has read that the climbing even though the peak is over and their boots. They are in the care of sickness can strike even Olympic athletes. 16,400ft above sea level. He realises that one of the finer adventure companies in In a few hours, Laughing Buddha, too, is his achievement is diminished by the India, Aquaterra Adventures, which is struck. The next day, Cleo falls. fact that he could get a mobile signal on expensive. The company charges about But on the third morning, everybody the summit. “Very faint signal and only 84,000 to take a person on the trek. appears to be in good health. They are on in one spot,” he says. After over 10 days Most outfits do the job in under 20,000, but the phone, saying goodbye to their families. of trekking, when he finally reached the as would be evident in the days to come, their After this moment, they would not be summit, he took out his phone and called trekkers would get what they paid for. speaking into a phone for over a week. his girlfriend, who said, “Can I call you Aquaterra’s trekkers would stay in Leh They leave Leh in cars. On the way, they see back? I am in a meeting.” After he got off for two nights to acclimatise in high altitude a group of men burning something on the the mountain, he broke up with her. before setting out. They would take two or back of a pick-up truck to warm the frozen He is on Tinder, and observes that three hours from Leh to reach the part of fuel below.