The Seeker (6 page)

Shiva seemed to read his thoughts. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The trek from Gangotri to Bhojbasa is a joke. We call it a ‘ladies’ hike’ in these parts. It’s an easy, well-marked path. A tall, fit guy like you could be up and down in five or six hours, even quicker now that there is no one around.”

“Have you been up there?” asked Max.

Shiva nodded. “I didn’t stop at the guesthouse though. I went further up where my uncle was meditating in a cave. Serious yogis live much higher up than Bhojbasa. You can’t get there on marked trails. Many curious people come here—this researcher from Glasgow University, that writer from Milan—the lower Himalayas are a total tourist trap. Yogis don’t want to be found so easily,” he said. “And higher up in the mountains, the locals respect that. If people want a yogi’s blessings, they’ll just touch the outside of the cave or the yogi’s footsteps in the snow and go. All this watching and taking pictures and gushing over exotic India is done only by foreigners and people from the plains.”

Omkara noisily opened a packet of cookies. “All over the world people are striving for progress,” he said. “Only in India can you live naked in the mountains like a caveman and have idiots ask for your blessings.”

“They aren’t cavemen,” said Shiva. “They’ve just realized sooner than all of us that man’s soul cries for the infinite in a finite world. That’s why nothing ever satisfies us.”

Omkara got up from the steps. “My soul cries for an end to your infinite stupidity,” he said. He walked over to where the motorcycles were parked and took out a plastic container from Shiva’s motorcycle’s saddlebag. He began refueling his motorcycle from the container.

“He really needs to watch his mouth,” said Shiva. He turned to Max. “You can never talk about yogis like that.”

“I won’t,” said Max.

“I’m serious.”

“I said I won’t.”

“Ever.”

“Jesus. Never,” said Max.

“Good. One of the yogis in the cave next to my uncle’s had kept his right arm raised for twelve years, not even bending it down while sleeping. Every moment, day and night, for twelve years, can you imagine that? My uncle told me that such practices—raising the arm and standing on one leg—train the yogi to treat his body with contempt so he can concentrate undistracted on the divine soul within,” said Shiva. “I’ll never forget how the yogi smiled when he saw me. His right arm was thin like the dead branch of a tree, just bone and loose skin on top, but his skin glowed like a lamp. It was freaky. A man like that, who doesn’t eat, who doesn’t sleep, who deliberately withers his arm away to bone, what can he not do? You can’t joke about things like this. Everyone in the mountains knows that.”

Omkara came back from the motorcycle and joined them at the steps.

“What is the height of foolishness?” he said.

“You,” said Shiva.

“Nice try but not good enough. There is an even taller answer,” said Omkara. “Give up? It’s a seven-foot American on top of the tall Himalayas listening to taller stories from a village hick.”

Shiva burst out laughing. Max smiled awkwardly.

“Should we get going?” said Omkara. “Else you may convince Max to strip naked right now and run into a cave.”

They walked toward the motorcycles.

“Is your uncle still up there?” asked Max as he put on his balaclava.

Shiva shook his head. “He lasted just two months. It’s tough in the caves. The brutal cold, not speaking a word, scorpions inside, bears outside, one can go crazy up there,” he said. “Try it. See how you feel. Maybe you’ll handle it better.”

The solitude sounded nice, thought Max, as he put on his helmet and mounted the motorcycle. With apartments stacked on top of each other and rows of buildings packed close together in the projects, Max felt he could live for a lifetime without seeing a soul.

The dirt road turned steeper and the air thinner. Max huddled in his coat, glad for the warmth of the backpack behind him. They approached an iron suspension bridge hanging impossibly in the middle of the mountain. It had no sides. Loose gravel, small rocks and chunks of frozen ice were scattered over its one-hundred meter length. The bridge bounced up and down as though made of elastic when they crossed over it. Max closed his eyes to avoid looking at the holes that stared into the frozen Ganges hundreds of feet below. Omkara raised two fingers of his left hand when he came off the bridge. Shiva slowed and dug into the motorcycle handles. A sheet of black ice covered the dirt road ahead. Max tried not to move a muscle. Shiva didn’t touch the motorcycle’s brake for the entire length of the slippery patch. The motorcycle wobbled and turned but eventually crossed without skidding.

They took a sharp turn at the end of the patch and climbed up a valley. The wind gusted. For the next hour, they hugged the cliffside. The angry wind had blown away the snow on the mountain patch, carving thick grooves and crevices in the stone. Max held on tight. When they reached the top of the valley, the wind calmed again. They stopped for another break.

Despite the frigid air, Omkara and Shiva were soaked in sweat from steering the motorcycles.

“I can’t thank you enough for the ride guys,” said Max, suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude.

“Don’t turn all American on us, dude. Friends don’t send friends Thank You cards in India,” said Omkara.

They filled their water bottles from a small stream trickling down the mountain and stood by the side of the road. Max took a sip. The ice-cold water struck his gums and teeth with crushing force. He coughed and took smaller sips.

“Speaking of Americans, do I have to worry about racism in the US?” said Omkara.

“No, no,” said Max, his teeth still chattering. He paused. Who was he kidding? Hispanic and Black kids got high, dropped out of school, shot and killed each other in the projects every day and no one cared, while one isolated school shooting in a white suburb triggered national debate on gun laws. “Yes, but for you it won’t be.”

“Definitely in Cincinnati,” said Shiva.

“How do you know so much about Cincinnati?” said Max.

“He doesn’t know jack,” said Omkara. He sat down on his motorcycle. “He just doesn’t want me to leave India because the rest of our gang is staying here. But if I don’t go to America, I will be working in a call center like the rest of these coolies. ‘Thank you for calling from Texas, Mary, we will arrange for your carpet cleaning.’ ‘Of course, John from podunk Iowa town, we will fix your toilet immediately.’ ‘Yes, Michael, I burned four years of my life and my parents’ money studying chemical engineering when I should have read American bathroom plumbing manuals instead.’ Like hell I want that. That’s why I’ve been telling him to come with me instead of trying to get me to stay.”

“No, no, I know the Midwest,” said Shiva. “My uncle lives in Toledo in Ohio. Everyone there keeps asking him if he is Catholic. And if he says he isn’t, they look at him as if he is a cannibal or something. Very creepy.”

“Your uncles are everywhere from Cincinnati to China and they don’t like it anywhere,” said Omkara.

Shiva laughed. “All mountain people are like that. No matter where you go, the mountains call you back.”

Max’s heart clutched. His breathing slowed.
The mountains call you back.
All his life, he had felt a deep, inexorable pull for the mountains. It had never made any sense. He had grown up in flat land and hadn’t even seen a mountain until he was eighteen. Yet he had known immediately he’d come to the Himalayas when Viveka had started talking about them. The mountains had called him back. He stared at the white expanse shimmering in the faint glow of the mid-morning sun.
Back where?

“I don’t care about religion. I’ll become a Seventh-fucking-Day Adventist or a Jehovah creep if it helps me pick up girls,” said Omkara. “I have this dream that I enter a bar in Cincinnati and start chatting with this girl from Poland or Finland or somewhere cold and well, you know the rest. Possible, or will they reject me because I’m a slumdog?” He stared at Max. “You okay, dude? You look pale.”

“Yes, yes,” said Max. He sat down on Shiva’s motorcycle opposite Omkara and took a large sip of the water. The explosion of cold inside his mouth brought him back. “Definitely possible. You just need solid game,” he said.

“What game?” said Omkara. “You’ve got to sit with me in the last stretch.”

And for the next hour, Max sat behind Omkara on his motorcycle and laughed and chatted over the roar of the motorcycle engine as if he was in a college dorm instead of slipping, sliding and holding on for dear life on an icy road in the mighty Himalayas.

Finally, five hours after they had started, they dropped Max off in front of a snow-covered milestone, the starting point of the trail up to Bhojbasa.

“That was brilliant, dude. The best ride we’ve ever had,” said Omkara. “I love the game. I’m going to try it in Bhatwari itself.”

“With my aunts?” said Shiva.

“Fucking yeah. With your aunts. I’m going to use the foreigner in a foreign land game, what say Max?” said Omkara. He put on a deep, affected accent. “Oh really, Aunt Nirmala, how charming. In New Delhi, we don’t drink milk straight from the cows like you do in your sweet little Bhatwari village. Oh, meeting you is so educational. Your culture is so different from ours.” He removed his dark glasses and winked at Max. “They will lap me up. I’ll be in their laps. Oh yeah, in their laps, in their laps, in their laps,” he sang.

Max laughed.

“You are disgusting, man,” said Shiva. He turned to Max. “You sure you can manage? Want one of us to come with you?”

Max shook his head. “I’m a solid hiker. I’ll be okay.”

“It’s an easy trail. Just keep going northwest for four hours or so and you’ll reach Bhojbasa. Fourteen kilometers max. Steep but wide. You’ll feel the path under your feet soon. There won’t be anyone on the trail of course but there is a guesthouse in Bhojbasa that’s open all year. If anyone knows about this Brazilian dude, the guy who runs it will.”

Max nodded. He had read online about the guesthouse. He planned to sleep there for a few nights until he could track down the Brazilian doctor. No one knew the doctor’s real name but he went by the immodest name of Ishvara, Sanskrit for “a supreme being,” and he seemed to be well-known among the yogis meditating in the caves near the guesthouse.

Omkara dismounted from his motorcycle. “Take this cellphone, dude,” he said, pulling a smartphone out of the jacket. “It doesn’t work here but maybe it works up there. These things are strange sometimes. If you get stuck, call Shiva’s number. It’s stored under his name.”

Surprise tears welled up in Max’s eyes. If he learned nothing else in India, he’d learn how to open his heart more.

“Seriously, I’m okay,” he said. “You got me here in great time. It is barely noon. I should be there well before sunset.”

Omkara hesitated, then put his phone away. Shiva asked Max if he wanted to borrow his thick motorcycle gloves for the hike.

“And how will you go down?” said Max.

Shiva patted the rear seat of his motorcycle. “Without a giant huddled behind me, I don’t need to grip the handles so hard.”

Max laughed. “I’m good. I have enough gloves for three people,” he said.

They shook hands.

“Look us up when you come down,” said Omkara. “It’s the only engineering college in Rishikesh and everyone knows us there. We run the place.”

Max waved them goodbye, wanting to store their kind faces in his memory.

“Be crazy, be safe, Mad Max.”

Max’s stiffness vanished as soon as he began hiking. He was glad he had kept running through the haze of work and hospital visits over the last three years. His lungs seemed to adapt well to the 14,000-foot elevation and he breathed easily in the thin air. There was no sign of a man-made trail but it was hard to get lost. On one side of the thick blanket of snow was a cliff with shriveled trees and large boulders, on the other a steep fall to the frozen Ganges. There was nowhere to go but straight up. He walked along on the packed snow, slipping into a comfortable rhythm, looking ahead not below, keeping his neck and back straight and his shoulders loose, just as his track coach at Trinity had taught him years ago.

About a mile in, he came across two uprooted trees on his path. Max scrambled over them using the snow-covered branches for support. Just a few steps ahead, he ran into a boulder, then a few more, followed by more uprooted trees, all seemingly the effects of a recent snowstorm. He looked up. Not even a wisp of cloud covered the afternoon sun. The sunlight reached him well before the valley below, keeping him comfortably warm. Luck was shining brightly on him that day. Max crawled over the rocks and trees, keeping a close eye on the frozen river hundreds of feet below. One false step and he’d hurtle headfirst into it. But destiny was on his side today. If he hadn’t left the hotel in Rishikesh, he wouldn’t have caught the morning bus to Uttarkashi and later got a ride right up to the trailhead. He’d be in the Bhojbasa guesthouse by 4 p.m. if not sooner. If his lucky streak continued, maybe he’d even be pointed to the doctor’s cave that evening. Max wouldn’t bother him much. If he could just get a push in the right direction, he’d figure the rest out himself, working hard, methodically, just as spiritual seekers had done for centuries. And no matter how much time it took, he wouldn’t leave the Himalayas until he got a glimpse of the perfect state which lay beyond birth, suffering and death.

The air got colder and the wind blew harder as Max made his way up. He stopped every few minutes and took out a layer of clothing from his backpack until he was wearing almost everything he carried. Two hours passed. He must be half-way there, but there was no way to know for sure. Everything below him, above him, around him was blanketed by snow. He wolfed down the bread and potatoes he’d packed that morning and forced himself to hydrate, adding two packets of electrolytes to his water for good measure. A light snowfall began. Almost immediately, a thick cloud enveloped the sun. Only 2.30 p.m. but it felt like late evening.

He could feel the air thinning. His throat itched and he coughed long, hollow coughs. Any moment now he would be there. Both Shiva and the articles he had read had said that it would take three to four hours for a reasonably fit person and Max hadn’t missed a beat in the three hours he had been hiking. Yet there was no sign of the guesthouse or of anything human, just snow, rocks, and bare trees. His heart fluttered a little. Come on, he knew the way of the mountains well, didn’t he? Everything was hidden from view until it wasn’t. The guesthouse was just around the corner. A turn here, a climb there, and he’d be facing it.

The snowfall became heavier. Small, blue hailstones, sharp as bullets, struck his face. Max put his hands over his eyes and took shelter under a rock jutting out from the cliff. The sky turned darker. He switched on his headlamp in proximity mode to save battery life and wore the last of his layers, his hard shell jacket and hand warmers. If it got any colder, he could be in trouble. But he wouldn’t panic yet. He’d be at the warm guesthouse soon. The rock above him trembled. Max walked out into the snowfall with his hands on his cheeks.

It was 4 p.m. By now, he should have been there. He checked his compass for the hundredth time. Yes, he was still steering northwest. Had he missed a turn when the sun disappeared? Should he retrace his steps? He kept moving forward. The hail rained on his face, scraping his cheeks like a razor blade. The wind screamed. His knee began to pain lightly. The lingering running injury was back. Max’s heart beat nervously. If he got lost, he could wander forever. No one in New York knew he was in the Himalayas and Omkara and Shiva didn’t know if he was coming back in twelve hours or twelve years. Max breathed deeply. He couldn’t think like a loser. He was a survivor, a marathoner, a mountain climber; any moment now he’d find his way.

He climbed higher. The hail stung the inside of his lips. A strong gale knocked him to his knees. He tried to get up. No, the wind was too strong. Flattening himself against the cliff, he picked himself up slowly. The ice seeped in through his mittens. Worried about frostbite, he let go of the rock. Immediately, he lost his balance and fell on the packed snow again.
Relax.
He got up, slower this time, more focused, touching the jagged edges of the cliffs lightly with his hands, and moved forward inch by inch.

Six hours of continuous walking. He couldn’t be walking in the right direction otherwise he would have reached Bhojbasa two times over at this speed. The compass read fifteen degrees below zero. He’d been in colder temperatures before but the wind was so strong here that he was shivering despite his layers. He had no more clothes to put on. Electric shocks like sharp pains went up and down his knee. If he kept walking higher, he’d . . .

Everything blacked out for a moment. He blinked rapidly. The black heaviness in his forehead reduced. Quickly, he pulled out three chocolate bars from his coat and gobbled them down for energy. He sat down panting on the ice and devoured yet another piece of the Indian bread he had packed in the morning. The sky darkened more yet there was no sign of a moon or a twinkling star. The thick blanket of clouds had obscured everything.

I am lost
.

A knot formed in his stomach. Max had to admit to himself that his search was over. He didn’t have a clue where he was. Not a soul in the world knew his whereabouts. If he were to survive this night, he would have to return to Gangotri quickly, force his way into an empty hut and keep warm. Max put his headlamp in full-power mode, turned around and headed southeast, back to the trailhead, with a burst of manic energy, determinedly ignoring the pain in his knee.

He stopped two hours into his descent. A forty-foot long, bluish-white glacier with dangerous-looking black rock jutting from under it lay in his path. Stunned, he stared at the slanting block of ice. Where had this bastard come from? He looked at the ridges in the bare cliff above. It must have slipped down in the last hour. Or had he taken another false turn? He looked around. Nothing was familiar. Should he go back up? Up where—to certain freezing death? No, the ice must still be fresh. He could cross the glacier.

Max approached the glacier gingerly. He took one tentative step. His foot slid immediately. He threw himself to his side and grasped the crumbling ice for balance, stopping his fall. Slowly, he crouched back. If he’d taken another step on the glacier, he would have hurtled down the mountain into the frozen river below. God, this was serious. He could die. He took a few steps back from the glacier. Jesus H Christ. What would he do now? He was stuck in the middle of nowhere. Going up was foolish, going down was suicide. God, he was fucked.

Focus. Focus. Focus. All he needed was a little traction. If he found a dry tree branch, he could wrap it around his shoe. Max walked a few hundred meters back up the mountain. Nothing. The bare trees were covered with snow, snow, and more snow. But if his tough, weathered Merrell hiking boots were skidding, even a dry branch wouldn’t work. He walked back to the glacier. How did the yogis live in the caves?

Like machines their bodies were. They walked barefoot in snow while we used shoes imported from Russia
.

Max’s heart raced. He dare not even consider Viveka’s suggestion. It wasn’t just stupid, it was dangerous. But it was the only way out. He stood there in indecision. The hail started pelting him again.

Shaking his head, Max removed his hiking boots and three layers of socks and toe warmers and put them in his empty backpack. He breathed deeply and began crossing the forty-foot glacier, taking small, light steps with his bare feet, reasoning that the lesser the force he exerted, the milder the reaction he’d get from the ice.
One step at a time. Don’t look at the river. Next step. One more.

Last step. He walked off the glacier onto the path. Christ, he had done it, he had. But he couldn’t feel his toes anymore. Immediately, he grabbed the matches from his backpack. One by one, he struck the matches against the box, but they were too wet. Desperate, he struck them faster, two at a time. How long did he have before frostbite damaged his toes? Finally, he managed to get one to ignite. He looked for his diary in the upper zippered pocket of his backpack. With a cry, he remembered that Omkara had cast it aside that morning. He rummaged in his backpack for something, anything to light. Nothing.

His passport.

Max pulled it out from his inside shirt and tore off its unused pages. He put the dying match to a page. To his relief, it caught fire. He added more pages to the flames and thrust his wet, cold feet on top of the burning paper quickly. His toes burnt—and thawed. Wincing, he put all his layers of toe warmers and socks back on, wiggling his toes furiously and dancing on the ice until their movement returned to normal. He started walking down at a furious pace. Barely had he gone one hundred meters when he saw another glacier in his path.

Max burst out laughing. He was done. He had neither dry matches nor more paper. He couldn’t pull the stunt with his naked feet again. Warm tears rolled down his cheeks. He put his head in his hands and sat down on the ice. He was about to be buried alive in the snow. Was he going to die here? Now? Hadn’t he been safe and warm in New York just a week ago? What a slow, pointless death.

Keisha, I was so wrong, I’m sorry
.

Max’s high school girlfriend’s bright animated face rippled through the blurry whiteness. His heart rose up his throat, choking him. He had ruined her life. Was she even alive? Right now, he wanted just one more chance to find her or at least come clean to her family about everything that had happened between them so they wouldn’t blame her. Max put snow on his face to stop the tears.
Get a fucking grip.
He’d freeze to death like this. He couldn’t think of her now.

Max looked in his backpack for something dry to wipe off the snow with. Finding nothing, he threw the backpack aside. He removed his shoes, took off one of the three layers of socks from his feet and wiped his face dry. He stared at the socks. Maybe, just maybe, the extra friction would help.

Max put his shoes back on and pulled a woolen sock over each shoe, tearing them at the ends so they snuck over the entire sole. Standing up and leaning to one side, he walked slowly across the forty feet of glacier, catching the packed snow for support after every few steps. His heart thudded out of his chest. Again, he willed himself from looking down.

He reached the other end of the glacier safely and stepped on land again. Science was far more reliable than God. He removed another layer of socks from his feet so he was wearing only one pair and jammed them on top of the shoes for the journey ahead.

Max checked his watch: 9 p.m. Pitch dark. His headlamp was flickering. Where was he? He should have reached Gangotri by now. Or at least the abandoned ranger office he had seen two miles into the journey. All he saw was snow and rock, snow and rock, snow and rock—and the icy river below. And soon he would slip and fall headfirst into it. He was hobbling like a ninety-nine-year-old man because of his knee pain and could no longer walk straight. No guide was going to come out of a tent with Ben Gay and a hot flask of tea for him, unlike on Kilimanjaro when his knee had started hurting on his way down from the summit. He tied his towel around his knee. Gingerly, he put one foot down and took a tentative step, then another, slowly making his way down, the pain shooting from his knee to his head like a bolt.

Not a sign of anything. He was completely lost, a mere speck in the infinite ocean of ice. He didn’t have a chance of running into the narrow trailhead in Gangotri. Should he just make camp here until the morning? What camp? He had nothing but a backpack. Without motion, he’d freeze to death. He moved faster. A sudden wave of nausea surged through him. Warm bile rushed into his mouth. He emptied his stomach and lay down spent in the cold snow. The ice seeped through his overcoat, sweaters and shirts. He didn’t care. He wanted to die.

Enough.

He pushed himself up and took a large sip of water. He took out the aluminum foil with his food from his backpack and smelled the food. The potatoes inside the bread had gone bad. But it was freezing here. If he died now, even his body wouldn’t rot. How could the boiled potatoes rot then? Maybe the potatoes weren’t bad. Altitude can make you smell stuff, see stuff, think stuff, that doesn’t exist, right? Say it, say it, he was going mad. No. He threw the bread away into the blackness surrounding him. He was now officially without food. His headlamp was almost out of battery, lighting the path ahead with just a faint, narrow beam.

Max inched down through the blinding pain in his knee. Shouldn’t he see a flicker of light somewhere? Gangotri, Harsil, Dharali, some town in the distance? What had he been thinking? How had he entered the most formidable mountain range in the world so unprepared? He couldn’t even walk properly on flat land with his old knee injury. Why had he been so arrogant, so foolish? The snow fell faster. He covered his face to stop icicles from forming. Somewhere behind him he heard a soft, thudding sound.

The Brazilian was here to save him.

Ecstatic, he turned around.

A pair of gleaming eyes. A furry face. A deer, no, a mountain leopard. Something.

Max ran forward, away from the eyes, falling, picking himself up again, odd flashes of Sophia, an old priest and a brown woman passing through his head. He stopped when he couldn’t run any longer and looked around. The eyes had disappeared.

Max sat down with his compass, shivering, heart bursting out of his chest, surprised he hadn’t steered off course during his mad, frenzied dash down. He wished he had. Maybe he’d see something other than the darkness and snow then. Perhaps the destiny he’d been so sure of would steer him better than the compass. It was well past midnight. He had been walking in circles for more than twelve hours. He was out of food, out of battery power, and his knee was throbbing. Max got up again. Should he head up toward the guesthouse which he had missed before or down toward Gangotri? His life depended on the decision.