Chapter 1


Approach

NunKun seen from the Margan Pass

^ ^ ^ ^

Door, always open
Only the blind eye is shut.
He fears to enter
Who does not know the inner way.
Rabindranath Tagore

 

I awoke to that beating sound. But it wasn’t of wings, nor was I flying to the safety of warmer valleys. Instead, I found myself firmly grounded; wings of dream giving way to the reality of flailing tent walls. The nylon shell was part of me, a second skin. I felt the cruel bite of the wind, exhaustion from the ceaseless whipping, but equally an exhilarating freedom—almost as if I was still flying so high, so free.

I fought to escape that bird, to remember where, and who, I was. Not that I had much hope of ever knowing the "who," but I knew I had better figure out the "where." If I didn’t, "who" wouldn’t matter.

My brain struggled, one part to regain the dream, another to discover the present. For a moment these forces were equal, canceling out thought. I was back, drifting high, suspended in an equilibrium of time and space. Yet when I looked down, I saw only impenetrable fog. I wonder, if that fog had lifted, would I have seen me?

This suspension lasted only moments. Facing survival, present need overtook past remembrance. Senses keyed on the few clues, those urgent flapping sounds, the silky feel of down, the stale stench of confinement. The present came flooding back, although I would have preferred to linger in that fleeting dream.

I reached this place in the waning moments of yesterday. It must have been yesterday…at least before now. The sky remains storm-dark and my watch long ago kherab, kaput, finished. For two days I climbed alone the steep nala know as Sharfat. This precipitous cleft funnels NunKun’s snow melt out onto the flood plain of Suru, a long, north-south gash of a valley lying to the east. I was on my way to Kashmir—or so I thought—having reached Suru’s wide and sandy plain after an arduous trek across Lahaul and Zanskar. There, at Rangdom Gomba, ancient monastery and Dharma’s westernmost outpost against Islam, I paused to recoup my energies.

From the vantage of the gomba’s high ramparts, I turned to my host, a wizened ancient who served as the Kaushak, temporally the leader over a dozen or so lamas. I asked if there wasn’t some quicker way to Kashmir than the road north to Kargil.

"Well Sahib," the Kaushak replied, "you could cross up there, but that means cutting through the very heart of the Himalaya, the abode of snows. There is said to be a way across, although…." Suddenly, caution clouded his eyes. "So very high…it is also said that the Himalaya is home to more than snow. Some believe there Mara dwells, together with demon legions. Jealously they guard the heights, waiting to strike all enemies of Dharma. You know of Mara, Sahib?"

I glossed over his question with a slight nod of my head, preferring to ask my own. "Enemies?"

This Kaushak seemed a rational sort, a man of wide-ranging knowledge who would understand such mythical demigods as metaphor, not flesh and blood creatures.

"That is Mara’s purpose, testing each traveler to find what lies within."

"But sir, certainly you aren’t such an enemy, you’re Buddhist?"

"Yes I am Nang’pa, what you call Buddhist, but I have never been that way," he replied without expression. Then seized by caution, "This Mara is most difficult to understand. So much has been ascribed to this God…. On one hand, as desire, Mara binds us to an endless cycle of being, but on the other…offers liberation…for those with the courage to face….

"What’s this Mara look like?" I broke into his almost trancelike monologue.

"Oh, yes, please forgive! Life here is so easily lost in…shall we say…dream. Well, in our art Mara has many forms, many names. It is only fitting that the perceived appears as perceiver…like a mirror…but within, not without. What you and I see in this mirror is different. So too is it different from one moment to the next, for we like Mara are in constant change. To know the real Mara you must surrender mind to a higher truth, a truth beyond mind. It is a spirit some think lies above, or at least beyond."

He waved in the general direction of that looming massif. But intentionally, he made his movement an all-encompassing sweep.

"I think it lies elsewhere…in fact everywhere, if, my dear Sahib, you know what I mean. It takes great courage to see Mara, to see truth only found by not looking, not seeking, just being. I have not yet found that courage."

"I know what you mean Kaushakji," covering my uncertainty with the Hindi term of respect, ji, to the end of his name. Then to further mask that confusion, I probed, "but…I think…I’ve met your Mara before."

And I had, but at the time I was reluctant to elaborate on what I thought might well be a product of overwrought imagination or, the road, or the altitude…drugs. Besides, while I had flirted, even briefly communing with this awesome spirit, I was also a coward when it came to that ultimate embrace.

Our eyes met momentarily. I had to glance away, almost as if I feared prolonged contact might injure, like gazing into the sun. I felt the Kaushak was reading my mind. A gnarled hand emerged from the folds of his rough woolen coss.

"There! Back the way you came!"

He motioned up the vast, stony plain, stretching to the Pensi-la, the pass I had crossed into Suru. His fingers came to rest on two notches in the sandstone range just below the pass. These hills—high mountains elsewhere in the world—were fantastically layered in a palette of sedimentary colors: pale ivory, ash rose, a mahogany so dark that it appeared almost black. Once the beds of primordial seas, the layers were uplifted, fractured, and uplifted again by immense tectonic forces. Yet the mountains of this range were only sentinel hills to the colossi beyond. On my map, a tattered U502, this beyond was marked "NunKun Massif." Even in the shallow dimensions of ink on paper, it seemed an insurmountable barrier—between where I was and where, I thought, I wanted to go.

As my eyes gazed on those malevolent forms, I could well believe them to be a "Dark One’s" home. I remembered an earlier time, long before I knew anything about Mara, except perhaps on some intuitive level, the providence of youth. I had fled, fearful of what I understood as "desolation." Now older, I welcomed this second chance to enter Mara’s beckoning void. Memory, softened by the filter of many years, allowed imagination to take hold. Where before I fled loneliness and desolation, I now looked forward to annihilation’s embrace.

The Kaushak interrupted my thoughts, sensing the dangerous ground they were entering.

"You see those two nalas? The closer one is Sharfat, the farther Chillung; both lead over the mountains. They say Sharfat is shorter…but maybe there is too much difficulty…the dragon is too strong, too clever."

"The dragon?" I asked with growing amusement at this educated man’s repeated lapses into what I saw as superstition.

He beamed, as if sharing a joke, then excused himself.

"Ah yes, dragons, or at least that is how I have come to think about them. Here, the people believe what you call ‘glaciers’ are dragons, perhaps because the sound shifting ice makes…like a dragon’s roar…or that glaciers look like giant serpents. I know in the West you fear such creatures…you think them evil. It is different here. Whether Nang’pa or Hindu, we respect the naga, the serpent…and the dragon is like a serpent, no?

"Some fucking huge serpent," I thought to myself.

"Perhaps," he continued, "this is because much in our belief comes from an older time; a time before Lord Buddha brought the Way; a time when we felt at one with the earth; a time when our ancestors worshipped the Earth as a Mother, calling her Amma; a time when…"

"I understand Kaushakji," I broke in impatiently.

"In that old religion," he continued without a trace of rancor, "people thought waters flowing from the mountains were nagas, or at least the nagas’ spirit. It is most natural, for these streams form the lifeblood of our land. Is it wrong to see the naga as good, as the giver of life? I believe this is different from how you think in the West. There, you set your life above all others. You throw down the loving Amma, and make your God an angry, distant father in the sky. The serpent, once the friend of Amma, a symbol of healing and prophecy, turned into a thing of evil—the tempter of your Eve—perhaps trying to recast Amma as a thing of evil."

My eyes drifted upward, resting on a serpentine icefall that dangled from a great gash on NunKun’s flank. I needed to get the Kaushak back on the subject of a way across.

"Whether it’s ice or reptile," I replied with a nervous laugh, "I’ll have to conquer it."

"Conquer, eh? Maybe Sahib, maybe! Very big though, very hard to conquer." I got his drift immediately and felt a fool for giving him such an obvious opening. God! It is always a bitch talking to the cloth—Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, whatever.

In an attempt to escape, my eyes climbed upwards, trying to see where Sharfat might lead. I followed its cut, up marbled foothills, soon lost in impenetrable mist. I continued my gaze higher. Finally, towering behemoths emerged; dark, brooding, gun-metal granite, sheathed in gleaming coats of eternal ice, edges fiery pink with backlit alpenglow—colors so like the cheap reproduction of Hokusai’s Fuji that once hung on my San Francisco kitchen wall.

Yes, I had been here before. But in a time, more than a dozen years ago, when I still believed I could grasp my dreams.

^ ^ ^

I had just finished herding a gaggle of tourist across the mountains, but with their bitching and moaning, there was little time for my own spiritual needs—the "connection" that we who frequent these mountains tend to romanticize. I was obsessed with the idea of going off and being alone with my mountains. A solo climb of Nun peak seemed just the thing, at least from the safety of an overplush houseboat in the Vale.

At 23,500 feet, Nun isn’t so high as the Himalaya go, but this modest elevation is more than made up by an extremely lethal character. The western face, exposed to the full brunt of  monsoon storms, is a sheer cliff almost a mile in height. A deep and highly unstable mantle of snow covers the eastern, more sheltered side. No one, to my knowledge, has climbed the cliff; certainly, it required technical skills and equipment beyond my energies. The eastern route, where luck and fortitude might see me to the top, was my sole option. Yes, the conquest of Nun would have put a sizable notch in my climber’s belt. This wasn’t just about ego, but might prove a valuable asset, as I hoped to make my living peddling the "Himalayan experience."

I almost made the top, almost beat the Beast—was this categorization a self-fulfilling prophecy? But it was late in the season…just as now. A vicious storm caught me, maybe only a few hundred yards from this very place. I held on for several days hoping for a clearing. Finally, running short of all the energies necessary for survival, I had to retreat. Then came the real horror. I almost packed it in during the cold, wet week it took to get down. And it wasn’t just the physical obstacles. In my rundown state and incredible loneliness, I saw ghost at every turn. At least I took them for ghost. Now I wonder, for on this trip I have seen them again—and I am no longer sure that "ghost" is the right term.

Let’s not forget the bears or, perhaps, they too were ghosts. I had seen them in the distance, and their tracks were everywhere. Just a small family, a sow and two cubs, but the sow was huge. My greatest fear was that I had stumble between the mother and her babies. Rounding each bend of the swamp-filled valley floor, I held my breath. On one side was steep cliff, on the other bog, with only a narrow path to walk. There in the trail’s soft ooze were clear tracks of bear. The mother’s were big, much larger than my own. How far was I behind? When would they stop to rest? My only retreat was the way I had come. Loaded down as I was, and on marshy ground, how fast could I run? I played out the meeting a thousand times. Would it be best to submit, just roll up into a ball and show the sow I was no threat? I had seen this work…but in a movie. And it would take courage I wasn’t sure I had. Perhaps, knowing my weakness, the Gods had been kind and spared us both the ordeal.

If the bears had been unnerving, the river crossings were nightmares; waters so cold they burned like fire. These streams too had their own spirits—perhaps of nagas. In places the water moved with such force I feared being swept away. In places where the current slowed it was worse, quicksand.

But overwhelming all else—fear, hunger, cold—was loneliness. I was in a different space in my life and not prepared. The land was truly lonely; rock was king and an unknown force, sensed at that time as predatory evil, the only companion. I was so starved for the company of the living that I broke down when I reached the tree line. With tears of joy, I hugged the first birch like a long lost love. I must have spent some time in conversation with that tree, stroking the smooth silver bark as a lover’s skin. The isolation changed my understanding. Like all people living close to nature, I had entered a realm where everything—animal, vegetable, and mineral—was endowed with spirit, spirit with real consequences for me.

After walking a week, I reached the first outpost of civilization, a rag tag hamlet called Meterwan. The denizens wouldn’t believe a human could come from the mountain so late in the year. They too lived in a world of spirits. Convinced I was a ghost, they shut themselves in their homes and offered no welcome. That was the most depressing moment, even more than when I had realized I wouldn’t top Nun.

Below Meterwan, the trail again climbs the precipitous valley wall. As I struggled along this track, etched on a cliff a thousand or more feet above the valley floor, I thought long and hard about just letting go, a little slip of the foot on the loose shingle and then…. But there was something still within, something that wouldn’t let me write the end. It was two more days until I finally got down to the main valley at Yordu. There, I found shelter and a hot meal.

I have always looked back on that journey as a watershed. Oh, there have been many of these, but perhaps none more meaningful. Up to then, I believed I had only to imagine. It would simply be a matter of seeing the dream through. Buying into my culture’s myth, I thought it was only about will. Then I hit Nun—or, more accurately, Nun hit me—with the realization there were forces beyond my ability to conquer.

I imagined I knew Death well enough. Nam had seen to that. But there it had preyed on others, reinforcing my own sense of invincibility. Somehow, I was special; death, and its precursor, failure, weren’t for me. Nun was mortality’s final knock on that door of youthful folly, a door that up to then had shielded me. Nun not only knocked, but also kicked in the door, letting me experience for the first time what waited outside. When I got down to Yordu, I was no longer young.

^ ^ ^

"You used that word ‘conquer’ my friend." It was the Kaushak’s turn. "It is true you can fight against your own fear. That is an enemy you can conquer. And, even though it is against our teaching, you can fight against another creature…human or otherwise. Against this nature…against a mountain, desert, sea, jungle…you might as well struggle against the air you breathe or the soil on which you stand. Life is life. When you try to divide into opposing elements what is one, you truly fall prey to Maya."

This last word caught my attention. Part of me wanted to inquire further, but I was too enmeshed in this very Maya, the webs of all that had gone down before. Here in NunKun’s grasp, feeling Mara’s icy breath through the chinks in stone and nylon walls, I begin to grasp its meaning. But in Rangdom, there were more immediate considerations. How could I winter in such desolation, even on the not so certain chance the Kaushak extended hospitality? I needed to move fast. Having been on the trail for many weeks, I was almost out of supplies and the means to buy them. Most importantly, I had depleted my siddi, that internal store of spiritual energy to do those things I thought I couldn’t do—in plain English "balls."

Besides, I was still eager to get to Kashmir, though not so much as only weeks before. It was late in the season. The weekly bus service between Padam and Kargil finished. I had already decided against a lorry. Anything but a lorry! I knew that torture all too well. Being battered for hours, then suddenly a brief respite, very soon again the renewed battering, like beating your head against a wall.

I felt incredibly intimidated by what lay before me. Having just set my course, I found myself backpedaling, wracking my brain for some excuse to escape. Weakly, I asked the Kaushak for a guide. "Just up the Sharfat to the plateau, then he can come back down. I’ve been the rest of the way before." The Kaushak replied, with a trace of a smirk, that during his time at Rangdom no one had ever gone this way—and returned to tell the tale.

"A few foreigners have gone up the nala, but they never came back. Maybe they went on to the Marwa, to Yordu, across the Margan-la to Kashmir. I once heard of a man who came from that way, but then again maybe…." Then turning away he excused himself. "Ah, it is time for pujah. I will pray that you decide wisely what you must do. Remember, is it not the wisdom also of the West…the shortest distance is not always a straight line?"

The call to supper broke my train of thought. I was in no hurry for my tsampa, even if it was served three different ways. Suru is a poor region, where little grows, and bazaars are far away. The ubiquitous staple of the Tibetan Plateau, roasted barley flour, was creatively served as both porridge and bread. The leftover bread was mixed with tea and yak butter into a nourishing drink—nothing wasted. Anyway, I had no right to bitch; the monks ate nothing after the late morning meal. Besides, I was reluctant to use my own dwindling rations. I only hoped my stomach would hold up, but this thought haunted me every time I ate anywhere in India.

I lingered on the rampart, filling my mind with the expansive panorama in the dying light. Just before I turned to descend the notched-log ladder, I caught sight of a Himalayan Griffin, soaring high toward the Southeast. Such birds were always a thrill to watch, so huge, yet moving with such effortless grace. What a lucky sucker, I thought. How easy for you to come and go as you please. If only I could fly over these mountains, if only….

Later that evening, in front of an ancient fresco, I meditated on my future course. Although this representation of mystical Shambhala was the principal art treasure of the Gomba, I initially took little notice. The dim light and my own pressing problems reduced it to a mere backdrop. Yet ever so surely, my mind was drawn into the vision held by artists many centuries before. As I became attuned to the darkness, I noticed, while flaked and cracked the colors of ground mineral pigment remained distinct and vivid as when first painted. The long-forgotten creator had depicted Shambhala as a sparkling emerald of a valley, set in a seemingly impenetrable ring of snowy mountains. It is here, myth has it, that "Clear Light," the "Diamond Lotus," truth, reigns. Shambhala, according to the mysteries of tantric lore, is a paradise, hovering just beyond reach, attainable only in that third, ethereal eye, seemingly outside physical grasp. Except, I irreverently thought, in those fleeting moments where rationality is suspended by sexual orgasm or drug-induced ecstasy. Yet beneath this bravado, I knew it was my own slavish devotion to existence keeping me from Shambhala. The work of being "me" made it impossible to empty mind and allow Clear Light to enter.

In the dim glow of butter wick lamps, I took off, not merely on but quite literally into, the fantastic vision before me. The atmosphere was intended to be conducive to mind tripping; there were no distractions. Every stone, every structure, every piece of art, was steeped in age-long meditation. Purposeful scents and sounds shaped even the air. The evening pujah was being offered in the nearby du-khang. Within this cloister the lamas performed the ritual offering to the Lord Buddha—smoke from the sandalwood and jasmine incense combining with the buzzing vibration of the collective, throat-song mantras, prayers for the salvation of the world. No better score could have been composed to send me on my journey—the hypnotic male harmony, punctuated by drum, cymbal, and wailing, clarinet-like shanai.

I felt drawn to the wall, through the cracking plaster, into that ancient vision. What at first was two-dimensional, became three, and then four. I entered an island…no, better, a world within worlds. Ringed by snowy mountains was a valley of eternal spring, filled with waterfalls, green forest, flower-filled gardens, animals of every kind, a world of incredible peace, a world of harmony where all was one. This Shambhala was clearly a dream of those destined to live out their lives in Rangdom’s arid desolation. How many lamas had labored how long to create, and then sustain, this marvel?

Behind me the Kaushak quietly approached. His training made him hesitant to disturb my meditation. Yet he felt compelled to speak, determined as he was to dissuade me from my planned course. He coughed, and then as I turned, my meditation obviously ended, he spoke.

"A very beautiful painting is it not? Very, very old! From time to time we repair it, a little paint here or there, but much the same as when it was first painted, maybe three hundred years ago. At that time, two lamas went off to the West, over the big mountains to find Shambhala; they were supposed to have heard the divine call. I myself have never heard this, but the lamas are reported as saying it sounded something like ‘Ka la gi ya’. Of course, that was only a way of writing what they reported of the sound. Anyway, the two lamas must have been mistaken for they had to turn back. One found his way to avidya…that passage between lives…through a hole in the ice. The other was just barely able to return. Perhaps, his life’s dharma incomplete, he had remaining work. Supposedly, he was left with only two fingers; the others fell off from the cold. With two fingers, he painted on this wall what he had glimpsed through frozen clouds and ice-bound peaks. Have you heard of Shambhala?"

I told him what little I knew of the myth, trying not to appear too ignorant.

"Yes, always just beyond the next pass, like your Kashmir, eh? See, surrounded by the icy crests, such a lush valley, the likes of which those bound to this land have never seen. Is it not like Kashmir? Is this why, my Amrikan friend, you wish so much to go to Kashmir? Have you heard the call? Have you heard the ‘Ka la gi ya’?"

I suppose in a way I had heard a call, but it was hardly divine, and most certainly had nothing to do with "Ka la gi ya." I told him of my great love for Kashmir, that for me it was the most beautiful of lands. What I didn’t tell him was I had business in Kashmir. It was a business that had nothing to do with beauty. But then business rarely does.

View of Dal Lake from Nashaq Garden

 

^ ^ ^

My mind filled with an image of that business. Nazir, the self-styled "Maharajah of the Water People," was the very opposite of beauty. I suspected it was this unctuous, obese son of a bitch, who had set me up for the bust over a dozen years ago. Oh, he was so good, the quintessential host, knowing all too well how to play to Angrez fantasies. But then there had been a rift, and all his venom toward the posturing ferenghi, so long suppressed, came spilling out. He had cursed me with what for a Kashmiri is the most terrible of fates, "You are finished in Kashmir!" This was followed by events that made his prophecy too prescient not to be of his own making. And then I had been wounded so deeply. I had to find something external to blame. It was on Nazir my rage fell. I wanted him to see it was in my power to return to Kashmir. It was a point of honor. After that, further payback would depend on my state of mind.

Or at least that had been my mindset in Delhi; one, over the many miles, I had almost escaped. However, just as I thought I was free, another finger of the same hand appeared, pressing down. How fond Kashmiris are of saying, "the five fingers are not the same," failing to add that those fingers, diverse as they may appear, work for the same master. This other, Gulam, or Gul as he liked to be called, was much younger, and innocent of his elder’s misdeeds. But Gul was to prove a more dangerous foe. While Nazir was the past, Gul lurked in my future. No, I wasn’t going to sink back into that mire. I had played it out on the Pensi-la, no more external questing for me. I knew where my demons….

Most thankfully, I drifted further back, past all that trouble with Gul, past Nazir, to more idyllic times spent in the Vale. And how like this picture of Shambhala it had seemed, even though at the time I had no real understanding, thinking Shambhala more like Hilton’s Hollywood fantasy, Shangri–la. As foreign guests, endowed with all the privilege the Amrikan dollar could buy, we whiled away the days on Victorian houseboats. We dined on sumptuous warzwan, the feasting foods most Kashmiris enjoy only at weddings, or Ids. Occasionally out of boredom, we had stirred ourselves from drug-induced stupors, tripping to one of the many gardens, palaces, or handicraft factories—modern-day Moghuls.

The luxury of it all! Just to drift along in a shikara, being paddled aimlessly about the lakes, through huge stands of lotus and water lilies, watching the turquoise-throated bulbuls dive for their suppers. A young, kohl-eyed boy, perhaps the shikara-wala’s son, would sit in attendance, preparing a pipe of afyon or a joint of charas. If I got hungry or thirsty, there might even be a cook who, on his stove behind my cushioned cabin, would provide chai and munchies like pakhora—the fritters, in this case made from lotus root harvested from the lake only moments before.

I had been of a different mind then, too many books about the Raj, too many fantasies about "the Great Game." We led life as we imagined had the Brits of old, but with only the pleasure, devoid of the responsibility that accompanies rule. In this waking dream, we were supported by a native caste of Water People, lake-dwellers like Nazir, who tended tourists much in the same way as did the mountain shepherds their flocks, or the valley farmers their fields and orchards. Kashmir was distinctly orchestrated into two worlds, the world of the tourist and the world of the native—fantasy and reality. But although divided, the Vale had been at peace. And I too had been at peace, until greed brought it crashing down.

^ ^ ^

The Kaushak continued, eager to prove he was a man of the world, despite his calling and the remoteness of its parish. "All of this has changed since the rising. Mussalmen have been much trouble since Independence. Be certain, they have always caused much problems for us Nang’pa. But this is something more. They felt cheated by the old Hindu Raja, who went over to India, even though they wanted Pakistan. The Mussalmen ran him out, but it was too late, and they could not run out India. Then there has been all the fighting between India and Pakistan. After the trouble in Iran and Afghanistan, the Ayatollah Khomeni’s Islamic revolution and the Rus invasion, many of the Mussalmen fighters, the mujahedin, came to Kashmir. They say they make jihad, holy war, as if war could be holy. They taught the Kashmiris how to fight. Oh, it is not only the Mussalmen’s fault. On the other side, down in the cities, the RSSS, and other Hindu fanatics want India to be a religious, Hindu-only nation. Then on another side are the Sikhs. We poor Nang’pa are caught in the middle."

He paused, reflecting on his words and then chuckled, "Well I guess that is the place we are supposed to be, on the Zhumlam, the Middle Way. Yet it is so dangerous. Thank the most blessed Lord Buddha for these mountain walls and harsh land. It is hard to get here, and once here there is not much for the taking. Our land is only for those with little care for material life."

He paused again, perhaps struggling with the temptation to detour into deeper theology. Thinking better of it he continued in a temporal plane.

"Kashmir is gripped by brutal war. Imagine war in your ‘paradise’. No longer are tourists lulled to sleep by cicadas or loons. Now the sounds of weapons too terrible to imagine rule the night. Each day the radio tells of new victims; several here, dozen there, rape, murder, burning, torture. A mujahed walks into a police station in Hazaratbal and shoots the local commander sitting at his desk. Out go the special police from Delhi. They call them "Black Cats" because of their black dress and stealth at night. Five students are dragged from their homes and taken to the old Rajah’s palace. There they are questioned, beaten, and subjected to electric shocks—some say in the most private places. Then, because they are only youths and can give no real information, they are released. But now they are no longer boys; now they are angry men. They too become mujahedin who will ambush soldiers that in turn will…. On and on it goes. Scores are settled only to create new scores to settle…an endless cycle of pain."

Again there was a pause. That old Kaushak had a vocation. He was eager to bring me into the fold. I was his guest; it was the least I could do to let him do his thing.

"If you will forgive me, it is like the bhavachakra, the Wheel of Becoming, what some mistakenly call the Wheel of Life. Maybe you saw the painting outside the du-khang, and in many other gombas that you have been so kind to visit. It is the wheel that represents the stages of existence, held in the claws of the demon-god, Saypo Kolu. He is just a local version of Mara. Hindus say it is just an aspect of Shiva we stole from them."

He laughed, seeing confusion spread across my face. "It is true, my friend, there is nothing new. We even take the Gods of others. Oh, we may give them new names, even new stories, but they are the same. Are we not all the same within, same needs, same hopes, same fears? Just because we speak with different words, eat different foods, dress in different styles, does not mean that within our heart of hearts there beats a different organ or flows a different fluid. We may call Mara by different names, but in all life there is Mara—that fear inside of what lies beyond. The only difference, how we picture, how we describe."

I wanted him to continue, for not only had his mention of Mara whetted my interest, but also certain events of this journey made me believe that Mara might be waiting somewhere above. However, one doesn’t interrupt a Kaushak lightly. Instead, I was polite and let him go on as he quickly spun away into the "wheel."

"Regardless of the name, the artist put the figure there to symbolize the terror from holding too tightly to existence. We believe our existence…the wheel of endless birth and death…is driven by three evils: lust, hatred, and ignorance. We call these Mara’s ‘Daughters of Desire’, Raga, Dvesa, and Moha. Our artists show them as a bird, snake, and pig. They are usually in a circle, one eating another’s tail."

"But I thought you said that the snake wasn’t an evil thing."

"That I did. Maybe it just worked out in the painting, you know I believe you call it…artist permission?"

"Oh! You mean artistic license."

"Yes, that is it! As I have said, everything does have both good and evil natures. These "daughters" stand for the causes of continued existence, most certainly the problems of Hindus and Mussalmen—lust for the other’s wealth, hatred for the past, ignorance that they are one in the same. As long as they hold onto these "daughters," they will go on as they have since Islam came to this land more than ten centuries ago. Kashmir will continue to revolve in endless cycles of pain."

I was unsure if this was how the Kaushak had decided to dissuade me from my goal, or if he was just deeply concerned with Kashmir’s plight. If all this was happening next door to me, I might be concerned too. Whatever the reason, he was getting agitated, and there was no diplomatic way to turn him off.

"As you may know Sahib, they once called Kashmir ‘Switzerland’ of India, ‘Garden of Peace,’ ‘Happy Valley." Now you have to worry about ‘crossfire,’ ‘crackdown’ or ‘curfew.’ Those three Angrez words have become Kashmiri. The troubles close the entire city. The army occupies all hotels. The mujahedin orders all restaurants, cinemas, videos, and discos shuttered. Between strike and curfew, the shops are hardly ever open. The poor tourists have no fun, no alcohol, and even, I am told, the charas you foreigners like so much is impossible to find."

Here I almost choked, for I had surreptitiously nibbled a generous hit just before he arrived. I knew most lamas disapproved of charas. Was this his polite way of chastising me? But then charas also makes me paranoid. The Kaushak, however, seemed more intent on his own thoughts than on any sin I might have committed.

"The situation is even worse for Hindus; they used to go to Kashmir by the lakh (hundred thousand). Very big was the yatra of Amarnath, to the cave in the mountains where they believe a giant pillar of ice is the penis of Shiva. Every summer at the full moon of their month of Sawan, tens of thousands of Hindu yatris trek through the high mountains. Many come from the South and have never seen ice or snow. They say many sadhus come with almost no clothes and without shoes on their feet. As you know Sahib, even in summer the mountains can be very cold. The mujahedin threaten to kill anyone who makes the journey. I do not worship Shiva either, but it is very bad not to let Hindus worship. A fortnight ago, All India Radio reported ‘agents of Pakistan’…that is their code name for mujahedin…had attacked a large party of yatris. I guess the yatris thought there would be safety in numbers and that the army would protect them. A few were killed, and others were scattered into the mountains. Even now they may be wandering, lost among the very peaks we have been speaking of…so close to our shelter, yet so very far away. How can they, equipped with so little, survive in such a place. Most are from the plains; they have no knowledge of mountains. I pray to Lord Buddha for their deliverance…even though they are not believers. Maybe their own God, Shiva, will protect them. They do so believe these mountains are his home."

A heavy pall must have fallen on the "Happy Valley." Of course, as elsewhere in India, there had been much poverty and some desperation among the locals, but this was kept beyond tourists’ eyes—unless you looked for it. Now it would be impossible for even the most casual tourist, regardless of the drink or smoke, to remain aloof from the sorrow. No, Kashmir was no longer Shambhala, if it had ever been, except in ferenghi fantasy.

"How sad it will be for you when you finally arrive," he said with a deep look into my eyes, as if hoping to see my resolve waver. "But then that is life. One makes some dream to drive one on. Only to find, when reaching the place where the dream should be, it is only in one’s mind."

But despite the Kaushak’s best efforts, I was relentlessly being drawn to Sharfat Nala, and Kashmir beyond. Again my mind drifted back to the bird. How easy it seemed if you had wings, if you could fly.

Of course, I couldn’t fly. On the map the Sharfat route was the most direct approach. But as the Kaushak had intimated, it proved more difficult than even I had imagined. An unheralded storm suddenly blew in from over the mountains. It made, what even under the best conditions was tough going, a sheer horror. Looking back on that short, but savage struggle, it seems almost a dream; that I did fly to this place, yet knowing I didn’t fly. Rather than the dream of remembrance, it was an ordeal in doing. Every step I took, once I began to ascend the nala, required an argument with myself.

"This is crazy, the way too steep, and you don’t even know if you are on the right track…. Look up there at that overhang, look at that jumble of ice…. What if the crevices are too wide and you find yourself in a cul de sac? What if something happens, but you don’t get finished off right away? What if death lingers? What if the walls of the crevice slowly crush you? What if…?"

Somehow I was able to counter my arguments. God! The pack was heavy. It was, after all, filled with life itself, for at least a fortnight. The going got steeper. I had climb one hundred paces and rest. Then, as I went higher, and the way even more precipitous, it would be seventy-five paces, then fifty, then twenty-five.

Night fell. I wanted to go on, but I had come to the snout of an ice beast. There was nothing to do except wait for first light. The wind blew off the glacier, filling the air with a shrieking howl. It was so cold; everything wrapped in clammy mist, matting my beard with ice. I had no strength to build a fire or pitch my tent. I found a place or did it find me? It was relatively flat and sheltered by a big boulder. I felt so drained. It was all I could do to dig my bag out of the stuff sack, crawl in, and wrap the tent fly around me. Yet once done, I was warm and almost dry. For the moment I had all I could hope for in life—to be warm, dry, and horizontal. This was truly heaven. Nibbling on a bit of dried chapati, that ubiquitous flat bread of India, I fell into fitful sleep.

Ahead lay the first of the guardian dragons. It loomed defiantly over the nala, its snout spewing not fire, but ice, rock, and a lava-thick mixture of silt and water. Had I known the creature’s true nature—in my struggle every feature, rock, moraine, stream became a living thing—I might never have taken this path.

In the morning’s light, I began to realize the enormity of my situation. Even from below the glacier’s snout, I could see the route, a tortuous vertical climb, up the moat where ice met rock. Refreshed by sleep, I was up for the challenge. The unknown ahead seemed preferable to the struggle behind, even if the air smelled of snow. It wasn’t a long distance, but with the pack and my weakened condition, it took the better part of the day to make the top. If matters weren’t bad enough, by the time I crested the first icefall, the promised snow began—at first, just a tickle of flakes, then quickly becoming an almost impenetrable curtain. It would have been much easier to get out on the ice, but the blanketing snow made it now impossible to see the waiting crevices. This forced me to make the more difficult, hand-over-hand climb on the near vertical face. No longer did I argue with myself. If I didn’t get off the cliff before nightfall, I was going to be in deep trouble. No, let us not mince words; the price of failure in that place was death.

Finally, I reached the plateau, a wide, snow-choked col between Nun and Kun. It is this place where I now record these words. A place not yet of death, but poised on a razor edge between known and unknown. I am still myself, suspended and sustained in webs of inescapable deeds done and choices made. Can I dare hope? After all, other dragons wait somewhere beyond in the mist. For the moment, exhaustion and fear keep me here, interning me in a limbo of what has been and who I have been. Yet freed from the certainty of death, I have still the chance for new experience, the chance to become another, the chance to hope.

Once I began to suspect I might survive, I had another inkling. My ears had been flooding mind with the sounds of struggle, storm, beating heart, gasping lungs. Yet underneath this barrage, another presence arose, the tentative suggestion of another being, someone with whom I would have to deal.

What would you do? Maybe your first thought is joy. Now you will have someone to share the time. Yes, a chance to assuage that gnawing loneliness. What if it is not someone, but something? Alternative possibilities rumble through your mind, chilling momentarily your joy. Such thoughts ran through mine. I knew I was too high for wolf or bear, no I was safe from those creatures. Was I too high for leopard? Could this sensed other be the rare snow leopard which in my years in these mountains has eluded me, except tracks once seen on Nanda Devi, several hundred miles to the East.

Despite the struggle, or perhaps because of it, some rationality still ruled. No, not even the leopard ranges so high, and in a storm like this. There is nothing for it here, except me. Then my mind went back to what the Kaushak said about Mara. But I was too pumped by my own achievement, my survival, to acknowledge the "supernatural."

No, this presence must be human. Only a human would be so foolish. Since it must be human, certainly it must also be…a man, I thought with some regret. No luck in the world was going to bring a woman, and all the comforts that might mean, to this ever so remote world. God! I realized it had been some time, days even, since I had thought about that…about woman.

Apprehension reared its ugly head. There was a stranger somewhere close-by. I could feel it. Was he aware of my presence? I could picture him snug in his secure warmth, maybe even a down bag like my own, sipping chai, nibbling chocolate and glucose biscuits, lulled by the hiss of a kerosene stove, maybe even with a Walkman to while away the hours. I was cold, hungry, exposed, with only the meager provisions I carried. He might turn me away. For a moment, all those thoughts of a tomorrow, visions that with such difficulty I had regained, now took flight.

What if he was worse off than I? Starving, without shelter, he might see it as his life or mine. That would be justification enough in many men’s minds. I felt around for a weapon. Ah yes, there it was, ready in my hand, so at one with me I scarcely noticed. The ice ax, with its serrated pick and razor-sharp adz would do nicely. Yet while I grasped the ax with renewed urgency, I knew I couldn’t strike a killing blow. Maybe, I would defend myself if attacked, but even this was uncertain. I did know I couldn’t force my way into this unknown’s margin of survival. No, that is not my style. This was another’s domain. I must bend to an external will.

"Jule! Namaste! Salaam Alekwm! Hello, Hello?" I hoped that at least part of this wide-ranging greeting—Ladakhi, Hindi, Urdu, English—would find an understanding ear. In the world below, such casual intermixing of religions and cultures could buy big trouble, but in this place, who could really argue God’s name or form.

I thought I heard a reply. But just at that moment the wind began to rise, filling the air with its howl. For some reason, all my paranoia drained away. It was as if, just ahead in the fog and snow, some benign spirit guided me. Yes, there must be someone ahead. My earlier resolve took flight. In this realm the reason of the lowlands became suspect. Then pumped or no, my mind drifted back to Mara. This was Mara’s supposed home, and we had met in such wild places before. Yes, I was ready. Unlike all those other times, I would now face Mara—no fear, only acceptance, only surrender

Then, as if part of one great mind-fuck, I saw the pile of stones. After many days in the wild, my eyes had become sensitive to shapes falling outside nature’s random structures, shapes more purposeful, shapes revealing a human hand. I told myself I was hallucinating, just seeing what I wanted to see. But as I grew closer, the stones increasingly took on structural outlines. Upon reaching the point where its reality was no longer in doubt, I saw it wasn’t much, little more than an oval cairn of rough stones, with a roof and small entrance hole on one side. Yet in such a wild place, this rustic hut seemed a mightier feat of engineering than the Taj Mahal.

I strained to see a wisp of smoke, a flicker of light in the doorway. Again I called out: "Jule! Namaste! Salaam Alekwm! Hello, Hello?" My call was lost in the wind.