Note - all of the characters are actually fictional assemblies of real people. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. All places are real and as described.
They'd got the last seats available - the two at the center back - and had spent the first part of the journey - 3 hours of winding through the streets of Delhi - comfortably. When the bus stopped to pick up the last of its passengers at Maj-Na-Katillah, the Tibetan settlement, Dick realized the travel agent had not lied to them about availability and the bus was indeed full, Indian style.
There were children on their parents laps, bags in the aisle along with a Sitar in its hard case and a slowly developing pile of food refuse.
Jane had plugged in her ipod as soon as they had boarded, closed her eyes and drifted off. Dick was starting to regret not listening to her advice but since his gentle prodding and nervous rearranging of his legs failed to rouse her, had consigned himself to catching glimpses of the apparently uniformly run down and ghetto like landscape as it crawled by, the noise of the diesel right beneath his seat he felt (though he was completely wrong on that count) punctuated with enthusiastic and overlong use of the horn.
Shit, it was all so fucking hot and loud and everywhere it stank.
Parahganj had been the worst of it though. Stuffed with pedestrians, autorickshaws and the imperturbable cows, he'd been unable to avoid bumping into endless people. Slowly it had dawned on him that no one here seemed to give anyone any space. The place was fucking crowded and the rickshaws frequently plugged the intersections. Miraculously, it seemed, no one got upset, there were no auto accidents, and people smiled at each other on the street.
Shit, strangers even smiled at them, then when he smiled back, asked for money.
He gave money to the beggar children for their hoop and contortion performance and then they demanded more.
"I hope Dharmsala's better than this."
"It is, this is just Delhi. I told you you'd find it difficult. Maybe we should get a room?"
"What? The bus leaves at three thirty and we're supposed to be there by three. I'll sleep on the bus."
Jane smiled, shrugged. Perhaps it hadn't been such a good idea to talk so gloriously of her India experience. Ah, well, he'd find McLeod Ganj a lot easier, full of Westerners, lots of Dharma students and cleaner air. She was scanning the shop fronts looking for a travel agent. Then she remembered.
"C'mon Dick, we're going to get a real coffee," and she grabbed an auto rickshaw and pushed him and his overlarge backpack inside.
"Connaught Place" she told the driver "and no more than 60 rupees"
He told her it was 100, they finally settled at 70. She was pleased, she'd not forgotten that skill. So was the driver, the going rate was 20.
Once at Connaught Place she'd got him settled with a large European style Latte in a bowl and a menu he could not only read but whose contents were familiar.
"I'll be right back, got to get bus tickets." And she headed right around the corner to the nearest hotel. She'd remembered there was always a travel desk and, because it was India, was a separate operation from the hotel.
There she booked the tickets, they'd only gone up a little, 100 rupees more than the 400 she'd paid last time.
Feeling pleased, and alone, happy to be back in India, she sat on a shop step, watching the traffic, the cows wandering down the middle of the street and breathing in the stink of it all. She liked it, it filled her with memories of four years earlier. Then she'd been 22 and taking a semester off from college. She was supposed to have been traveling with her then boyfriend Eric, but they'd had a fight in Bangkok over which Island to go to and she'd left him, booked a ticket for Delhi for two weeks later, left her passport with the Indian Embassy and hopped the bus for two weeks in Phuket.
Being alone had been wonderful, all the Thai boys were so attentive and helpful even if they were lousy lovers and obsessed with her cleanliness. (Later someone had told her that they were like that because they believed that was how to avoid getting diseases. "Not a bad idea" she'd said, and then the reply. "I mean aids." But even that couldn't ruin her enjoyment.)
She'd arrived in Delhi at night and sensibly took one of the hotel buses, figuring rightly that one expensive hotel night wouldn't kill her and was probably safer than the alternative.
The following morning she'd carefully repacked and gone down to check out.
The desk clerk had asked her where she was going, and on hearing she wanted a cheaper room had told her of his cousin's small hotel, not far, which was much cheaper. He'd even got her a rickshaw and carried her backpack out for her. She gave him 100 rupees tip. He smiled - a lot.
The rickshaw driver deposited her at a small run down building down an alley off Parahganj. After paying him and giving another tip, she'd wondered at her wisdom in just going along. Then realized she might as well start her real adventure.
The hotel was cleaner than the street, marble tile floors, and statues of Ganesh garlanded with fresh flowers. The desk clerk was expecting her and happily took her passport details and had one of the boys lounging in the lobby help her to her room. Another tip.
The place was okay. The bed was hard, not really a mattress, but bearable. The ceiling fan worked and the windows opened though she kept them mostly shut because of the noise.
She wandered the market for the next few days, slowly learning to ignore the persistent children, and she started to meet other travelers.
They were all full of advice. Most of it was useful. By the time she'd heard that Himachal Pradesh was a great place to go and that Dharmsala was the best of it for westerners for the umpteenth time she took the hint and got a bus ticket there.
She never looked back. It was cheaper than Delhi, It was cleaner, friendlier and she could eat the food without wondering nervously how far the next toilet was. She went to teachings, visited the temple and bought overpriced jewelry and shawls that she sent back to her Neo Hippie sisters to sell.
When the snows came to the mountains she realized she'd been there over two months and it was time to go back to school anyway.
Delhi the second time was no problem for her. She'd gone straight from the bus to the airport and returned to the states a good 15 pounds lighter and a great deal changed.
All through her degree she'd never forgotten those months in McLeod. And she was determined to return, only this time she meant to be able to actually get something out of the teachings beyond sitting, wrapped in a shawl, under an umbrella, (for both sun and rain protection) trying to understand how emptiness and form could be the same thing.
She'd been back at school more than a month before she ran into Eric. He was pissed with her. Claimed he'd worried himself sick but, when questioned, admitted he'd gone rock climbing in Krabbi and then spent a couple of weeks scuba diving. His CD player and music had all been ripped off when he was diving but he didn't seem to care about that. And then he proceeded to tell her how he'd met some great people from Australia - a regular couple of guys - and they"d gone off to Laos together. Took the slow boat from the north and ended up traveling through Vietnam before going back to Bangkok for the flight home.
She kept quiet. Suddenly not interested in sharing the details of her adventures. The boyfriend she'd had in India, the beautiful Thai boys and her new interest in Buddhism. Truly, their argument in Bangkok had been a positive bit of Karma for both of them.
After that she'd occasionally run into him around campus, always with some cut female jock hanging on his every word about rock climbing in Krabbi, rafting in Laos.
She found the local Dharma group and started a serious study of Buddhism. After all, she needed to know as much as possible if she was going to get the most out of her next trip to McLeod, already planned as being what she was going to use her graduation present for.
She'd already figured out form and formlessness (and a whole lot about Karma) and was busy trying to do Ngondro, though she couldn't quite get why so many hundreds of thousands of Mantra and prostrations were necessary. I mean, she KNEW, since it had been patiently explained to her by the kind Khenpo who led the Dharma group, but she also knew she didn't understand.
Dick appeared at one of the Dharma group's social events, a friend had brought him - he'd just transferred from a college out east - and it was, in retrospect, one of those magic moments. Like bees to honey she liked to think, though in meditation her wandering mind pestered her with visions of the hordes of Indian flies and their preferred food. She used such images to remind herself to concentrate more, and it occasionally worked.
They became good friends. He liked to listen to her and she liked to talk. Soul mates they'd tell each other. In final year they shared an apartment with other friends. Separate bedrooms, no hanky panky, she was, after all, serious about her Dharma studies.
Then, one night, at a flatmates birthday party, they'd gotten very drunk. They woke up in the same bed, naked, together. Both denied anything had happened. The bed sheets and strewn clothing said otherwise. After that they both accepted that souls have bodies.
So, when graduation came round it seemed natural that they'd go to India, to McLeod, for teachings together.
Now she was having second thoughts. She hadn't slept through Dick's fidgeting and poking. She was just ignoring him, a skill she realized, she'd honed over the year or more they had lived together.
The next time he fidgeted she pulled one of her earbuds out, enough so he could tell she was actually practicing Mantra, and before he could say anything said.
"You'd better get your sleep now. We'll stop around midnight or so for food and toilet break, then by around three we'll be in the hills and the journey will get bouncy."
Dick just looked at her. "That's not it. What do I do about this guy who's gone to sleep on my shoulder?"
Jane shrugged. He looked at her still wanting an answer. She shrugged again.
"That's what you do." And shrugged again.
"Tried it. Doesn't work. I think he's drunk."
"Then shrug and move away at the same time."
Dick tried it and the guy fell half across Dick's seat, close to dropping his head in Dick's lap. Jane wanted to laugh, but didn't to spare Dick's feelings.
"What do the locals do?"
"Probably push him the other way."
Carefully Dick propped the unconscious drunk up - easier to treat him roughly rather than think of him as the perhaps inebriated and sleeping well dressed Hindu businessman he was. And very carefully started leaning him in the other direction.
When he turned back to Jane he could hear someone retching out the window.
"Tibetans, they get motion sickness a lot, don't travel well."
"Oh."
"Yeah, when we start into the hills it'll get more; their only hope is to sleep through it."
Six hours later, with the Dall and hot chilies starting to boil in his guts, Dick was starting to sympathise with the Tibetans and wishing he could be as blissfully unaware as the older Hindu gentleman. Though the man was no longer his seat mate but Jane's.
They'd switched seats after the rest stop where Dick had eaten too much ( she hadn't seen him toss the chilies into the Dall or she'd have been worried).
Dick had had to wake the guy up so they could take their seats. He was very apologetic and quite friendly and smiled a lot as Jane sat down next to him. She'd tried to talk with him but after a few polite responses he'd quickly slipped back into sleep.
For her part Jane had been patiently and periodically struggling to keep the man's head on her shoulder and away from its preferred position on her breast. Amazingly, throughout it all he showed no sign at all of ever waking. And why should he? His karma had ripened and here he had this fragrant gift, a mix of expensive perfume and travel sweat clinging to this beautiful young western girl. So he gave in to the scents, let them intoxicate him further and lay prostrate in Mother's lap.
Dick, meanwhile was starting to turn green. The guy next to the window had just opened it and as Dick was just about to retch, grabbed him by his shirt front and stuffed his head out the window. Dick's guts flexed their alcohol ejection muscles more forcefully than usual and vomit dribbled down the side of the bus, flying back onto windshields and god knew what else.
He turned his head into the wind, needing the cooling of the thick sticky air, only to see four other heads also out the window. It somehow made him feel better to not be alone. He smiled at them. No one smiled back.
Apart from a little gas, which was not surprising really, that was the end of real discomfort for Dick. He fell asleep and only came awake briefly when he found himself airborne as the bus roared along a hillside track, the driver oblivious, or uncaring, of the deep ruts and large bumps.
For Jane this part of the journey was the worst. Not because of any discomfort from food, though the smell coming from Dick's open mouth as he snored his way to McLeod was a little gross, no, nothing of that kind.
Her discomfort came from the Hindu gentleman whose head, with every turn and twist, bump and roll of the bus, burrowed itself deeper into her crotch.
In moments when she was drifting off she found a strange comfort in it, like having a child in one's lap, and briefly at those moments, a great strength and peace would overcome her. Then there'd be another jolt as the bus lurched around another hairpin bend and the head in the lap would roll and the mood would snap and her schooled self would come back into focus.
Dawn she told herself, then we'll be in McLeod.
As the star shot jet sky started to lighten the Indian gentleman's eyes opened and he very carefully and slowly lifted his head from the now snoring Jane's lap, making every effort not to rouse her out of respect and gratitude for the unwitting part she had played in his Sadhana.
With her mantra silently flowing across his lips and her face, the image of terrible kindness, smiling at him he beheld the bus and all its sleeping tenants as the children of Mother, the skeletons and their deaths clear for him, just as his own.
The inner voice. "See Amrit, I am everywhere and your Sadhana of me is everywhere you go."
He closed his eyes and lost himself in Mother's terrible embrace.
Dick watched out the window as the small Indian towns rolled by. A couple of times the driver had stopped for chai and some of the passengers had got out and lined up along the roadside to empty their bladder or their bowels. This was all in full view of the bus - so much for Indian taboos Dick thought. No privacy, no respectable hiding of one's grosser bodily functions.
Then there'd be the scramble to get back on the bus before it left. Somehow they always managed it.
Being awake Dick got to see the view out over the Kangra valley as the bus climbed out of Dharmsala on its way to the hill station of McLeod Ganj. Unfortunately Dick could also see that the driver was passing on blind corners with steep hillside on both sides - one going up, and the other, generally steeper, going down.
What they were passing were the fully loaded Tata diesels that hauled just about everything in this area. Dick had seen them in Delhi and on the highway as they left the city. There they moved quickly. Here they crawled and Dick started to appreciate that the hills were steep and long.
The trucks were outlandishly beautiful, Mostly the outsides of the cabs were decorated like the entrance to a Hindu temple, and the cabs were big, you could sleep in them, he thought, little realizing that many drivers lived in their trucks permanently.
He liked the trucks, the way they were decorated said something about the place, something he liked. He suddenly remembered the trucks running the Midwestern highways through Arizona where he'd spent childhood summers with his mother's unmarried and weird sister. A maiden aunt who liked God and the bottle. Remembered how those trucks were decorated and was glad he was in India for the first time. Perhaps it had been a better idea than he knew.
The bus swung wide, stopped and started backing up. All around him people stirred.
Jane was still snoring (she denied vehemently that she snored and even a recording hadn't been sufficient -"could be anyone"- he'd planned on making a videotape but wisely thought better of it) and he had to poke her awake - it took several pokes, all followed by grunts and defensive body movement before her eyes finally opened.
Dick grabbed her shoulder bag, along with his own and quickly got off to join the crowd at the luggage compartment at the rear of the bus.
They were unloading the roof first, mostly bundles of cardboard boxes tied with string. The Tibetans were catching them as they were dropped over the side.
That done, and the ladder folded back up, the rear storage was unlocked and the westerners fidgeted as the assorted backpacks were tossed onto the ground. Jane was standing off to one side, getting her bearing and shivering slightly from the early morning chill. The sky was clear, so it'd be warm soon.
She noticed Dick dragging their two packs toward her; and gathering herself for the next task - hotel room negotiations - she grabbed hers and then failed to negotiate the swing necessary for it to actually be a back pack. Instead it hung at an awkward angle off one shoulder. She felt Dick lift it straight and hold out the shoulder strap - she assumed it was Dick, but didn't look. Then Dick stepped in front of her, still adjusting his pack. She turned to see the Hindu gentleman smiling at her as he stepped back, hands in Namaste, slightly bowing. She started to think of him differently than she had on the bus. She nodded, smiled back.
Turning to Dick she became resolute.
"We need a room first, get cleaned up, then I want MoMos. Dick said nothing, he was depleted, exhausted by travel, sleep deprivation and his digestive disturbances which were now apparently returning. He somehow managed to get an iron grip on his rectum. It might be gas but he suddenly knew he didn't want to chance it.
Jane headed off down Bhagsu road, following one of the three streams of backpackers wanting a cheap room with their own showers and western toilet. The place looked quite different from four years ago.
After three stops and finding that 250 rupees was apparently now the going rate for a double with shower, they stumbled into a small Tibetan run place, up steep stairs, above another guest house, where they could get a double with shower for 150 rupees. It didn't have a view, it was small and the shower toilet was even smaller than normal but they were too tired to go look anywhere else and Dick was now so desperate from the pain of holding his bowels so tightly that he'd have taken a prison cell so long as he could sit down and let go.
So, while Jane took their passports down to sign in he surrendered himself to his bowels. The explosion that followed on his sitting down was, for him, a pleasure, a relief and an exclamation that not trusting it was gas was a good thing. Looking down he saw his underwear was thoroughly soiled and that his jeans also needed washing.
"Welcome to India" he muttered as he started to look round for toilet paper. Not even a roll holder.
Down near his feet he noticed two things - a pair of taps (one with faucet) and a one litre plastic measuring jug. Well, he knew what the faucet was for, what was the other? He leaned forward and gave it a quick twist. A sudden wet coldness hit his anus, which quickly contracted. So, feeling a little strange, he washed his arse with his hands, turned off the tap, stepped out of his soiled clothes and headed for his backpack. Jane still wasn't back so he figured he'd get clean clothes on and wash out the others. Now, where was the soap?