IN THE PAMIR MOUNTAINS, THE KYRGYZ KEEP MODERNITY AT BAY.

            

Next morning, before departure, Dr. Ali Mohammed presented me with four apples, and I was again in the road. By then it was impossible to foretell that these apples were going to be decisive in securing my entrance to China. After twenty minutes waiting A Nissan truck pulls by. The trucker is a man from Peshawar, sporting a white shawar camisse and dark bushy beard. It could be said that he has looked for a truck like him, judging by the hairy look of hundreds of metal chains that hang down the front bumper. The bearded man and his fellow had alarming levels of testosterone, and during all the trip to Passu didn't fail at spotting any of the women of questionable sex appeal that were tending the fields, with a happiness only matched by Columbus sailors at spotting land. Even if the truck was going all the way to Sost, the last Pakistani settlement before China, I decided to stop in Passu to photograph the immense glaciers that literally reach the road here. I had to wait an hour before hopping into another Sost-bound truck. This time, one of the drivers was an educated person who spoke English and Arabic. Unfortunately, he mistook my curiosity for Arabic language as curiosity for Islam, and therefore tried to pack it and sell it. He insists that Islam is the only religion that prepares us for the life that will come after the inevitable apocalypses. He was rather surprised when I told him that almost all other religion predict the same sequence and that more than one prophet promoted the same after hour. So focused was that man with the life after death that he was hardly sensible to the subtle harp of the present moment. He additionally committed a classic local contradiction, and with the peculiar logic of intolerance, he stated that all Muslims were brothers, and that the Ismailies were not Muslims. Otherwise, as most Pakistanis, he was a soft and overwhelmingly kind man who would have never rise a finger to kill a fly.

Sost was a typic border wasteland redeemed by the exotica conferred to it by the parked Chinese tracks waiting to unload, their incomprehensible characters an advance of the forthcoming world on the other side of the Khunjerab Pass. Before crossing to China I had another piece of challgenge for myself, namely, visiting the most remote Hospitality Club member I have heard of, excepting those in Antarctica. Alam's mail, confirming his readiness to help in his native village of Zoad Khon, in the Chapurson Valley, had come as a surprise and a challenge. Firstly because Zoad Khon didn't turn up in any normal map. Secondly, because when it did turn up in a trekking scale map, it resulted that Alam lived in the last stretch of a valley extending all the way north from Sost to Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor, a particularly cut off area where Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and Tajikistan are all within fifty kilometers of each other. While smooth buses or are usually enough to make it to European member's doorstep, reaching Alam's home demanded walking twenty kilometers in the darkness, with the flash of my camera as only defense against the rare but probable snow leopards, before miraculously meeting a jeep out of any schedule. Chapurson Valley was only "opened" to foreigners in 1999. Despite this, the isolation of the valley acts as a filter, and only eighty foreigners make it here every year. Its 2000 inhabitants, who share Wakhi as their mother tongue with thir neighbors of Northeast Afghanistan, peacefully make a living from growing weath, potatoes and tomatoes.

Most probably, Alam is the only cosmopolitan man in the valley. He is fully entitled to the adjective, not only for speaking English, but mainly for having an e-mail address and the only computer in the valley. Internet? That will have to wait, since post, land telephones and mobile coverage have been on the queue for even longer. As a good Wakhi, he receives me with a salted tea, and introduces himself. Only looking at Alam, a long haired, strongly built, easy laugh man is enough to agree that the matrix of the traditional Wakhi suffered a mutation at the decisive moment of creation. Mountain guide, musician, poet, but principally, horseman, he seems to know each valley and stream of his country, and has even discovered new mountain passes into Afghanistan. Besides the tourism related activities Alam bids to improve education in the area, and believes that local kids should not be disadvantaged having never confronted a keyboard. It was thanks to his contact with a North American benefactor that his village became the first in the valley with running water.

Naturally, it was Alam to advise me to walk 10 km further to Babagundi, a hamlet near the Afghan border used as meeting point for trade with Kyrgyz nomads from the Wakhan corridor. In this corner of the world the Pamir mountains keep modernity at bay, and harbour the last breezes of the Silk Route. It's six hours walk, among fields where complete families harvest wheat manually using curved knives. Finally, there it is, Babagundi: a dozen stone huts, a meteorological tower, and some twenty obese cows grazing within a large fence. Once in the "center", landmarked by the teahouse, the encounter couldn't have been more direct: three men with baggy pants, boots, Cossack style caps and knives by the side organize in the windswept ground a whole diversity of objects, from carpets to cooking pans. A little to the side, another two stitch flour bags. They are Kyrgyz nomads! And the fat cows, yaks. The first I ever see. Mi arrival has coincided with that of a caravan of twenty yaks, led by eight horsemen. As I drink the tea that eventually came from some side, I ask my self: what century is this? As Richard Bach, I start to believe that time is an invention of mortgage salesmen and car designers. On their way to communism, places like the DDR achieved, instead eternity... The image of the stretched eyed, red worn skin, and angular beards, loading flour bags in his yaks, belongs to no time. They have traveled five days on horseback, bringing with them sheep and goats, and yak cheese, to trade for all sort of objects from shoes to lighters. Every object is precious back in the Pamir Mountains. Visiting a doctor implies a week trip by horse. This seclusion redounds in self-medication, a record maternal mortality and opium addiction rate. Communication is difficult: the Kyrgyz have never seen foreigners and smile nervously. Their language is XX % Farsi, language I can only understand by a XX%. In spite of percentages playing against us, one of them, called Talaualde, makes an extra effort invites me to ride his yak. The Kyrgyz anchor their yaks by using ropes that, in one extreme locks the beast's nose holes and, in the other a heavy stone. May the wind not blow them away. Another of them, older and involuntarily hilarious, carries a key tied to his jacket by a yellow thread. Looks like a car key. I spent hours trying to think an object a nomad would need a key for.

A goat was slaughtered to seal the trade, and both parties ate on the ground after praying together. Witnessing the killing didn't, as expected, resulted in me becoming vegetarian. Apples and candies were distributed, the first ones being pocketed among the nomads with resolute speed. After lunch the Kyrgyz went on loading their yaks with rolled carpets and the Pakistanis their jeeps with yak cheese, just thirty meters away, but several worlds away.

Two days later I crossed the Chinese border in a pick up of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation, being legally forbidden to cross the border independently. Cyclists on the route faced the same interrupted liberty. On the Chinese side the road becomes smoother, and enters a plateau surrounded in the distance by the wide, rounded, Pamir Mountains. Austerity is such that makes one think of the Nemesis of a condemned Eden. Double hump Bactrian camels obstruct at times the road, and the Chinese custom guard at Taxqorgan lifts in havoc the bag with the four apples Dr. Ali Mohammed had given me and asks, clearly upset at the apples: "What is this?" (Will continue).

A HIDDEN ICE WORLD IN NORTHERN PAKISTAN.

"Traveling among mountains is like undressing a maiden". The poetic exaltation penned down by German explorer Wilhelm von Goldberg as he crossed the Atlas range could easily be transported to Northern Pakistan, where each valley unfolds to reveal exclusive language, culture and traditions. The high peaks seem there as a veil for a parcel of this world that only confusedly has seen itself entangled in the phenomena called globalization.

From Chitral, my plan was to cross the Shandur Pass onto Gilgit, an from there start slowly the trip northwards through the Karakorum Highway towards China. It's been seventeen months on the road. I had been lucky enough to get a direct ride to Gilgit with a Chitrali merchant bound for Gilgit bazaar, the main gateway for incoming cheap Chinese goods. Trade has become the first income for some graduated Pakistanis who cannot find a job in their field. The prophet, who had urged his followers to seek knowledge, if need there be, as far afield as China, could have never imagined they would come, in search of household goodies and plastic toys. The bazaar, nevertheless, doesn't say it all about Gilgit, a town that for a century was in the eye of the Foreign Office as the last sure footed bastion of British India in a power wrestle with Russia for the contol of Asia. Those were times of bayonets and spies in pilgrim disguise. But much before that, Gilgit's claim to fame was its horsemanship. Polo is thought to have originated in the Northern Areas as a training game for the ruler's cavalry. Each year, the archrival teams of Gilgit and Chitral clash for honour over the world's highest polo ground at the Shandur Pass.

My stay in Gilgit, though, had nothing to do with Her Majesty's service or enraged horsemen. I wanted, for the first time in my life, to cross a glacier. Since this wandering began, road has meant anything from an old Roman Via in Syria to the spotless German Autobahn, from the cross- Baltic E-sixty seven to a maddeningly bumpy jeep tracks in Afghanistan. But it had never meant glacier. Finding a glacier in Northern Pakistan was decidedly short of being a challenge, for it's one of the most heavily glaciated areas on Earth. The challenge rather consisted in pulling myself over one of them, considering I regard the inclined plane as the most diabolic figure of the Pantheon of geometry... My hope was, of course, to parasit someone else’s experience and join a fit party. Madina Guesthouse, in Gilgit, was the obvious place to meet travelers with similar intentions. While in Indian guesthouses any bunch of travelers will be invariably found exposing their sayings about yoga, the Mayan calendar, and reincarnations, the patio at Madina guesthouse was a conference on climbing permits regulations and cycling technique. That's where I met Agneska and Martin, from Poland, and Sdanek, from Czech Republic. My new friends were committed to trek to Rakapochi (7780m) base camp on the following day, and from there, weather conditions allowing, they were hoping to cross Minapin glacier, as a side trip. Soon I realized that the two days walk to the 3500m high base camp and the glacier crossing were little more than a stroll for these guys, who now started to compete over who had smoked a cigarette at the highest altitude. Martin was quick enough to say I was welcome to trek with them, and slow enough to realize that they were climbers and I was a hitch hiker. At least there was one thing that, them being Eastern European and me being South American, needed no discussion: we would not hire guides or porters and we wouldn't use any of the official campsites.

The next most boring thing to describing mountains is describing trekking among them. For the reader is enough to know that more than once, as predicted, the author needed to be hand-towed as a kindergarten boy crossing an avenue. In a particular incident, I had resorted to having my backpack lifted with a rope to become light enough to ascend safely a vertical rock face. Standing over the southern Moraine of the glacier, we not only gained perspective over the magnificent river of ice and snow, but we also understood that we were in front of a live creature, the ice blocks cracking perfectly audible under our feet. Rakapochi wasn't n an static being either. On an hourly basis the sculptor sun would melt snow hangovers in any of the mountain's faces to unlock a sweeping and thunderous avalanche. Any climber on its way would have known how it feels to be a flea when the dog starts to scratch. Navigating the glacier was, to my surprise, the easiest part of the job, and I say it without underestimating crevasses and internal rivers. For a moment we looked like weird interplanetary beings jumping around an ice world: nothing else was visible except for the ice and the rocky edges of the moraines. The way back didn't lack an epic flavor: as a result of our policy of avoiding official campsites we were escorted a few meters by a local armed with a rifle, who vaguely claimed that, actually, the whole flat terrain belonged to the campsite....

When my little Artic adventure had concluded I headed on the Karakorum Highway, the road linking, since 1982 Pakistan and China. Almost twenty years were required to tend a double lane highway over one of the highest mountain ranges on Earth: the Pamir and the Karakorum. At that time the project was also an ostensive sign of the alliance of the two countries against the common enemy: India. The asphalt link greatly overlaps with the classic Silk Route, an commercial-ideological artery that until the 20th century saw generations of traders and scholars smuggling East-West and vice versa everything from walnuts to religions. It was also on these tracks that Islam made its way into China in the 20th century. The religion remains the main faith in Turkic ethnic Xinjinag province in Western China. Centuries brought, nevertheless, dust and oblivion, and the region fell in a medieval isolation that lasted until little time ago. Dervla Murphy, the Irish cyclist that in 1963 visited the region relates the story that, when in 1954 the fisrt jeep reached Chilas, the villagers provided it with a loadful of fresh cut grass. They believed that the jeep was the offspring of one of those strange metallic birds that occasionally flew over the valleys, and which if properly fed, would eventually fly.

From Gilgit northwards the road traverses the old kingdoms of Nagyr and Hunza, where fratricide and caravan preying was once as natural as the seasons. Hunza River marks also the geologic limit between Asia and the Indian Subcontinent, which collision against the earlier cause the Himalayan range to rise. After two disappointingly short rides in two fast new cars, both driven by Bank of Pakistan's employees, a philanthropic taxi driver and a motor biker, I arrived to the village of Nilt. Besides common features as apple trees, irrigation channels and old men hanging around teahouses, the village will always stay in my mind for a sign by the roadside... It goes like this: "Pepsi Agency: beat your thirst by the cold drink products". I tried my luck, only to discover that the pompously announced shop didn't have refrigerator. It is curious to see how the esthetic of the "American way of life" becomes eerily compatible with hatred for the same. Frequently I have spotted boys drinking their Cokes with the background of "Down with the USA" graffiti’s.

Nilt, Thole, and the other settlements along Hunza valley practice Ismailism, a more secular branch of Islam. Thus, for first time in a long time, I see women walking down the streets. Mosques have also left the landscape: Ismailies pray in their jamaat khana, or people's house, to which not only men but the whole family has access. Having left Gilgit fairly late, I was caught by darkness in Thole. When asked about a feasible place to camp, the village chemist, against my predictions, actually answers my question instead of inviting me into his house. I seat down by small general shop to wait for something. A gas fueled electric bulb coming from the shop made me visible to potential charitative souls, but after half an hour I had only gathered a bunch of local kids for whom I had become an effectively entertaining mix of clown and parachutist, as they deducted from the large backpack. Finally a tall mustached man wordlessly ordered me to follow him. He is the watchman of a health unit, where I would sleep that night.

WANDERING IN A RUBIK CUBE II: THE VALLEYS OF THE UNFAITHFUL

The day of my departure Azam handed me an envelope. It contained a letter of introduction to a relative of him, who lived in Naghar, on the way to Chitral, and who could put me up for the night. He referred to whim as “the prince”, which I thought was a nickname. But I was wrong; Azam’s brother in law belongs to the former Royal Family of Chitral. Let’s say it better: hadn’t royalty titles been abolished by 1969 he would be King of Chitral. Finding his residence, Azam explained, would be easy: you cannot miss a fort built on an island amid the streams of the Chitral river and linked to ground by a suspension bridge. I was shown a picture and hit the road. It was what I would call a nominal adventure: regardless the outcome, hitchhiking in search of a prince’s fort was quite the event alone. The towns of Chakdara and Dir set the turning point where, slowly, Pashtuns begin to give way to Chitralis. More and more frequently, I see white skinned, green-eyed people. Caucasoid features is something you wouldn’t expect from Pakistan, but the Northern Areas are truly an unfinished Rubik Cube, with patches of different people here and there, and many valleys speaking their own languages” Pashto, Khowar, Wakhi, Kalashmun, Farsi, Shina, etc Some of these people have migrated from neighboring countries centuries ago, following ancient trade routes. But the origin of some others still remains a mystery.

Exiting Dir I couldn’t resist the temptation of boarding an old Bedford trucks that was slowing down and inviting me with the horn. Pakistani trucks are giant rattles: from their entire perimeter hang metallic chains whose clash announce the truck from half a mile. The carved wooden doors seem to have been made for a temple, and the truck itself may well be a wheeled rococo cathedral. Boarding such a slow monster would have been a terrible mistake if the truck had been going far. But soon I was free and got a lift in the minivan of two engineers, bound to the other side of the Lowari Pass. After Ladakh’s high passes, I will need a one-year spiritual retreat in Holland to recover the adrenaline when going over 3000m.

Two hours after the pass the Prince’s for appear behind the bend of the river. When I arrive he chatted with his servants in the garden. Bore has diluted casts… As there aren’t anymore “regal” issues to be busy with, the kind prince, whose name was Salahudin, runs a small guesthouse inside the very fort. That’s where I met Richard, a Brit who had driven his BMW motorbike from England, and who gained my respect when saying that “work” once meant for him traveling to Sudan to arrange the exportation of sheep to Yemen.

Chitral seems a never-ending chain of farms under the dramatic background of Tirich Mir (7708m) among other Hindu Kush giants. While the entire bazaar was suggesting I should go to a hotel, a small man, dressed in white pants and shirt, and sporting a black navy cap with the embroidery of a war ship, called me apart. His name was M.I.Khan, and he was a lawyer. He promptly produced a wonderful speech on equality among men, and gave me the key to his office. He was one of that universal minded men that, if lucky, you may find even in the most remote of this planet’s provinces. Eventually I was off to explore the bazaar carefully, discovering that many vendors there spoke Farsi, since they are originally Tajiks from neighboring Afghanistan. Proximity to such country legally forced me to register in the local police station, where the sound of Olivetti typing machines still silences the few dusty oversized computers. “It is for you own safety Sir”-said the policeman there. I explained that I had been a month inside Afghanistan with no inconveniences, but let them fill the forms anyway. In the streets of Chitral I also met Richard again, who was trying to get the local mechanics to fix the electronic starter of his motorbike. Richard held the curvature of his head as the mechanics unscrew everything they found with the only inspiration of the Holy Quran, let alone the User’s manual.

On the second day after arrival I departed for the Kalash valleys. Who are the Kalasha? Nobody truly knows. In a country with 120 million Muslims, the Kalasha, that once dominated the whole Chitral, are the last 4000 survivors of the Kafiristan (or land of the unfaithful). Technically, they are the only Indo-Aryan people of Central Asia that was not (yet) converted to Islam. You can walk from Kashmir to the Turkish Mediterranean, and the only non-Muslims you will find are going to be the Zoroastrians at Yazd, Iran, and the Kalasha. Their beliefs are closely linked to the pantheism of old Vedic religions. Until the late 19th century the Kalasha lived relatively isolated, on both sides of the Hindu Kush, protected by a labyrinth of valleys and mountain ranges. Little was known about them, and the Royal Geographical Society considered Kafiristan the last mystery in Asia. The fate of the Kalasha changed when the British Empire, in their desire to avoid Russian influence in Central Asia, opted for a solid Afghanistan, drawing the Durand line in 1893 and arming the Emir of Kabul, who immediately launched a military crusade to convert the Kalasha on the Afghan side to Islam, through gunpowder… On the Pakistani side they still retain three valleys: Birir, Rumbur and Bumboret, although even there are outnumbered by Muslims (new settlers and converted Kalasha).

I thought the suspension of the jeep was going to cede before we would make it to Rumbur. The valley was comprehensibly narrow, being the sanctuary of an endangered culture. There is nothing in the valley big enough to be called a town. Only hamlets, where two storey houses edge the mountainside in order to take the most possible profit of the narrow even land used to cultivate corn or tomato. In Grom, one of the settlements, I met Engineer Khan. “Are you an engineer?” –was the first question to make him. “No, my father named me that way cause he wanted me to be the first one in the family to attend school” What was a family experiment had an unexpected outcome when the young Engineer announced he was ready to go to university. Both parents looked each other in dismay, in sought advice in their ancestors through the voice of a shaman. With the permission of the past (and not before swearing his grand mother that he wouldn’t convert to Islam) Engineer left his valley for the first time to study in Chitral, and came back years later with a degree in Political Science, becoming the first graduated ever among the Kalasha.

Having learned about politics, Engineer knew better than anyone that politics wasn’t at all what the Kalasha needed, and instead founded the first school in Kalashamun, their native language. It’s a pleasure to learn a few words of a language that is only spoken by a few thousand people. We must remember that a language is much more than a channel of communication; it’s a unique way to organize the universe. And the entireness of the Kalasha universe is still under threat: a group of Greek intellectuals have introduced the idea that the Kalasha may be the descendants of Alexander the Great’s lost legions. A romantic explanation we would all like to believe, but without scientific back up, unless you consider the prevailing green eyes as an argument. There are some who even think that these Greek are creating a small Christian community among the Kalasha, and that they are waiting for a larger number to build their first church. I spent two days walking around the plantations. From everywhere I could here a melodic “Ishpata, baia!” (How are you brother!). Regardless their blood links, the Kalasha refer to anyone as brother or sister. You feel like in a Rainbow Gathering. As usual, cultures based in brotherhood and harmony have the worst cards against a destiny that plays kings and aces. I am walking towards Gilgit: China is inching closer.

WANDERING IN A RUBIK CUBE I: GUNMAFIAS IN THE LAND OF HOSPITALITY.

I had left India with the pace of an escaping inmate, with extreme nostalgia for Muslim hospitality, and reached Lahore, the first city in the Pakistani side of the Punjab, with the anxiety of that who has accumulated the thirst of several deserts. In Lahore Tabreez, my Hospitality Club host waited me. When you see Tabreez sitting in the conference room of his company, eyes fixed in his laptop with a stock market like preoccupation you wouldn’t guess he is checking hitchhikers forums and websites advising how to sleep in airports. Since his country cannot provide him with a credible passport, Tabreez travels through his guests, to who he treats as ambassadors. In this way, even if I normally enjoy walking around cities, I wasn’t brave enough to reject the offer of an air conditioned Corolla manned with a kind chauffeur.

Beyond static wonders, such as the Badshahi Mosque and the Mogul built Red Fort, the jewel of Lahore is by far the Sufi music nights every Thursday. Sufism is Islam in its mystic variant, a staging through dance and percussion of the mourning for the death of Emam Ali, the leader of Shiite Muslims, murdered 13 centuries ago. Far from being a tearful ceremony, Sufi nights in Lahore are a causeway for the very human instinct of party, so repressed in modern Pakistan, where discos are criminalized. But how do we pass from the mourning to a hypnotizing drum jam witnessed by a hash stoned, head shaking mob? I just know that we humans owe our survival to the fact our morale is made of plasticine. Obviously, most attendants wish, at least once a week, to do without the unperturbed understanding imposed by Islam and embark in a trip.

My plan was to reach China through Pakistan’s Norhtern Areas, and the most direct way to achieve this would have been to take the Karakorum Highway connecting Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, with Kashgar, in the remote Chinese Turkestan, but a certain allergy for obvious roads and a compulsion for unnecessary detours caused me to tr4avel towards Peshawar, to only then start advancing northwards trough the Tribal Agencies of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). NWFP is a conservative area inhabited by the rebel, proud, and fiercely hospitable Pashtun, and where the central government is as much of a tourist as I am.

The 450 km from Lahore to Peshawar were covered in a day. Fast cars driven by upper class Pakistanis were plentiful in the spotless motorway, so there was no need to stop the low, old, and over decorated Bedford trucks. Traveling north from Peshawar, Afghanistan’s proximity is evident. It’s a naïve statement, considering that Pashtuns have lived as one people at both sides of the imaginary line much before this came into being in 1893. Women covered in blue or brown burkas walk by the roadside as silent ghosts. More meaningful, a group of Kuchi nomads who clearly just arrived from Afghanistan set up their tent just meters from the now narrow asphalt lane. The artificial nature of the border is a well-assimilated notion in the Tribal Agencies. Over the last 4 years, this local phenomena has given a headache to the international community lead by George Bush, who has always accused Pakistan of not guarding its borders strictly enough, encouraging thus the free locomotion of extreme elements between the two countries. A guy called Bin Laden, for instance, is supposed to be hiding somewhere in the Chitral mountains, if you believe in Washington comic stripes.

In Malakdn district I was going to learn something more about the famous border. I was crossing Takht-I-Bhai bazaar when a Suzuki Vitara pulled by, as if arrived from another planet. The door opened…”Come in men! I am going to Sakhakot, if you like the place you can stay with us and continue traveling tomorrow” – said the driver with an unmistakable American accent. Azam had studied in Oklahoma and now occupied the main seat at the (ruling) Islamic Party of Pakistan for NWFP. I asked the, what was there of interest in Sakhakot to see. Ruins? An old mosque? Maybe somebody selling a roadmap of Pakistan? No. Azam think that it’s the bazaar that I am going to find interesting. I was about to feel disappointed, when he goes deeper: the specialties of the local smiths are guns and rifles, manually crafted. I can see their workshops and take pictures, if I like, he adds. “Wouldn’t they feel unease with a foreign photographer peeping around their stalls?” – I had to ask, because it was clear to me that, should something go wrong, 8 mega pixels didn’t stand a chance against caliber 45. Azam’s face transformed, and a bit offended, he replied: “It’s my bazaar. They do what I say”. Pashtun hospitality, either accept or choose an epitaph.

Next morning I was tidily combed and ready for my peculiar sightseeing. Azam summoned two of his nephews as escorts, and we were off. I was expecting to be conducted to clandestine cavernous workshops, to camouflaged installations, which a private militia makes sure remains off limits to everyone. And no: all along the main road, at day light, without any intention or need for cover, two dozen workshops produce and sell only one thing: guns. It’s hard to find in town where to buy bread or cucumbers, but shops displaying row after row of AK-47s and M-16s need no search. Local gunsmiths delay only three days to cut, bend, screw, and come up with a freshly baked Kalashnikov automatic rifle, charging some U$D 150 for the job. It’s a real free zone: without registers of any kind guns are bought and sold as day bread. Pakistan itself has enough landlords with personal armies to claim a substantial slice of the output. The rest travels to Afghanistan, at night, through well-established trails, joining the caravan of computers and other electronic goods that have zigzagged all the way from China without meeting any custom, from full tolerance from authorities both sides. “When the Soviet Union split there were some men here trying to sell tubes with uranium” – remembers with proud a kind machine gun seller as he re-fills my teacup.

Back in the house Azam asks me if I have ever fired a gun before. “Well, I guess I never needed to… I admire Che Guevara but I am not following his steps” The joke doesn’t manage to break the silence produced by my confession. Being gun-virgin in NWFP is worse than having never kissed a girl. (And since this is an Islamic country, the last is likely to happen much after local boys become experts in all sorts of rifles) “So do you want to try?” I knew that question was coming. “Do you have a fusil here?” “We have some 30. Sometimes we have problems with the lands and we have to use them. Kalashnikov or Mauser?” As if I had been furious with heaven, in Azam’s garden, I I fired a few thunderous bullets in the void.

ESCAPING FROM MOTHER INDIA

Ladakh is a land of fragile balance. From the coexistence of the Buddhist and Muslim communities, to the stability of the political borderlines, everything stays in the loose cord. This is scarcely apparent when one contemplates the stark hand with which men have landscaped their habitat. Leh Palace, with four centuries behind that haven’t exactly tiptoed trough, is imposing enough to make a random observer believe he is in the capital of a solid and homogeneous empire. Visually closer to the high peaks behind than to the compact town beneath, it could perfectly be the dwelling of one of those kings who are never seen by their subdues, and to whom is irreverent to look in the eye. Sometimes, clouds with poor navigation skills dock among the rocky environ, giving the wrong impression that their emanating from the dilapidated landmark, as a sign of its holy character. This is anything but the case. This area of Indian Kashmir, as any other, belongs to the Indian nation only on the grounds of a strong military presence. People here are not Hindu, nor they speak Hindi. They are Ladakhis, of a such an orthodox Tibetan culture that sending one son to the monastery is still the rule in many families, keeping at line demographic growth in an arid area where agriculture could hardly support a baby boom. The other stratus of the rainbow is the Muslim population, that here is a minority, even if around Srinagar their figure hits 90%. Most of them live near the 16th century mosque, making trade their main activity. Despite most families in Leh, due to intermarriage, have members in both communities, and both sides exchange tiny metallic discs in the market place, there is a certain tension in the air, a scar of the last decade social boycotts that both communities imposed on each other. When each day at dusk the high speakers of the mosque call to pray, the nearby monastery replies with sounding Buddhist choral music, in what may be the oddest DJ contest on Earth. In another level, India attempts to retain its sovereignty in a region landlocked between Pakistan and China, all with their own territory greediness that little cares for the local determination.

The first thing that kept me busy since arriving in Leh, was finding a legal way out. As a result of landslides and roadblocks, my journey to Leh had taken five days, instead of the expected two. Well, expecting something in the Indian Himalayas is a mistake in the first place, but with my visa expiring, I had only another five days left to make the journey back to Manali, than travel a similar distance south to Delhi and cross all the Punjab into Pakistan. When I visited the Superintendence of Police at Leh I perfectly knew two things. First, that one week visa extensions are theoretically free for most nationalities. Second, that Indian police bureaucrats, sporting moustache and dark glasses as if copied from a 1970s Latin-American dictatorship, were good at the maneuver of receiving banknotes under the table. I decided to play the role of the die hard journalist instead of that of the ordinary backpacker, and got ready, as in many other occasions. My hair correctly tight, reading glasses on, and a folder full of newspaper articles under the arm. I introduced myself as a journalist from the inexistent Buenos Aires Times, showing at the time Respublika articles in Lithuanian language (they would never spot the mismatch).Yes, a journalist from remote South America promoting Asian countries through media reports, and also –of course- sharing these with local Indian papers. Reading between the lines: if you ask for a bribe, I will publicly denounce it. The high rank police on the other side of the unnecessary long desk listened to me with little interest, cupping his chin with his hands. While I spoke I could see other functionaries of brown uniform arriving in chauffer driven Ambassadors. As this local Indian cars respect in every detail the 1950s design, they seemed as returning from Philadelphia Experiment.
The policeman I was trying to persuade of how VIP I was seemed more interested in the teenage soldier bringing him tea. When I was done with my speech, he simply said: “No problem, the extension is possible, but you have to pay the visa fee of U$S 40”. So took calmly my camera and took a nice snap, and assured him he would be in next weekend Hindustan Times. From then on, they started to pay attention, but insisted in the U$S40 fee even if I assured them I knew it was free. Eventually, after parading around several offices and acting in front of several office workers, got my legal –and free- one week extension.

During my stay in Leh, I must admit, little I did to spin in the local orbit, and succumb to the temptation of joining the backpackers own kaleidoscopic existence. Sometimes I think that the Indian chapter of my trip will definitely lack the depth of field achieved elsewhere in Asia through isolation from my western pairs. I somehow consider India as a deserved break from this immersion experience. When I have met foreigners in Iran and Afghanistan, they were themselves part of the local landscape, NGO workers, for example, or soldiers, and a few adventurous travelers. In Leh instead, as in the rest of India, it’s all about café hopping and chatting with other foreigners. Just sit down, in five minutes you will be surrounded by Germans, Israelis, French, etc. Even if most of this café talk fades away rather fast, in Leh I had the chance to meet some people who impressed me with their sensibility. The first time I talked to Eugenio, he asked permission to my landlady to inspect the light conditions of my room. He explained he was a painter, and if the room was lit enough, would I be leaving, he would take over. A white beard as the one the fat man with the sleigh. A matching forehead with wrinkles as a philosopher. Bushy eyebrows. I couldn’t help thinking of Leonardo Da Vinci. When he said he was actually from Firenze (not far from Vinci) I started looking for the hidden camera. The coincidence of physical outfit, occupation and nationality was too much. His name could be Eugenio, but for me it was Leonardo…

Leonardo had passed 12 of his 72 years in India. The first time in 1972, when he had rode two horses from France all trough Middle East, crossing Afghanistan on the way, something that instantly bebrothered us. What amazed me most about him was not his experience, but the calm and attention with which, in spite of this experience, he listened to each of the answers to his questions. As if planning to travel for some hundred years more, he justify his curiosity saying that “it’s always useful to learn fromother travelers experience” We would meet everyday in the Corner’s Café at 6 pm. He would arrive punctually with a copy of Dante’s “Paradise” kept under his arm. 1926 edition, printed in Milano. We would talk for hours over a tutti frutti of issues from photography to autistic children, for whom he felt an unparallel tenderness. Frequently, Jose, a Dutch girl, would join our table, to deliver the dosage of thriller, and relating how her guesthouse’s owner had misread the trust and started to enact an insane jealousy. The tendency rocketed out of control when the night of the party (because there are always raves and parties in these travelers hang outs) the local aspirant, in shock when Jose turned up with an Israeli friend, started a fight that ended with a motorbike chase across the Indus valley under white washed moon lit monasteries… And yes, there is always an Israeli involved, otherwise you are not in India. I have been running into many of them here and then on the way from Leh, since there is only one road to follow for everybody from Manali. I feel such nostalgia for Arabic language, that I still hope to fins one of them that has learnt, by osmosis, the language of their neighbors. But the most I could find so far, somewhat disappointingly was someone who could say the equivalent of: “If you make a step further I fire.” Very useful in checkpoints…

Virgilio didn’t leave the pages of Leonardo’s book to lead me trough the road to Manali. Classic poets still have a but at the time of hitch hiking. Instead, I earned the company of Ian, a South African of Dutch ascendance whose first language was Afrikaans, blend of old Dutch, German, and a dozen of black dialects. The Dutch that settled around the Cape of Good Hope are known as Boers. The trip to Manali was long enough to discover that, despite coming from different continents, there could be unexpected things in common. To begin, we are both grafts of European experiments in the New World. Both Boers and Italians climbed down their ships with more sense of the adventure than realism, in similar latitudes (Buenos Aires and Cape Town) and created a microclimate compact enough to psychologically exclude the place they were living in from the rest of the continents. In this way, when a South African goes to Kenya, he says he is going to Africa. Likewise, English buy ferry tickets to Europe when they cross to France and Argentinean backpackers happily announce they will set off to discover Latin America, when they intend to visit neighboring Bolivia or Peru. Comprehensibly, Peruvians accuse us of considering ourselves a branch of Switzerland…

Ian enjoys walking barefoot, for I nicked him Barefoot Boer, but his distinctive note is his passion for all things Asian. He lives and teaches English in Taiwan, what is not so terrible, if he wouldn’t loose his head for local girls. It’s this frenzy for the “narrow eye staff” what entitles him to the intensive care unit. Or maybe I should be more respectful for other people’s decision to follow the steps of John Lennon. So a Malasyan girl was waiting for Ian in Manali, and that kept him smiling, in spite of the slow pace of the local Tata trucks. In one of those we reached Tikse. A tire screeching halt and we jumped off to explore the local monastery. I still don’t see clearly the way monastic life is fully compatible with Buddhism. It was by abandoning his cloister style life and traveling that Buddha concluded that “life is pain” and that the reason of such pain is desire. But Buddhism doesn’t seem to take note of that importance, for I have never seen an image of a “Traveling Buddha”. Can you imagine a Buddha with his thumb up as a mudra?

The next stop was in Tso Kar, a brackish lake at 4500m, at which shores stands a compact tourist camp, mainly used by prearranged trekking groups who made week long walks with horses, guides and porters to take all their gear. The guides seem bored, since they have covered the route infinite times, but the trekkers seem to experience adrenaline, still don’t know how, even if they are guided and someone else is carrying their luggage. In the very shores of the lake, I also met two Austrian ornithologists who were the first people I have met that didn’t need forewords to know immediately the ring in my left hand is a cormorant’s tagging ring and not a spouse tagging one… In the third day of our trip together, Ian and I reached Pang, one of the many transitory camps I had already come across on the way north. There, the only thing heading our way was a big black stormy cloud. As if the road builders had forecasted the episode, a yellow sign by the road side said: “SMILE!”. But that was a difficult task under the rain that eventually showered us, so we sheltered in the camp. The tents there are old army parachutes forced into a conic position with a sturdy wooden pole. I said old army parachute, so that means that every time it rains (every night in this season) part of the stuff filters through, making my first Chinese lesson (language I will soon need) even more epic.

The night had closed in long before we made it to Koksar, an insignificant village more notable for its checkpoint. The policeman there was of the kind that sticks to the word and letter of the laws and opened the door of the truck to scream ”Illegal! Illegal!” Indian laws, apparently, forbid tourists to travel in overloaded local trucks whose drivers consume brandy at 5000m to amuse themselves. That’s quite sensible. The Indian laws of course ignore a tiny part of the foreigners love all that mess, but philosophy was not the way out in this case. The roles were set from the beginning, Ian would play the goog traveler, I would play the tough one. In these occasions in I feel grateful to have dogged into theatre many years ago. It’s only a matter of turning on the switch of emotional memory and speak to the policeman as if he had just dropped my pint. And of course, take him a eye blinding snap with flash…. The man smiled confusedly. Then recovered his seriousness, and ordered the truck drivers to follow him to the police station, parentheses we used to jump down and walk past the checkpoint, enveloped in darkness. We had barely done a hundred meters when we heard a scream, and noticed a torch advancing as an acrobatic firefly in the nights of the Himalayas. After our truck sped without lifting us again, we were hopeless. Obviously, they had instructions not to help us. The policeman fastened his steps. Then, unfolded from the pen of a hidden novelist, with the synchronicity of a guardian angel, a white jeep stopped and asked: “Manali?” Wemounted it as we would mount the flying dog in Never Ending Story and let the driver understand we were in the run: “Chelo, chelo!” (Go, go ,go!). “Stop!!!” – was the last we heared from that isolated policemen interested in applying the laws of an artificialentity called India in the middle of eternal mountains. The flow had rescued us once more.

There is one technical way to describe our arrival to Manali: we were stinking, with a fragrance I would commercialize with the brand ‘AFTER475”. Four hundred and sevety five kilometers of unpaved road. Eau du routard. At Manali, Barefoot Boer and I split ways. The day after I only waited for ten minutes for a fast car of three young professionals from Delhi who were back from a short holidays in the North. “What is the aim behind traveling?”- they asked. “Well, I guess traveling is the aim”. As everybody in Asia, they found it hard to accept the concept of a project that doesn’t lead to a economic progress. They dropped me in Delhi Bus Station a couple of hours before sunrise. There is something oppressive in those places that have the same rushed pace in nighttime as in daylight. They seem cities built for machines, not for humans. But those were my last 48 hours in India, and my mind was craving for crossing the border into kind Pakistan.

Conclusions about India. I often receive letters from readers asking me about the famed spirituality of this nation. It’s true, many travelers find a denial of western materialism in the frugality of the local lifestyle. I just see the contrary. I see that India is not in the condition of rejecting anything, it simply can’t afford things as a starting condition. A potential West. The upper classes exhibit a worship of success with a typically Asian abandon, as the one Max Weber attributes to the Protestants who forged capitalism in the 16th century. For them, the magnitude of the local market is an addictive predicament: “If you make a profit of one rupee per sale, in India you are earning one billon rupees.”-would state categorically one of my drivers, as dollar symbols aligned in both his eyes. In the meanwhile, the low casts combine the lack of any self improvement discipline with the instinct of everyday fight for the basics. I assume that in the 60s and 70s India sounded out enough of the bipolar world to attract seekers of spirituality, but it’s clear that today India is galloping in the same global horse as the home countries of the travelers who come here to find the source of spirituality. It seems curious to me that the disenchanted of our side of the world find shelter in a society which is far too hopeful to produce a disenchanted bunch. Isn’t disbandment a privilege of the West? Are there Asian Carmina Buranas? To make the matter more complex, most of the travelers that arrived here in the 70s used to come overland, and comparing. Now people just arrive by plane with the prejudgment that the rest of the continent, except South East Asia, is a battleground. Arrive by plane to study yoga in Rishikesh.3 days course, fast food. Valid, as everything else under the sun. But there is also a bit of fetish, and I say this having done myself a 3 days Reiki training, but aware that it was the same to do it in Dharamsala or in Caracas. I mean, yoga, reiki, ayurvedic medicine, have been traveling with international passport long enough and don’t need to be discovered in the Himalayan foothills. But well, of course, there is the plus of cheap cafes to hang around… A Spanish fellow insists that I should revisit India and I will realize that Mother India is beautiful and feeds a lot of people. Of course, he had never tested India and never needed to be fed, plus India was the only Asian country he had been to. I held my ticket gladly and took the train to the Pakistani border. (I had to gave the thumb a rest due to the visa expiry date inching dangerously closer).

On the way to Amritsar, by night, sleeping, I could know we were traversing a city due to the smell of urine that invaded the carriage. My last vehicles were a locally made truck who engine needs to be spinned manually to achieve ignition, and some cricket players in motorbikes thanks to whom I bated my first cricket ball before leaving the country. In the border I met a French couple that were driving all the way to Paris. They pushed me to the other side, to Lahore, with the Pakistani customs unobserving the whiskey bottles hidden in the back. Once in Lahore I phoned Tabreez, my local C host, from a phone shop whose owner produced a chair and a glass of chilled water. Evidently, I had crossed the border. Once in more in lands where hospitality is not a lateral consequence of higher education.

A TRIP TO LADAKH: HIGH ROADS, THE RYTHM OF 'CHAI' AND MOTORIZED MONKS.

“Himalayan Queen” was certainly an undeserved novelty title for the ‘squat over rails’ that transported me from unbearable Delhi to Shimla, in the cool Himalayan foothills. I cannot say the trip was pleasant, and with whole families packing the corridors and quantic-proportioned mothers attempting to sleep their children over my knees, it didn’t take long until I reexamined my opinions on population control. The scene reminded me of a creepy pension in Delhi Bazaar called “Prince Palace”, where the closest thing to a shower was buckets of boiled water. I repeated myself that the important thing was that I was leaving Delhi, even if Delhi hadn’t actually been that bad in the last week, partly thanks to the social life I borrowed from my friends at the Spanish Embassy, and also to the interesting conversations with Susumoy, my local Hospitality Club host.

Shimla is a collection of large Victorian mansions, a heir of the colonial era. Horror films could be rolled in any of them, since their state of conservation make them al look haunted. While today the pedestrianized “Mall” is a stampede of Southern Indian families in Sunday dress, boy-with-ice-cream included, it’s hard to imagine that back in the colony days it was forbidden for Indians –except for those carrying the luggage of their masters- to set foot in what then was a sanctuary of style and inequality. Today Shimla is the capital of the State of Himachal Pradesh (Land of the Eternal Snows) and starting point for venturing into higher and more desolate valleys.

The plan was to explore Kinnaur and Spiti valleys, in the border between Himachal Pradesh and Tibet, and then head up the second highest motorable road in the world, linking Manali with leh, in Ladakh, another exclave of Tibetan culture within Indian borders. But my visa was slowly expiring as the classic refrigerator lemon, so the trip would only be possible resorting to the undesirable “arrive and leave” strategy.

Thus, Kinnaur Valley passed as a slide show. Even though it’s one of the most scenic valley in the whole Himalayas, the fertility allowed by the punctual monsoon deprives it from any dramatism, making it rank, at most, as idyllic postcard. The view of Mount Kinner Kailash from Kalpa village, in fact, shines with the selection of memory. Its inhabitants, the Kinnauris, to whom the first historic records refer as ‘celestial musicians’, are easily identifiable from their caps, which resemble the ones of an impossible reggae army, with red and green embroideries. They are generally Hindu, with a special devotion for Kali, who they worship in stone and wood tower shaped temples. It’s interesting to note that, besides being Shiva’s wife, Kali is also one of his attributes. Another version of the old macho argument where woman is born out of a chunk of man….

Spiti valley rest behind the Himalayas, which doesn’t mean that mountains is not all what’s around. It happens that the Himalayas are only the most famous of a plurality of concentric mountain ranges forming the arch of high peaks separating the Indian Subcontinent from the Central Asian massif. Squeezed between the Himalayas and the Zanskar ranges, the valley stays sheltered from the annual rains, which accounts for its moonlike scenery. The water of the Spiti river has over the lands it washes the same null effect that modern world has over the monks of the numerous gompas (Tibetan monasteries). Following the systematic destruction of Tibetan culture by the Chinese (process the later proudly calls “Cultural Revolution”) the monasteries in neighboring countries such as India and Nepal have become repositories for posterity. The proximity to China, occupied Tibet, is a bit more than poetic data. Both countries staged a brief war in 1962, following a failed invasion by the Red Army, and still today the area is considered volatile. While the Tibetan are used to being in the fire line, it’s still to be seen how they resolve the interaction with the new pacific invader: the tourist. Just watch the novices of Tabo gompa –the place where the Dalai Lam is meant to retire- playing fascinated with the Enfield motorcycles parked outside the monastery by foreign visitors. They seem to enjoy to much our material world to seriously expect to abandon it.

I joined the main road in Manali, and soon moved to an outlying pacific village called Vashisht. Pacific, in spite of the hundred or so Israeli backpackers, that you may also find in any other touristic village in Northern India. As far as I understood, after two years of Army service, the average young Israeli compensate with a couple of years plane hopping around the world. Those I chatted with were twice as happy to be in India: if they had been at home they would have certainly been called to duty. The night arrived, but I resisted the temptation of cheap guesthouses and instead wandered the streets, a bit lost, knowing that little could I wait from the locals in terms of hospitality. I was, in fact, rescued by a fellow foreigner, a German called Rogelio, who is resident in the village. I had just watched “The Lord of the Rings” in a café, and the in-stage of Rogelio, with his broad never ending ginger beard and his Saxon warrior outfit, made me wonder if Frodo legions hadn’t escaped the 24 inches. In any case, reality and Rogelio were not best friends, and even if he offered a space in his room as promised, he went all night speaking incongruously with himself. I pretend to sleep, but I listened in awe: “I have an Enfield motorcycle. I can ride it to Germany, and drive around the Reichstag, and inside stadiums, no problem, but slow…” At midnight he would stand up in bed and proclaim: “The German Parliament of Schroeder is a debate club where people get paid to talk nicely…”
Standing out of town I stretched my thumb towards Leh, 475 km further north. I didn’t expect an easy trip, knowing that it takes two days by bus. I reached Keylong without difficulties, with two rides in a jeep, one carrying tomatoes the other pipelines. Keylong is situated at 3350 m, and it is the last town of any size in 280 km, before reaching Rumtse, already in Ladakh. In the middle , the road runs almost always over 4000m, with two passes over 5000m, and there are no settlements except for army barracks and transitory yurt camps offering accommodation and basic food to travelers. And the travelers are not few: since the road was opened to foreigners in 1989, thousands of our specie complete the arduous journey every season, whether in bus or in rustic Enfield bikes. Personally, I couldn’t avoid evoking similar South to North trips in the Argentinean Calchaqui Valleys, but without the perspective granted by recurrence. Behind lied the Beas river, that responsible for discouraging Alexander the Great, that traveler disguised as conqueror, who thought the “End of the World” was around here. I stayed overnight in Keylong, where Ailine and Stephanie, two Swiss travelers, smuggled me into their room.

It took me the following morning a jeep and a tractor to reach Parsu village, 52 km north from Keylong. There I saw in the horizon a caravan of Tata trucks, one of which, a tanker, stopped for me. After so many short rides in jeeps, tractors and motorbikes, I had a reason to smile when they said they were going all the way to Leh. Of course, things were not going to be that easy… The first day everything went smooth. Kuldip, the driver, and Guddu, his assistant, were kind in each detail and never spoke about money. So, slow but steady, the Tata opened his way across the winding cliff roads that characterizes the north of Himachal Pradesh, where the high peaks hold the eternal snows so precariously that one expects an avalanche at any moment. More the geography I feared the human factor: Kuldip chose the Baralacha Pass (4830m), the first of a series of high passes, to train Guddu in such tasks. Eye opened Guddu gave stern turns to the wheel, hardly correcting the direction in time for the next curve. I started to choose what memories to retain in the second of my life.

But Gudu did the job. The job of a trucker assistant in India exceeds those of a mere navigator, for in top of those tasks in relation with the road, such as clearing the way from heavy rocks and monitoring the progress of the truck in dangerous curves, there is a devote Guddu who lights incenses very morning to purify each corner of the cabin, from the dead speedometer to the mandatory Shiva image, before joining hands in prayer position and clapping twice. Darkness surprised us soon after the pass, and we stopped at Zingzingbar camp, in a yurt where also three Israeli bikers took rest. These people always surprise me: one of the, with long hair and a pacific aspect, is, in the reserve service, a tank driver! That night it rained harder than ever. My Israeli friends will have, I thought, some genetic skills in Arc construction. Given the circumstances, I couldn’t make clear if the terrible headache was the product of the altitude or the first symptoms of the rabies shared by the dog that bite me in Delhi bazaar… Way or another, we were up 5:30, ready for a long day of traveling after which we should reach Leh.

We hadn’t covered 20 km when we found a column of parked trucks by the roadside. The rains of the previous night had caused a landslide and the road was blocked. A group of 15 workers from Bihar (the poorest province of India) struggles with shovels to make the surface even again. A digger was on its way from Zingzngbar, but it would take hours for it to arrive. With such scenario, Kuldip stared at Guddu and invited (imposed) with a scream: “Chai?” (Tea?). Chai, that Asian way of punctuating the void. Each second, in all Asia, from the Bedouins in Syria to the mullahs of Iran or the lamas in their gompas, millons of throats coordinate the exact inflection and invite (impose): “Chai?” As the tea was not going to be enough to quench my hunger, I decided to walk over the landslide to Sarchu, the next camp, 4 km away. After filling the stomach I looked for a quiet yurt, rented a mattress for the day (1 dollar) and, lethargic as the altitude had rendered me, I fell in a deep sleep. Between the gaps of unconsciousness I believed to hear the engine of the Tatas roaring through. Could it be possible? Could the way be already repaired? I decided, with more instinct than rationality, that resting was now the priority and that next morning I would eventually find another truck bound to Leh. I woke up at 8 pm. It was still raining outside, and there were no other foreigners in my yurt to talk to. Feeling a bit miserable a bone-wet, I emigrated to a yurt across the road, where some Israeli and four Indians from Bangalore, all riding their bikes to Leh, were having some greasy soups as dinner. While crossing the road I could noticed there were several trucks pulled by the muddy roadside as defunct dragons, but being the camp several kilometers long, I rejected the idea of searching for “my” Tata. I had been talking for a couple of hours with my new friends. Raghu, one of the Indians from Bangalore, worked for Dell and had offered to sponsor my up coming website for the first year. In that moment I saw Guddu emerging out of the semi light provided by the kerosene lamp, leaning his head to a side and another, as if it was about to fall, in that polyvalent Indian gesture that can mean everything from affirmation to acknowledgment. They had arrived while I slept, and they were looking for me. “Tomorrow, 6 am, up, evening, Leh” –said Guddu in his broken English, which in that moment sounded as a Shakespeare sonnet. “See you in the next landslide!” – I greeted my fellow travelers and went back to my yurt.

I shouldn’t have used such a dangerous formula. The following morning we had covered less than 10 km when we met again a queue of trucks and jeeps. “Chai!” – shouted out Kuldip, as if two landslides in 10 km would be part of the routine. The second landslide was, nevertheless, more peculiar, for this time the foreigners who traveled in buses and jeeps delayed at both sides of the landslide, joined the Bihari workers and shovels in hand helped to repair the obstructed road. The bright skinned black Bihari workers are always found where the most difficult tasks are required, and remind me of the sub races imagined by A.Huxley. The job demanded more than 5 hours, and only after midday we speeded again. By now, landslides had imposed their rhythm, and we traveled in an involuntary convoy of three trucks. One of the other trucks carried goats, which loomed with through the gaps of the wooden bars of the cargo compartment; the other five hundred hens drugged by altitude. In each landslide, the three truck drivers (and their assistants) would gather and ask each other: “Chai?”.

After we overcame the second landslide, our Tata galloped like a wild horse. The road unexpectedly got paved and led to a plateau of pastures, inhabited by a few khampa nomads, from whose faces can be told that they are still complaining to the Gods for the draw of destinies. The plateau lasted some 20 km, and we started to climb the side of a gorge. The outcome of such steep zigzagging was Taglang Pass (5360m), the second highest motorable pass in the world. With the attitude of a surgeon, Kuldip extended his left arm, where Guddu appropriately fitted a bottle of cheap whiskey. It was their way of celebrating the safe crossing.

On the other side, and after three days in the truck, we reached the first town, Rumtse, which is culturally, a point of inflection. We had left Himachal Pradesh and entered Ladakh soon after Sarchu, but the absence of any settlement had concealed the evidence: that Ladakh is a “Little Tibet” in India. And in Rumtse that fells like a verdict, it is enough with looking at the architecture and the faces of people in the street. Tibetan architecture somehow transmits the stoicism and solidity of the Tibetans. Even the humble most of dwellings looks like a fort built to last a millennium. The slightly inclined angle with which the Hellenic white walls part from the ground enhances this illusion. Near Miru, another Tibetan village with eroded stupas –symbolic Buddhist altars- on the sides, our third landslide surprised us, and tamed us until the next morning.

The last stage on to Leh was clear of landslides but not uneventful. In Karu, a large military base, a young local palmed down the Tata. I thought he was a conscript heading back home to Leh. Once inside, with the premeditated eloquence of a TV presenter, he took a dozen film black plastic tubes refilled with opium and started a real auction. The drivers of the other trucks were already in our cabin. The always ready dealer had even a manual weight like the ones jewelers have. All the transactions went on just in front of the military base…

In Karu I said goodbye to Gudd and Kuldip and boarded an Army jeep of a General who had lived a year in Angola and spoke Portuguese. We soon reached the broad Indus Valley, with its enormous gompas that, far from having been conceived and built in the same instance, are real rag puppets, the babelic result of infinite additions and earthquakes and… Finally, the road seemed to crash against a arch of high unforgiving mountains. A couple of curves and these slided like a theater’s canvas. What was behind was Leh. 101 hours and ten vehicles had been necessary. But I was there.

NEW DELHI: SPIRITUALITY, DECEPTION AND COW'S TOTALITARISM...

By definition, the capital of a country of almost a billon inhabitant cannot (and will not) be a pleasant site, I knew that, but besides my wishes, New Delhi was the place to obtain Pakistani and Chinese visas. Being the Indian Himalayas, where I had already spent two weeks, a culturally diverse region I comforted myself by saying that now, traveling southwards, with the unforgiving heat of the plains growing closer, I was in an exploratory mission. Thinking ahead, I imagined an overpopulated metropolis, poorer than Cairo maybe, and surely with more rickshaws and street cows. But I was being distracted by frivolous differences. New Delhi, the heart of the beast, was going to let me with recurrent fantasies of a trip to a South Pacific Island as Cook or Tokelau.

I had always read travel guide authors empting the dictionary when time comes to describe how hospitable Turks, Kurds and Iranians are. En route through such grounds I had found comments of the kind fair, and I had started to such amount of generous adjectives wouldn’t have sense without any of the neighboring countries being hostile or at least sensibly less inclined to help strangers. With its widely acclaimed pacifism and spirituality, India ranked as the applicant less likely to incarnate such eventuality. And yet, I am convinced, acknowledging all what the country has to offer in terms of culture and history, India is, as regards hospitality, the element that allows for the contrast.

After such a categorical statement I know some of you will be wanting proves. It may be enough to remember the rickshaw driver who, on learning that I wouldn’t pay him seven times the fare of my trip, preferred having a nap to driving me for the real price. Or shall I evoke that friendly local who, seeing the coming bus that we should both board overloaded with passengers hanging from the doors as bunches of banana, sent me to the wrong one and literally ran towards the correct one. In any case, it’s their poker face and deep apathy what now, with hundreds of Iranians and Afghans still mimicking invitations for tea in my retina, makes me miss Muslim countries.

Having said this, I must make clear that no specific resentment towards foreigners operates in Indian people, but they are rather democratic: they treat you as bad as they treat each other. The whole picture is both sad and comic, that of a nation regenerating daily their own suffering. Saying that Delhi inhabitants have an unchallenged capacity to turn unnecessary stressing the simplest events of everyday life would be to oversee far more alarming aspects. We are not expecting the vendors of the Paharganj Bazaar to throw their rubbish in the bin, because the haven’t been taught the trick, but then it’s funny to see them throwing rotten fruit in front of their stands and chasing tha happy flies with giant fans soon after. In fact, the average Indian seems to take an immense pleasure in being in close contact with filthiness. When the first monsoon rains hit Delhi, the narrow main street of the bazaar became an Olympic pool size swamp, and mother tenderly waved their children who set off to play and swim, dodging if lucky the open drainage mouths, where hundreds like them drawn every year. By night, control of the area shifts to gangs of rabid looking dogs (one of which sharpened his teeth with my right ankle) and homeless sadus (holy men, most of the times disguised beggars) whse only friends are those dogs.

It turned an immediate question to me, where does the famed spirituality of India comes from? After only two months in the country I am less than qualified to write an essay about the issue, but I suspect it has more to do with the spiritual vacuum of western new agers than with prevailing local state of facts. Many of the travelers I come across arrive to India with an a priori fascination and rapidly derive spirituality from the polychromatic simplicity of life. As for me, I still can’t find any depth in the abundance of incense and the mechanical worship of Shivas and Kalis. I am the first one to admire India for its theoric developments in the course of history, but it is quite obvious that little of that wisdom has filtered to present days. No need to say it is the of yoga and meditation, of the clever assets who wrote the Uppanishads, but this bulge of knowledge seems reserved for a tiny learned minority.

My arrival to Delhi overlapped with the Bombay blasts. Thousands of Indian in the streets stopped harassing each other to watch the news and vengefully exclaimed: “Pakistani people!” In the aftermath of the tragedy, even the noses of the street cows were pointing across the border, and the temptation to strike back was stirred by the contiguity with which TV channels broadcasted Israeli retaliation in Southern Lebanon. That’s within comprehension, but I am still trying to understand how can Indians ride in panic when the death toll is caused by the enemy and be so indifferent to the much higher number of casualties caused by their sole negligence. The supporters of spiritual unearthly India should have a closer look at statistics, and learn about the thousands of cases of parents murdering their newborn daughters to avoid paying hefty marriage “taxes” in the future. As women are considered worthless, the family of the bride has to pay thousands of dollars in compensation to that of the groom for taking their daughter. That also explains why pre-born analysis is forbidden in India. The slightest hint that it is going to be a girl is enough to result in abortion.

In perspective, levels of internal aggression, silenced and accepted, seem to more than enough to stop speaking at once about a land of mystic tolerance. The pacific strategy of Gandhi to drive the British away was emotive. Yet, I wonder, wouldn’t they value more the consequences of their actions had they had to fight for independence? In any case, any attempt of to understand Indian indifference requires looking further back at the emergence of the cast system. The cast system must be the most efficient social control device in history. In this way, the exploited low casts comfort in their misery, and those who receive the legal minimum wage of 7 dollars a month don’t blame anyone, but just believe that they are going through the punishment for bad actions committed in past lives. In India, logically, it’s more realistic to expect advancement from reincarnation rather than from the less than flexible social frame. While the higher casts –the businessmen, or waisha- continue to base their wealth in the management of an underpaid working class, the future remains hazy. Cows are, by far, the ones who result always unscathed from the struggle of Indian existence. The Hindus consider them the second mother of all India, since their milk replaces the mother’s breast. This turns them into untouchable beings who dwell victoriously around the city, smelling at the sign of Indira Gandhi International Airport, as if claiming the few areas not yet under their realm. Being native from Buenos Aires province, where probably the best steak in the world comes from, I can only regret so many cows are not on the right side of the fence (and in the menu).

After two weeks of waiting for Pakistani and Chinese visas to be issued, for anti rabies vaccines to be shot in my arm, and for Delhi citizens to show a more kind side, I left the city for the far North. The Buddhist valleys of Kinnaur, Spiti and Nubra – and the highest roads in the world- were waiting for me.

SLOWLY, SLOWLY...FULL POWER!!! (TWO WEEKS IN MCLOED GANJ)

Many years before cheap airlines and the Interrail would metabolize nomadism making it socially acceptable and accessible almost to the point of irrelevance, both the North American police and the Interpol led their own investigations aiming to understand (and prevent) the growing inclination to roadside life displayed in the 60s and 70s by a disaffected youth. Those were times of the overland hippie trail to India, of the French May, and to the eyes of authorities that understood self segregation to be another kind of transgression, , the movement of an intrepid generation seemed to akin to ideology and militancy. In his book “A sociology of Hitch Hiking” (1974) Mario Rinvolucri pastes fragments of such reports, where the official-redactor bitterly complains: “traveling, specially by hitch hiking, seems to be the joy of this people. Wherever they are found, they are bound for somewhere else; back to Amsterdam or onwards to Istanbul (…) Drinking wine and kissing in public they are a displeasing spectacle” –concludes the inspector who, with the Vietnam war in the headlines manages to make room in his indignation for wines and kisses. Confronted to the lack of consensus at home, there was hardly a better choice for the travelers than the shelter provided by their own strongholds, like Crete, Istanbul or Northern India. But intolerance had a replica abroad and soon the leaders of several alternative settlements near Pokhara and Katmandu were given a stern warning by Nepali Police. An alarming similarity with the late Roman Empire era when, anticipating the Medieval Law of Residence the peasant was obliged to stay where he was recorded at the census. Two weeks ago I arrived to one of these reservoirs; McLoed Ganj, in Himachal Pradesh, Northern India.

My first impression of McLoed was that of a compact universe where Tibetan monks, cows, and long haired travelers in their Royal Enfield – the little modified Indian version of an English 1955 motorcycle- share the streets bis-a-bis. The second mementos I associate with McLoed are its are its poster covered walls, announcing courses on yoga, meditation or Tibetan cuisine. The town has in fact performed a maneuver of adjustment (and bastardization) to accommodate –and please- the visitors’ community. Having traveled trough Iran and Afghanistan in relative cultural isolation, it wasn’t difficult to take the decision to drop anchor for a fortnight, stability I hadn’t known in 14 months of marching pace. Consequently, McLoed became a sort of TV studio , with the curtains unveiling each morning the same settings, more often than not the terrace of the View Café. I was talking there to a slightly built man whose beard was white enough to remember Afghanistan in peaceful times and even to emotionally recall the winters in Qandahar, when a another man, who had been all the while leaning over the corner sofa and repeatedly preparing whiskey and coke, addressed to me. His name was Daniel, and he was an artisan (or jeweler –as he dubbed himself) from Argentina. He resided in Canary Islands, Spain and had come to India to buy stones at Jaipur’s gem market, allegedly the largest in the world. Having accomplished his commercial affairs, he had quickly realized that he was spending less money in India, sleeping in hotels and eating at restaurants, in perpetual holidays, than back home with a basic life in Spain. As many others, he had decided to stay until the last day of his visa. And that’s not a short time, for all Indian visas are granted for six months. For his contemplative pose, every afternoon in the corner coach, whiskey ‘n coke in hand, rather than for the badge in his left eye we started to nick him “the Captain”. I am speaking in plural, since by dusk the View Café, which also doubled as a guesthouse had revealed the presence of other latinos: Sergio and Andres from Chile, Elena from Spain, and others.

- I have whiskey, warm clothes, and playing cards, all I need” –had stated the Captain, letting us mentally reconsidering each item of our gear in the first place, but also hinting at the downhill fate McLoed had experienced, formerly a screen for the flirt and the bias of English aristocrats who, among cocktails and servants would show off their position, now a hangout for a impoverished artists who make frugality the center of their pride.

- When I first set foot in Canarias –the Captain went on- I had no shoes, not a dime, my trousers –a present- could have fit two men at the waist, I didn’t even had a belt. Such is the life of the artisan, today you are rich, and tomorrow you starve. I love it!” It was clearly a Captain that appreciated wrecks. And yet, something hadn’t changed. Hill Station or Hippie Station, it was always about the locals serving a richer lot.

In the following days I rejoiced in the bourgeois and novel pleasure of having a neighborhood. When the day would draw to an end, it was a tacit date that grouped us in the View or Trimurti Cafes to play cards with Sergio and Elena. McLoed itself doesn’t loose, for being the seat of the Tibetan Government in the exile, its general aspect of farming town. Tibetan prayers –strips of colored cloth printed with Buddhist sutras strung at the top of houses and temples to purify the air- make the hillside village look like something in between a birthday and the bridge of a massive ship. There were in McLoed enough temples and monasteries to keep us busy for al week, but it was hard to see the town as something different than an esthetic background for our own personal searches. It was enough to activate the lateral hearing in the View Café to realize that it was possible there to go around the world in 80 loonies. Everybody there seemed more or less involved in a series of disciplines ranging from Reiki –which I later found myself learning- to Ayurvedic medicine and yoga, but we were particularly impressed of the constancy with which ‘the people over the cushions’ gathered each evening to work on the Mayan calendar. Led by a Swiss with a scholarly preoccupation for the nature of February 29th, the group worked industriously, deriving the astrologic predictions for the following day, and publishing the graphically in a A4 size poster. In fact, when you ask, “what day is it?” in McLoed, chances are the other person is going to come up with “self existing red moon” or “blue monkey”. With such titles, who can honestly miss old Monday or Tuesday? Other times you can hear them speaking about bakthuns, 52 years long cycles. When 52 bakthuns are passed hold yourself, game over. Redirecting our ear to our South American table, the Captain argued with Andres about the mileage of different Royal Enfield models, while Sergio categorically suggested a classification of nipples, and asked seriously if hardness and diameter should be enough criteria. Mind the gap…

Seen like this it seems like just a logia of mystic orientated coffee drinkers. And to some extent most of the routine in McLoed slips away hanging around different cafes in rota basis, but of course, with a police reluctant to interfere with Holy Tourism, the freedom of consciousness is the only moderator and coffee or chai are mere footnotes to marihuana or hashis. It’s an old issue which, let me say, our society, too afraid to openly embrace it but too interested in the grass to reject it, has promptly resolved with clandestinity. It is no doubt a matter of perspectives. I was surprised to meet an English couple who not only resorted frequently to smoke in front of their children but were rather afraid that these would pick up odd prejudices from school…

As days passed, however, other layers of the onion came to surface, and it became evident that McLoed was a lot more than a destination for a colorful bunch happy to have a great time in a cheap country. It was quite an experience to run into Jari, an Ecuadorian who has studied alternative therapies in India for over 4 years, and who is equally qualified to heal a migraine with Bach Flowers or to give a lecture on the Bhagavad Gita, the Epic drama of Hindu gods. But Jari rejects the word “mythology”, for he rather considers our civilization to be the corrupted inertia of a forgotten golden era, which echoes reached the scribes of the Bhagavad Gita. As he instructs us in an elegant style that includes rhetoric questions, nothing seems to grasp at the attention of the Swedish girl who next to us keeps knitting a brigh orange sweater with the slogan: “Slowly, slowly, full power”, which quite summarizes the prevalent attitude around, the faith of the visitors in their alternative paths, the stoicism with which the Tibetan maintain their exile. With the same criteria, the inhabitants of Christiania, the alternative community nestled in the heart of Copenhagen, had their coins minted bearing a snail. Not as intimidating as the double headed eagle of the Russian coins, but far more meaningful. Also as in Christiania or as in a Rainbow Gatherings, McLoed offers shelter from the mainstream to the traveler and the innovator. On learning that many of the present were thinking of flying to England to attend the on going European Rainbow in the South Coast, the link was clear. But no matter how cozy harbors are, ships were conceived for the sea. Sometimes ships don’t return from the sea, and this is something sailors know perfectly well. My last days in McLoed were all sadness. By email I learnt that Kinga, resourceful and unstoppable Polish hitchhiker and writer from Gdansk had died as a result of malaria in Accra, Ghana. It is proper to ribbon an article about patience, commitment and confidence with the most famous of Kinga’s statements: “Every dream is given to us with the power to make it come true”. Slowly slowly, full power.

BETWEN THE CONCEPT INDIA AND REAL INDIA.... HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY SAINT ID???

An innocent white line painted across the pavement divides, in the famed Wagha border, Pakistan from India. It is possible to speak about these countries as different entities only from 1948 onwards, when the former British India split up in three independent states, when the former British India split up in three independent states including the mentioned ones and Bangladesh. In the case of Pakistan and India, the “Partition” had a religious background, and the newborn countries found themselves edging battle almost from the beginning over the bordering northern region of Kashmir, whose valleys are populated by Muslims in a ratio of 92%. Even if the Wagha border is way far from the red zone, one would expect to find the parsimony of two nations that guard each other as wounded snakes. Instead, the two wedding clad officials stuck at each side of the white stripe chit chat fluently and are even happy of having their pictures taken. More significantly, both border corps merge each afternoon in a border closing ceremony where the choreography comes to symbolize them. Ironically, the Pakistani secret services continue to fund a petty terrorist attack scheme in Srinagar and Jammu.

Some meters on the other side, with a new stamp on the passport, a boar welcomes me into the “largest democracy on Earth”, undoubtedly referring to the figures rather than to the magnitude of such representation. Personally, when crossing the magic line I realized that I wasn’t arriving to Real India, the physic substrate of statistics, but to the concept India, to the remote lands where the first books –the Vedic scriptures- were written, to the mist that threaded Sanskrit – mother of almost European languages. Through millennia India has worked as hidden sender of wisdom, as a supernova whose energy reaches us well after its conception. Knowledge was for some time an endemic creature of India: while Europeans were sharpening their axes someone near the Ganges was designing the intricacies of chess. Moreover, the idea that the universe is a mere illusion to our minds unfolded from local sages centuries before Descartes and Schopenhauer started to crawl. The umbilical cord may seem invisible today, but quite a few people suspect that Jesus himself studied Yoga and meditation in India during his uncharted days. On the demon’s side, and racist as they were, the Nazis ended up excavating their origins in the Himalayans, as attested by several SS led political archeological expeditions poorly portrayed in the film “Seven years in Tibet”.

Having listed these attractive connections, I must say my first steps in Amritsar drove me back from the Concept India to Real India, where slow, obese, elder cows block for minutes the fishy stream of rickshaws that no traffic lights could punctuate, and where unworried men and women find comfortable sleep in walk paths and roadsides. Temporarily, attributing the excessive spontaneity with which life occurs in India to an unconsciously professed nihilism seems pushing things too hard. Overpopulation may explain the issue, if less charmingly, more accurately.

Busy with these thoughts I made it to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab’s premier cty. All travelers on East to West traffic had informed me of the possibility of lodging for free in the fabulous temple of the Sikhs. Introducing the Sikhs: opposed to the ever calm Hindu, Sikhs considered violence necessary to defend themselves from invading Muslims. Sikhism spiritual life centers on the Golden Temple, an extensive complex of temples and ashrams aligned at the shores of an artificial marbled edged square lake in the center of which, and linked by a catwalk, lies the bright, golden laminated, main shrine. With the rhythm of religious music (gunbali) as a pass maker, thousands of pilgrims, some arrived from as far a field as the US or England (where rich Sikh communities reside) walk around the lake day and night. Telling an Hindu from a Sikh is really easy. The later are reluctant to cut any of the capillary emanations of the body, which results in Afghan like beards, and cover their hair with a unique turban called padgi. Theoretically, they all should carry a curved knife by the side, thank God just for decoration these days. One of the temple guards, for example, parades himself proudly dressed in neon orange turban and deep blue one piece garment, as he discretely dispenses stick beats to those falling asleep during prayers. Coming from the chromatic sobriety of the Muslim world I have the impression of having swallowed a hallucinogen

Seated cross legged by the lake I was approached by a young guy dressed in a brown shaggy gown. “Excuse me… are you a saint?” “Negative. Why do you think so?” – I replied. “Because of your dreadlocks!” Rajan was a graduated from a Philosophy College in the South of India wandering in search of enlightenment. He had been crossing India by train in all conceivable directions for over three months. Before getting the point that I was hitch hiking for pleasure, Rajan suggested that, looking like a saint, I could use the trains for free. For I moment I overlooked the possibility, and smiled at the idea of adding a saint ID to the passport and the fake student card. We spent many hours discussing about Hinduism (he, speaking; me, learning) and the veil of Maya… “Today people believe too much in the propaganda of reality” – commented Rajan as we looked for our place in the temple where 40,000 portions of food are served daily, attesting to the Sikhs vocation for hospitality. There were around 300 people in the room, aligned at both sides of a carpeted way where colorful servants passed by, refilling each plate aerially and almost without breaking the march. As food is served all day round, also teams of men and women can be seen ringing tones of onions at any time while, in a similar premise, a similar bunch wash and pile hundreds of metallic dishes. After each banquet, another party, armed with buckets and brushes, storms in. With an un Asian degree of precision the room is ready to welcome new hundreds of anxious dinners a few minutes later.

After feeding ourselves we continued our conversation lying n the garden’s grass. Reality was unsubstantial; we had reached agreement on that point. I tried to remember what I had done on a random date, say July 16th, 2005. Impossible. Even if it didn’t evidently transcended, chances are that day I woke up with a feeling of urgency, hopes and programs. No track however of July 16th, 2005. Vanished from the wheel of cosmos. My wise friend prescribes local Hindu medicine (seldom used by Hindus tough): “Mindfulness of each second, grain of rice or smile. Avoid chains of actions with long term sense. But enough philosophy, let’s go for a good plate of water” And his exclamation was correct and literal, amid such frugality it was possible to talk about a good plate of water, as reposed over a desk by a pious Sikh. Rajan had successfully rescued me from Real India. I was floating in th Concept India again.

I knew that hitch hiking out of a large Indian city meant exposure to unwanted offers from rickshaws drivers. The first ten who opted to park their hellish machines by my side (thus blocking the sight corridor between me and the coming cars) benefited by an early and unfruitful attempt of cultivating patience. Number eleven, instead, saw his rickshaw stolen by the hitch hiker. With a puzzled passenger in the backseat, I pedaled 500 meters to a much quieter location, much to the driver’s surprise, now half a mile distant and shouting. Excluding this initial stressful scenario in Amritsar, the rest of the trip to Dharamsala, en the Himalayan foothills, was a swift concatenation of private air conditioned cars and local “Tata” trucks, which come with Shiva altar as factory feature in the center of the windscreen. Fleeing the tyrannical heat of the plains I bypassed Dharamsala and made it to McLoed Ganj, formerly a hill station for the India residing British aristocracy, who quickly discovered that no fan was enough to cool down Delhi n the summer months. Being McLoed Ganj synonym with Tibetan exiled government (which includes the Dalai Lama) the character of the town is no less defined by the presence of hundreds of hippies from 5 to 80 years of age, embarked altogether in a different sort of exile. When I arrived, the sundown was already limiting my curiosity. Only the following morning would I start to navigate the labyrinthic network of searches which is McLoed Ganj and the Kangra Valley.

PASHTUNISTAN, MOSES, AND THE LIZARD...

Five years ago, excited by the success of my first hitch hiking trip around Europe, I had written an email to my best friend in Argentina describing the adventure briefly. He had replied: “…and I am really happy that our beloved “thumb method” works also in the old continent, where in 1941 you could get a lift in a Panzer, and in 900 with a caravan of enraged camels. The epic episode of hitchhiking to a passing convoy of German tanks had remained ever since in the vault of dreams, until Afghanistan proposed a valid substitution. I was hitching out the outskirts of Kabul towards Jalalabad, in the Pakistani border. Initially, the front sun and the ever present dust allowed seeing only the hexagonal contours emerging ghostly. A second later, the German flag became visible, along with the white riveted black cross that stands for the Bundeswehr: it was a column of German armored vehicles on patrol. I pulled out my thumb, more as an acknowledgment than as a serious attempt to stop them. A bit confused –in shock- the driver waved at me. If the strong foreign military presence in the area did not intimidate me, I started to pay more attention as the local kids welcomed me replicating with the index finger the triggering of a gun. And this meant: “Welcome to Pashtunistan!” the tribal Pashtun are that extends on both sides of the relatively new Afghani-Pakistani border raw by the British a century ago, today a porous border permeable to smugglers and terrorists of varying lineage.

At the sight of this scenario I felt nothing but relax when I came across a camp of the road police, and the officer in charge of the road block, who spoke English and Russian, address to me with a “My dear! Come in the office please” It was the first of a series of charity actions by the police that week. As snooker balls that shoot each other, I was going to be passed on until Peshawar, my final destination in Pakistan. Of course, the office meant the tent, where another officer, of higher rank, seated behind a desk, cashed in a mysterious road tax from truck drivers who left the place mumbling references to Allah. Corrupt policemen are a classic grief for all travelers, but in this case I exited the tent with my stomach full, Pakistani pocket money, and a free ride to Jalalabad, where I arrived in the Hi Ace van the boarded me in. Jalalabad marked the entrance in a new climatic zone, technically known as “damned hot”, without stepping out of the Taliban risk zone, it also encompasses the risk of malaria. A great junction.

In Jalalabad I slept in the police station. The commander and his secretary, anxious to practice their English, honored me with a dinner at their fan ventilated room. Next morning they boarded me to the border in a typically Pakistani truck, excessively decorated with its wooden panels featuring landscapes, houses, women’s faces and prosperity amulets of various kinds among which, significantly, a Pepsi logo had found its way. At the end of the ride I was in the mythical Khyber Pass, a land of bandits even in the local’s regard. The pass itself is disappointingly low (only 1080 m), deservedly unnoticed behind an amorphous bazaar that sprawls under mediocre peaks. To spice up the peak was enough to remember that the road to Peshawar is considered by some to be the most dangerous in the world. When the Pakistani official heard I had come by foot, he twisted his mouth. When he heard I was ready to continue on foot, he almost literally fell from his chair. With a veritable shout he called in a young soldier with a machine gun. It was my personal escort! I explained that the soldier looked very elegant but I had no budget for Rambo, since I was expected to pay for my protection. In any case, I said, the soldier was welcome to hitchhike with me to Peshawar. As no officer wants to be responsible for the death of a foreigner in his jurisdiction (and no soldier wants to hitch hike) I also exited the customs room with a free van ride to Peshawar. And seated next to me, Rambo!

From the pass, the road zigzags down for 53 km before reaching Peshawar. After each bend, it became warmer. Parallel to the road, occasionally, the rail line could be seen. To install railways in this eternally lawless region, the British had to seduce local Pashtun chieftains by promising them that the train would roll slow enough to be assaulted. The sign that says: “Khyber Rifles welcomes you” suggests that the mood in the neighborhood has changed little. I had to meet Dustin, a North American aid worker, in Peshawar’s Kentucky Fried Chicken. Despite Pakistanis, as any ex British colony, speak reasonable English, the instructions of the first person led me to a dark alley full of live, caged chicken…

I stayed two days in Peshawar, before hitting the road again aiming to cross the country towards India. I will zoom in Pakistan later in the summer, as I expect to enter China through Pakistan’s Karakorum Highway. So for the first time in a while I was moving through grounds where there was no reward for my head, and that was something to appreciate. As was the heavenly sent three lanes motorway, a real bless after the always off road Afghanistan. Moreover, a steady flow of cars (yes, private cars!) not only UN vehicles, trucks and taxis, dashed by. With 40ºC, I didn’t complain when this air conditioned cars started to pull by gently, their drivers stopping now and then to invite a cold drink by the road side. In spite of independence, high class Pakistanis display, in their politeness, standards, and self image, the stigma of the British Empire. When I asked one of my drivers, a textile businessman who was taking me to Faisalabad, if that city was big, he replied: “It’s is the Manchester of Pakistan, the heart of textile industry” So he still looks in an old mirror. The driver of a spotless Corolla, instead, when asked about his profession, he surprised for his originality and sincerity, and replied: “I don’t work. My father dedicates to money laundry in Saudi Arabia”. From the air conditiones Corolla the back of a truck with two oxen, and on in another truck –in the cabin this time- to Lahore, where I arrived at dusk, having completed 450 km since the morning. Being at shouting distance from the Indian border I called it a day, and phoned Riaz, a local member of Hospitality Club there.

“No problem –said Riaz unworried- I am dinning with a friend at the Holidays Inn’s restaurant. You are invited” In this way, straight out from the road, considerably filthy, I flagged down a rickshaw, announced my destination proudly, and 20 minutes later I was arriving, heralded by the explosions of rickshaw’s exhaust, to the all marble and golden foyer of the luxury hotel. With no ferry to turn my proletarian tricycle in a chariot or Lexus 4x4, the confused steward barely let me in. Fully equipped as a moonwalker I made it to the table where Riaz was serenely chatting with his friend, a politician who had just landed from the UK, where he had interviewed Pakistan’s former prime minister. In such a celestial setting I couldn’t do less than apologizing for my spontaneity, and sited own. Averaging half dinner, Riaz asked me where I was planning to stay overnight. “Well, in your house”. Misunderstanding, misunderstanding! The good man had omitted that his sister and nephews were visiting so he had no free beds at home. “But no problem – he anticipated- There is a YMCA hostel near by. We boarded his friend’s Land Cruiser (“Pakistan’s most expensive car! –he said proudly) towards the hostel, which was closed. Then, my “host” hided his sight stretched my hand, said sorry, and protected himself behind the dark windows of Pakistan’s most expensive car’s.

The park seemed to be waiting for me, with a show of Sufi music. A bearded man in white tunic makes place for me in his bench. “Why are you here?” –he goes. I explained him. In the curious English of the subcontinent, he replied: “Oh, so you are here for sleeping purpose! Don’t mention it, come to my house!” Sajid lived in a student’s residence, because even if he looked older than me he was actually four years younger, and studied Laws in Lahore. The common room of the residence lacked all furniture. At its center there was a PC, and some hundred books scattered around as if intending to eat it. There was everything among these, from Chomsky to an anachronic book about the “rational spirit of socialism” in which pages you could see a picture of two blond guys repairing some radio equipment, and the legend “Kaunas Technical University”. Sajid and Kaswar, his friend, were two men at the edge of their society. “Which is the meaning of life?” –he repeated once and again. I declared that I didn’t know, but I knew many things that were not. “Shall we be materially productive?” – Kaswar essayed. Somehow, submerged in a society where one has to buy a Corolla and a wife (yes, buy) before becoming thirty, these guys had managed to realize that happiness and material progress are two different wheels. Curiously, Pakistan’s high class, who would always claim to be moralist, suggests their children a path in which family seems a mere added value, an effervescence of time, a fermentation of money. OK, also in Europe I have met guys who, running after the Porsche, have lost their wives, children and got an ulcer. While we talked, two lizards on the wall were acrobatically trapping the insects which happened to be in the wrong place on the wrong time. Sajid improvised a joke: “One day Moses, disturbed, came to God and demanded: God! What is the meaning of the lizard? Why did you create it? God replied: “Curious! The lizard was here yesterday, and asked for the meaning of Moses!” Meaning. Sense. Perspective. I diluted in sleep happy to have met two alert minds in a country of automats.