Friday, June 30, 2006 Drive to Yamunotri

We had to wake up really early and pack for our paid-for group excursion with Bob to Yamunotri, the origin of the sacred Yamuna River (the river on which Delhi is built). It was all rainy with no water. Doesn’t make any sense to me. We all piled into cars/vans/Ambassadors, 12 taxis in all. Dinker was the leader, and the whole entire way was chain-smoking bidis. No wonder his voice is so hilarious. The van started, and it smelled like exhaust, so we played it off…That is, until we were miles away from other cars and had every window open, and it still smelled. So, for two hours it turns out we were breathing in carbon monoxide, leaded fuel, and exhaust. The bad: We inhaled dangerous amounts of toxic gases, I was nauseas, that’ll probably take six months off my life, and I will not be able to remember as many Hindi vocab words. The good: I did manage to get extremely high off the fumes. The remedy for the leak was to put a plastic bag over the gas cap, and they told me that the car part (a few loose screws) had been fixed. Needless to say I hopped in another car. We stopped for lunch for exactly 45 minutes at some random road (not even a curb) at Patthar Gad, according to Dinker’s itinerary and the map that he drew and signed ‘Dinker Rai’. The lunch was awesome…a pastry box filled with liquid curry in a bag, oily puris, expired mango juice, and cheese sandwiches. I sat on a weed plant because it was everywhere. They were burning the lunch trash, and I pulled out a marijuana plant and threw it in the fire for fun. The roads were all windy and weaved through deep river valleys, cliffs on one side and steep mountains on the other. The hills were rocky and steep, but colored with the green of terraced rice fields, deciduous trees, grasses, and weeds. I unpacked my stuff in the room with Daniel and Joe. There were three beds, but they came adjoined, so it was like one huge bed. I went through the small hill town north and over the bridge to a small 700-year-old placed called Kharsali Village. The paths were completely muddy and there was cow dung everywhere…If you fall here, you literally will “Eat Shit”. I managed to make it up the steep hills. I was slow and got passed by little dark playing kids in dirty clothes; old wrinkly short Nepalese and Indian men dressed in tweed coats, circular hats, old khaki pants, sandals, and walking sticks leading their mules; and old heavyset short women wearing gold jewelry, shawls, scarves, jackets, and heavy dresses carrying pounds of leaves on their backs and dozens of sticks on their heads. Women do all the informal work, while men try to make a living or spend their family’s earnings smoking, drinking, and gambling. This does not surprise me; sadly it’s this way all over the world. The kids (dressed in warm dirty clothes) greeted us warmly, trying to speak limited English, laughing, and wanting to show us around. They brought us to a temple (more like a watch tower), that was completely steep and dark inside. We got to ring the little bell that looked over the entire (population like 50) town. Then we went to dinner, which was really good but an hour late and flies were everywhere (including larvae in the rice and a cockroach that fell into my khir). I was locked out of my room, so I had to hang out in the big room that smelled like paint because they had fumigated it way too much. Today is just one constant high. There was a huge (probably 5-inch in diameter) brown spider with fangs on the ceiling. So much fun sleeping in a place like this! Then we told ghost stories and while Emily was telling hers, she knocked, and then there was a knock in response that came from somewhere in the room that NO ONE made.