From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Seven (Part II)

In the past I’ve had luck with the tradition of finding a stranger with whom to share a New Year’s kiss. Eleven years ago in the English city of Leeds, I met a girl in the throngs of a basement club and we danced together to rock music that was so loud it nearly pushed us over. At midnight she yelled something into my ear but because of the noise and my unfamiliarity with her accent, I had no idea what she was saying. Annoyed with me, she pulled me to her. I can still remember the touch of her lips, a pair of the softest that I have ever kissed. It happened again on New Year’s in Valparaiso, Chile, with the reverie of hundreds in the city plaza dancing to live music. There, a girl who I had been making eye-contact with all night broke free from her date and grabbed me by the arm and we kissed among the drunken multitudes. I broke away from her quickly, assuming her date would not be in as celebratory a mood as all the rest.

When I reached the top of the stairs of the club in Gangtok, I believed it was fair to think that perhaps my luck would carry over to India. What greeted us though was a room half-full, populated almost entirely by men. Again as the only white people, the attention fell on us like a mountainside collapsing.

Our Indian admirers came quickly and unabashedly, the alcohol eliminating the need for the initial charade that I had witnessed on the MG Marg. Both Dan and I were pulled from one group of men to the next. We’d pose for a selfie and then get shuffled off to someone else. The act was all in good fun and made it easy to get to know people. As a stroke of good fortune, women eventually started coming into the club as well. Their attention also fell on the two foreigners who now seemed to be very popular among the crowd.

The band played a mix of English music covers and Punjabi pop. I did as I usually do, flailing around in a way that I hoped would be construed as dancing. When it came to the Punjabi songs, the crowd accompanied their steps with intricate mudra-style hand gestures that I attempted without success. The women watched me critically and giggled at my failure.

Dan disappeared right as my fate for a kiss that night moved in the right direction. Not one, but two women beckoned me into their circle of dancing friends. They were women who I had seen come in and who had that quality of beauty that transfixes a man and instantly makes him doubt himself.

We began to dance at a respectable distance from one another. I was hoping this was just a kind of test to see if I was a gentleman. I kept my distance and worked on my erratic moves, afraid that one uncouth flail would get me expelled from the group.

In time, an older couple joined the circle and we all danced together. One of the girls leaned in, her lips close to my ear.

“These are our parents,” she said.

Her father, in the middle of his groove, gave me a knowing nod. I took this to be a positive, if not permissive, sign. But the mother gave me a smile that, for all of its smile-like nature, looked more like a scowl.

I kept the respectable distance. One of the girls, the one I vied for the most, wore a short black dress and stood up on a small, cushioned seat. She looked right at me and rocked her hips like a pendulum, holding her gaze. Her mother was disaffected by her daughter but kept me in the corner of her eye.

It didn’t help that the previous throngs of selfie-taking men were now circling our group like hungry sharks. These women were clearly the ones that they wanted. The men came to me with friendly pats on the back and handshakes that overtly signaled “We’re best friends. Really! Didn’t you see us taking those selfies together?” They edged in. To preserve my chances of getting a New Year’s kiss, I led them away, one after another, their previous bon homie turning to resentment.

There was one man, a towering, light-skinned Delhi-ite who was built like an Indian train engine and was near stumbling drunk. He was harder to hold off. He came up to us more than once and instead of giving me the perfunctory pat on the back to try and get into our dance circle, he bear hugged me. He’d then turn me around and position me outside of the circle, replacing himself in my stead. Neither the women nor their parents appreciated this macho display and soon they moved off to one of the tables to sit down. It was nearly midnight and this wall of a man had destroyed my chances of a kiss.

There were other women dancing nearby, all embracing their boyfriends or husbands or some guy that they had just met, the guy that I could have been. With minutes left before 2017, I found myself standing awkwardly on the side of the dance floor, half-heartedly tapping my foot to the beat. Dan had returned, explaining that he just needed to take a rest, and so we were two travelers who, at that moment, Robert Service’s words seemed to ring true for:

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

I was ready to call it a night, afraid that the strike of midnight would come to me as a fatal blow. But just then the girls rose from their seats and came back to the dancefloor.

We danced closer this time. Their parents were off to the side and could not see us.

When midnight came, there was no countdown. The band suddenly stopped and announced something in some other language and everybody cheered.

“That’s it?” I asked Dan.

“I guess so.”

“Well, Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year.”

The women went to their father and mother and gave them hugs. They went to their friends, shaking their hands and wishing them a happy New Year. Then one came up to me, the one in the black dress.

“Happy New Year,” I said.

I extended my hand, and she looked at her mother who shook her head in disagreement. The girl kept her arms crossed. She smiled at me and said, “Happy New Year.” Then she went back to the dancefloor, dancing with her family, and leaving me alone.

“Selfie?” another guy came over and put his arm around my shoulder.

“Sure,” I said.

He took the picture and walked away. And the girls danced separate from us for the rest of the night.

Once the celebration was over and the women had gone, I walked back to my hotel, the whole time thinking of Robert Service’s poem. It was a long walk on those Gangtok hillsides, the air having that familiar cold. 

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Seven (Part I) - Sikkim - On Selfies and The Self

Sikkim is known for not being well-known. Unlike its southern neighbor, West Bengal, which houses Darjeeling, a city so famous that there is a tea named after it, Sikkim still exists as a bit of an anomaly. It was its own independent country until 1975, when it became a constituent of India. Gangtok, the capital, is built up on steep mountainsides and is looked over by the third largest mountain in the world, Kachenchunga.

Gangtok is one of the most diverse places I’ve ever been. It’s as erroneous to think of Indians as one kind of people as it is to think of Americans the same way. The people around Gangtok turned the streets a rich tapestry of skin tones, facial features, dress, and languages—most people didn’t speak Hindi, but in fact, Nepali. There were many who looked Tibetan, and others Han-Chinese. Some seemed to have come clear across from Kashmir, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Then there were the Bengali and Assamese up for vacation, joined by the Delhi urbanites and the Kolkata hoards. They all blended and wove between one another on the MG Marg, the walking street mall dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi (nothing quite says Gandhi like a mall). It was enjoyable enough to sit on one of the many benches and people watch.

It was on such a bench that I was accosted with the first of many surreptitious selfies. I have since found that there are common warning signs. A passerby, always male, stares at me as he walks by. Then he doubles back and stares again. I nod, hoping to dispel some of the awkwardness. He sits next to me, takes out his phone, pretends to look at something other than the camera, but quickly gives up the charade and asks pointedly, “Selfie together?”

This happened twice in the five minutes that I waited to meet up with Dan on the MG Marg. Once the selfies were taken, both men quickly got up and left, their mission accomplished. One reason for this spontaneous need to capture a moment with a foreigner was because, though Gantgtok is filled with great diversity, very few of those people were white. Again in my life I was an anomaly, someone very strange, someone worth taking a selfie with.

When Dan met me at the MG Marg, we stood out even more. I’m six-foot-one and Dan is inches taller than I. There were plenty of stares as we walked down the street and into a Tibetan restaurant for dinner.

After dinner we asked around for where the best New Year’s Eve celebration would be. A local club promised live music and full crowds, though at 8:30, it was empty. We went back to Dan’s hotel to have a drink and discuss the world until we could be sure that the club was full.

Dan played his ukulele and sang songs while drinking the famous Sikkim rum. In the interlude he shared with me one of his favorite poems, one that had resonated with him and, I learned, would with me as well. He had copied it into his journal, which he passed to me and I read as he continued on with his ukulele.

The Men That Don't Fit In

By Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win;

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

He's a man who won't fit in.

Service’s poem struck a chord. Here we were, two men who had chosen an itinerant life, seeking some kind of fulfillment far away from home. Why does anyone choose a lifestyle like this?

When I lived in America, the pressures began to mount to find a stable job and settle down. Such pressures came covertly, as I observed my friends’ lives following that path, and overtly when I’d be confronted directly about how I had saved nothing yet, didn’t have a stable job (unfortunately for many, being a public school teacher in America isn’t considered a sufficient career), and had plans to take off yet again. There was a sense that all this was childish. It was time to grow up.

But there is a call that exists for me that Service too knew well. One that Dan knows. Those of us who can’t sit still, the rolling stones, the wanderers and vagabonds, search for both new adventures and for a much more elusive goal: a way to explain ourselves and justify these lives.

What is the point? Is it pure narcissism to go off alone and, in my case, write every detail of the trip so that I can share it with others? Are we just looking for our own vainglorious ends, to get pats on the back and occasional affirmations of worldliness and bravery? If that is all we travel for, then yes, I agree with one interpretation of Service’s poem, we will find that we are failures in the end.

What makes for a good life? In America, often a good life means having a house and two cars and beautiful, talented children. But I have also seen good lives in the villages of Bhutan, where goodness simply comes from being able to knock at your neighbor’s door at any time of the day and sit down with him for tea and a long conversation. I have seen the good lives of the rock climbing bums who live in vans and tents and follow the crisp, dry weather around the world. They wake up in expansive, pristine landscapes every day and breathe in the fresh air and accomplish nothing more than climbing to the tops of rocks and yet they are whole and feel a peace incomparable. There are the bon viveurs who make sure that they eat well every night, joined by friends and a good bottle of wine; and there are the cloistered artists who skip meals to work on masterpieces that will never earn them a dime. There are those who have very little, but have found love, and so have the greatest wealth they could know. I have met these people, sat down with them and called them friends. And the only reason that I know about these lives is because I have traveled.

I looked over the poem again.

“Actually, Dan, I’m not sure that it’s as bad as I initially thought. Service says, ‘Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh.’ So, he’s okay with it in the end. So what if he fails? He’s followed that drive within himself, that need to be a rolling stone, the need to keep moving. He’s found his good life and it happens to be the life of a man who won’t fit in. He doesn’t have to be anything else.”

Dan looks at me for moment, considers this, and then looks back at the poem. “Hmmm. Maybe you’re right. It still seems a bit depressing to me, a bit haunting.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” I thought that the poem mirrored our lives well. It was open to interpretation. One may think the message was good, others a failure.

Dan began playing again and I finished my beer and checked the time. It was 10pm, about time we head to the club. I thought about 2016 now through the context of the poem. What kind of a life was it? Was it good? I tried to make sure that I analyzed well. I wanted the certainty of correct interpretation. But I did not get it. By the time we reached the entrance to the club and heard the music beating like a heart, I had to push the idea into the back of my mind. I’d interpret it later, I promised myself. 

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Six - The Indian Roads

As I looked on at the Indian roads ahead of me, I kept strategizing how to get through the melee, knowing still that all the mental preparation I could muster wouldn’t do a damn thing. I had to just take off and get into it, figure it out while being consumed by it. There was no other option.

I was worried. About the risk, and about something else that I had yet to consider. The paperwork that I had for the bike was dubious at best. My registration was nothing more than a copy of some card bestowed on Adam, the original owner, years ago and since lost. The copy I had was faded and all but eaten away by mold. I was also in possession of another piece of paper with a line that was somewhat understandable: TRA..FER O.. OWNER..HIP. The transfer didn’t say my name, of course, nor the names of the previous owners, but did say HARPAL SINGH, who I imagine helped Adam buy the original bike. Adam probably never gave a damn that the bike wasn’t in his name because in Bhutan in didn’t matter. But now I was returning Solivagant to his native land and I was neither Adam nor Harpal Singh and all I had was ratty photocopies of documents that proved nothing about rightful ownership. And, another minor detail, I didn’t have a license to drive a motorcycle.

I did reach out to Adam before heading to India, hoping that he had better copies of the documents or, failing that, some other advice. I got the latter. He told me, “If a cop is on foot trying to get you to stop, then just dodge them and keep going. Ignore them.”

I was about to cross the border with these confidence-inspiring resources as my only defense. Would they even let me in? Or let the bike in?

After you exit the Bhutan border, you head straight into the frenetic Jaigon streets. I’ve had no instance of culture shock as jarring as that cross into India. I remember getting out of a taxi in the middle of Hanoi and feeling a similar shock, but Hanoi was cleaner. I remember my very first time traveling alone abroad and having to navigate the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica. But San Jose didn’t smell as bad. No, Jaigon was something else entirely.

The Jaigon roads are the most irrefutable evidence that the nature of the universe is toward entropy. Centuries ago, a Silk Road bazaar must have collapsed into itself on a nefarious transaction, swallowed its vendors, their customers, and its lineage through time (the spices, vibrant textiles and jungle fruits then, along with modern plastic refuse, rusted sheet metal, chip wrappers, clouds of exhaust, and fecal matter). All of it was then churned together and returned back to present day, not as a celestial Big Bang, but as a vomiting, in long, erect lines.

The separated castes seemed to be indifferent to this time warp. They went about business as usual. Incredible beauties in saris drifted through the turmoil like vibrant and contented Siamese fish. The downtrodden and destitute sat amidst the fumes with hands out and looks of prolific suffering indelibly drawn onto their faces, looks that revealed a mental suffocation, a shackle connected to a weight immovable. There were Bhutanese woven into the crowds, some in ghos and kiras, others in leather jackets, punks, and uppity rich kids, drug addicts and businessmen. The cacophony of all kinds of labor set the background and pace: the staccato banging of a rickshaw driver repairing a broken chain, the shouts of a cabbage vendor, the strident honking honking honking of anyone and everyone in their own automobile.

It was a labyrinth that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I didn’t even know how to begin. So I pointed straight and tried to weave myself into the fray.

As a child, my parents took me whitewater rafting when I was technically too young to go. My father, an accomplished river canoer, convinced the rafting company that I had been down many rivers and would be fine. They set me in the very front of the raft and told me to hold on tight. When we made the first descent into the angry rapids, I grabbed at the raft white knuckled, bit into my PFD and remained that way, shivering, for the entire trip.

When I edged into Jaigon traffic, the experience was much the same as that rafting trip. Now the boiling rapids came as the tumult of rickshaws and motorbikes. The cargo trucks and cars were like boulders stuck in the madness but occasionally unleashed to wreak havoc. And there I was, getting pushed forward in the chaos such that all I could do was clench my teeth and hold on tight.

Amazingly there did seem to be some method to the madness. Though we moved in a swarm, as long as I kept sharp, no harm would come to me. Everyone seemed to be on high alert. I’d have to brake, accelerate, brake, put a foot down, pass a truck, ignore the oncoming cars, accelerate, swerve, all in a minute, still surrounded by everyone and everything. The motorcyclists around me were all good drivers, much better than me. If I made a bad swerve, they quickly adjusted around me, sounding their horns, not as an attack, just as a constant habit, an “I’m right here,” as natural to them as checking their rearview mirrors. Since they were all keenly aware of how to move in the traffic, it made it easier for me to go along with the momentum. After leaving Jaigon and encountering many more small towns with the same kind of traffic, I felt like I was getting the hang of it.

I hit a signpost after my first hour in India. It was a temporary police gate set up to “control” the flow of traffic. It dragged against the ground loudly when I clipped it, rousing the Indian cop from his lackadaisical attention to his phone and prompting him to stand up and yell something at me.

Remembering Adam’s advice, I pulled back the throttle and pushed on. The bike wasn’t damaged; my side satchel took the brunt of the hit. Later I would find that my camp pot had a dent in it the size of tea saucer.

Eventually, the traffic did abate, though there were always people everywhere. The presence of oncoming trucks, random potholes and meandering cows also kept me wary. The world was flat now and the roads straight and it was easier to take in the sights of this new country. In the quieter moments (which became a relative term), I found myself among endless tea plantations, estates established during British rule. That quintessential Indian haze, a mixture of kicked-up dust and pollution, filtered the early-afternoon light onto women in saris attending to the plants, and onto men on bicycles riding down the side of the highway. There was something pleasant about it, something beneficent.

To return to the basis of this whole adventure for a second: I have no idea what I’m doing. Once in India, this became apparent in two ways. First, I did not have a map. In Bhutan, I never needed one because there is literally one highway. Once you’re on it, that’s it. Go east or go west. But in India I suddenly passed intersections and junctions and all I had was a poorly loaded screenshot of West Bengal. To make things worse, in the ramshackle development and utter disarray of the West Bengali travel infrastructure, road signs were almost nonexistent.

I got lost. A few times. I would turn on a whim, going on a sense of direction calibrated from absolutely nothing. Then I would end up heading back the way I came and I knew that was the only direction I didn’t want to be going.

It was easier to tolerate this improvidence because I didn’t really need to be anywhere in particular. I had told Dan that I could probably meet him that night in Sikkim for New Year’s Eve. But if I missed it, it wouldn’t matter much. The situation also forced me to do something that I had been afraid to do all morning. I had to interact with the people.

This hesitance to interact with people seems counter-intuitive. It is not what one expects as the world traveler’s modus operandi. It’s a truth that I don’t want to admit, but one that is important. I’m often afraid once I get to a new place. If I have yet to make friends with the people, yet to teach students from the culture, yet to eat the food and learn some small bits of the language, I feel like I’ll be taken advantage of, or that I’ll be threatened. It is a feeling that has proven time and time again to be unsubstantiated and ignorant. From Peru to Tibet, Bhutan to Tierra del Fuego, I have rarely felt threatened. Most the time, people are more kind in other parts of the world than where I come from. The road to Sikkim was no different.

The first time I stopped was at a gas station where the attendant not only gave me directions but, despite limited English proficiency, zealously asked me where I was from and about my trip. He wished me a good journey and pointed fervently in the direction he had just told me to go. He was still pointing when I was well established on that road and turned to wave goodbye. The next person I met was along the side of the road, at a small stand selling puri for lunch. I stopped and ate there and though the man who served me seemed to not speak any English at all, we communicated through gestures. I’d pat my belly to show my satisfaction with his puri. In response, he’d smile and give me a thumbs up. We did this a few times throughout the meal. When I asked, “Gangtok?” he also gestured, pointing to continue down the road I was already on.

Eventually, with the help of men like those along the way, I found the right road that would take me into the capital of Sikkim. It was a road that once again rose steeply into the mountains, with grades much the same steepness as San Francisco’s streets.

It was on that road that I realized the second error that again proved how much of an amateur I was: I had never stopped at immigration in India in order to get an entry stamp on my visa. I was now hours from Jaigon and going back would not only mean I would miss New Year’s in Gangtok, but I’d have to brave the madness of those roads again, something I couldn’t bring myself to do.

“All well,” I thought. “I’m sure it will work out somehow.”

From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Five - Thimphu to Phuentsholing

Now the beginning of the real trip. This time I’d be venturing into uncharted territory. I didn’t know these roads, and I wouldn’t know anyone along the way until Phuentsholing. I had sent all my excess possessions back to the US (souvenirs, my ghos, gifts for my family) and had all that was left for the next six months on the road.

I lashed my forty-liter backpack to Solivagant, secured my computer satchel to the side, and mounted up, ready to start the adventure. But Solivagant reminded me that it wouldn’t be that easy. I tried to start the bike, and he gave me a weak groan in return. On a prayer and a dozen attempts at a kick start, he finally grumbled to life, a curmudgeon barely willing to get moving.

The first stop was an easy decision. I needed a new battery. I found a garage and a young kid who called me Bro with every interaction swapped out the battery, oiled the chain, and sent me on my way.

“Have a good trip, Bro.”

“A’ight, homie,” I rejoined. “Keep it real.”

Though I was heading toward the Indian plains and descending the emerald mountains punctuated with wild poinsettias, I thought of what a transition it must have been for those coming here from the opposite trajectory, rising into the foothills of the Himalayas. With very few exceptions, as soon as you hit flat land, you’re in India. To rise from those plains, steeply, quickly and into the cool and unpolluted air of the temperate jungles is like coming to a different planet. Water falls vertically; you can touch the clouds; there is snow on the higher peaks.

Bhutan has changed significantly in the last century. The road is paved now – yes, this section too, paved – but not too long ago a traveler here would have to follow single-track trails through the forests, climb up relentlessly high ridgelines and stumble down dangerously steep descents in order to get into the heart of the country. It is easy to understand why Bhutan was so isolated. Who would endeavor such pains in order to find the tiny villages and occasional fiefdoms hidden among the hundreds of peaks? Part of me wished that I could have visited Bhutan when it was still so shrouded in mystery, before electricity, television, and internet came. But I was also satisfied with my little adventure, and I knew that for me, heading toward India and out of Bhutan was the right direction, though the pain of leaving such a place was beginning to take hold.

I arrived to Phuentsholing by early afternoon. It was much hotter, the altitude lower than I had been all year. The long underwear and extra layers I had worn to protect me from the alpine breezes became clammy and oppressive.

I had skipped lunch and was in a desperate search for food. I found some women who were selling puri and momos sitting at a large prayer wheel. I ordered two plates of each and they invited me to sit with them and their rambunctious children, who all watched me, fascinated by the foreigner in winter clothes who was wolfing down a meal that could have satisfied their whole family.

The food was a blessing and a curse in that it sated my appetite but also brought to the fore that reality that had started to build on the road. It was a reality that I had conveniently been able to put aside for the more pressing need to be hungry. But with basic homeostasis established, the feeling in my chest became unavoidable. It told me with cold certainty that this was it: I had less than twenty-four hours left in Bhutan.

I had said many goodbyes already. Too many. Over the course of the last month I attended separate farewell events for both my class eleven and class twelve students. Then I said goodbye to each individual class again, giving them pictures of us together. They, in return, said goodbye yet again and gave me gifts. That was just the students. The staff held a “Gents Farewell” where the male staff gathered in the school mess where the giant cook stoves heated the room. We got drunk and gave speeches and they bid me a safe journey and said their goodbyes to the other teachers leaving to teach at other schools. Finally, the whole staff gathered one more time, men and women, on another day to have an official farewell ceremony.

This approach to saying goodbye was a cultural phenomenon that I didn’t adapt well to. Despite the whole intent behind such ceremony, the overall effect lacked closure. With almost every goodbye I didn’t have to feel any finality because I knew that there were more goodbyes coming. I could say, “Goodbye … but I’ll see you next week in class.” Or, “Goodbye, but we’ll meet up again in Phuentsholing.” The goodbyes were never anything permanent.

All that was changing now. I would head into India and would not be able to return to Bhutan for the foreseeable future. The goodbyes that I would say in the next few hours were the real ones, the kind that sit with you a long time, the kind that make you feel hollow.

I met up with seven teachers from my school that night who were in Phuentsholing to correct the National Board Exam. They treated me to a final Bhutanese meal and I ordered the pork prepared the Bhutanese way: more fat than meat. I remembered when I arrived to Kanglung on Losar and first had the dish. I was appalled by how gluttonous it was and choked it down. Little did I know I would start enjoying it, craving it even, and when I had it then each piece melted when it settled on my tongue and I felt complete satisfaction.

We went to karaoke late in the night. K.D. and I sang either Billy Jean or Smooth Criminal, I can’t remember now. It was a poor performance, of that I’m sure. We stumbled home and I slept poorly, thinking of leaving Bhutan and of what the Indian roads would be like. I had glimpsed them from the border and I was terrified.

In the morning I packed up and said my final goodbye to my friends. This time, yes, final. But the men were hesitant to let me go.

“Are you sure you don’t want to just stay in Bhutan? What you are doing is very dangerous, you know. Indian roads are nothing like Bhutanese roads.”

“I’d love to stay in Bhutan. But as of tomorrow, I’ll be a tourist here. I’d need a guide and would have to pay 250 dollars a day.”

“But you can just sell your bike and take a bus or a train through India. I don’t think you understand how dangerous India is.”

“I’ve traveled through many dangerous countries. In fact, I’m from a dangerous country. It’ll be fine,” I told them.

They finally abated, not because I had convinced them, but because we all realized that leaving was inevitable.

“I’ll miss you all,” I told them. “This has been an amazing year.”

“We’ll see each other again, Josh.”

“Yeah. Within ten years.”

“You come back with a wife and a family, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll try my best.”

“And be safe.”

“Yes. I will.”

“Enjoy the adventure.”

I hugged all of them. We stood there for a moment, looking down at the gravel. What to do? We had to part ways, though I don’t think any of us felt like it should be so. This is the life I have chosen, I reminded myself. I’ve said a lot of goodbyes. That hollow feeling set in, now to stay for a long time. I’ve given up finding a remedy for it. I just move into a new future feeling like a shell and hoping that the next experiences would fill me with as much goodness as Bhutan had.

I rode away, my friends watching until I turned a corner and disappeared. Then I do not know what they did nor where they went. And I may never know.

But, perhaps with an unconscious awareness that facing the pain of this new loneliness would be too much, I set my focus on the next challenge, the biggest challenge yet: the Indian roads.