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.”