Last hours in Delhi before attempting to get a bus to Kasol. Navin has important meetings so it’s no longer a joint venture. I’m at a third air bnb; the second was abandoned after one night due to a) there being a grille-window in the wall, and so all noises from my Swiss neighbour (chatting excitedly on Skype) floated through to my side, b) an open window above my door to the landing, itself open to the street, allowing a flow of dog-barking and mosquitos to fill the room through the night, and c) a bed that seemed more like a table top thinly stuffed with straw. The lunch and dinner and breakfast I managed to consume in this brief time were, however, excellent. If my back hadn’t been totally ruined by table-sleep I may have been persuaded by paratha to stay longer. I did have one walk in the area, which was in fact the sock district. My first sights on the street were sock merchants, shops filled to the brim with socks, delivery men weaving the narrow streets, scooters piled high with bundles of… socks. This was lucky, as I did actually need socks- one of the few things I had on my ‘to buy’ list after seeing the tan lines solidifying half way up the calves. It was a little tricky buying just a few pairs from wholesale merchants (rather like the nut-man in the market who wouldn’t trade below 4kg), but I got a few sporty low-cut numbers in the end.

This latest air bnb is probably the one I should’ve gone for in the first place. A roomy flat, sharing with a swarthy musician who’s soon to appear in a Bollywood movie, in a lively area (Karol Bagh) that felt like a district I wanted to hang around in. Calm streets in a grid, but with a couple of little  parks, street eats, tea-stalls, cafes etc. Only one big road to be dealt with to the east, once crossed leading into a whole huge area to be explored east to Connaught Place. So over the past few days I have been enjoying the home atmosphere, boiling up water in a sauce pan for my Assam teabags, enjoying the atonal honks and woofs from the street, padding around my little neighbourhood, venturing further out for a some photo-walks. I managed to drop my camera, flinging it out of my unzipped bag onto the floor as I fled the sock district. Luckily there a was a Nikon centre close by: reassuring zones of camera rehab and orderliness the world over. Camera (itself unharmed) was cleansed of street-dust, focus realigned (it was out, apparently, which serves as a good excuse for all those shoddy shots) and lens taken into the operating theatre, to be collected upon my return to Delhi. So I am zoomless for the time being.

I decided to down-size, so I bought a rucksack (‘North Face’) at the market, and left my suitcase and extraneous belongings at Kabir’s. Am starting to lose track of the cities in which my belongings are deposited. Thought it wouldn’t do turning up at Backpacker’s Nest with my suitcase. At least now I am actually Backpacking, although two of the zips have already broken- if another one goes I’ll be plastic-bagging my way to the north. Also, my phone isn’t working (credit?), and I don’t know precisely where the bus leaves from, so a successful trip isn’t yet assured. I think I found the backpacker street yesterday. I saw foreigners. Including a dreadlocked couple. I wondered if they were both dreadlocked when they met, and thus bonded. Or perhaps bonded by both becoming dreadlocked. And if one followed the other, which one, and how that affected the balance of the relationship. It didn’t take many turns to be away from the Russian and Hebrew menus and lost in a warren of chaotic little streets. A few people told me to watch my camera- that lump of heavy metal- but I didn’t feel threatened, just stared at. I ploughed on, left and right, trying to feel the atmosphere through the haze. People called out, asked me to take photos of them, stared, smiled. One man gave me an Oreo. A few confident kids asked me some questions: ‘You are from which country?’ I saw a man, the keeper of a dark shop of very-vintage arcade machines, stroking a cow while feeding it bananas. I squeezed between two pairs of large white bulls. I passed through a crumbly, very old-looking arch and ended up at a mosque, outside of which a couple of boys stood on the steps arranged tableau with a group of haughty goats. Zoom lens would’ve been appreciated for that one. A couple of guys stopped me to say hello and see where I might be heading, what I was doing. Amicable, forthright, quizzical. I noticed one young lad hanging around me, he was shy and smiley and I said hello. Wherever I was walking, he was lingering behind, or up ahead, or perched on a motorbike nearby. I guess he was curious, and with nothing to better to do than meander around for a while. I felt that he was watching over me in some way. I emerged from the intense, smaller streets to a main road. I wanted to buy the kid some sweets, as a thank you for his unwitting guardianship. I didn’t know how to go about it, but in the end I bought a street-cucumber (fresh!) and gave him the change- he accepted with a gracious nod and a little smile and I hope that he got himself a treat, little lad alone in his streets. 

Continued from Kasol…

Went to the bus pick-up point at the side of a motorway and found the bus company office nearby. The little office was loud with shout-speak. Outside, the road thundered by. Pravin came to meet me- I think he wanted to show me a buddhist area nearby, but it took him ages to find the office (quite pleased that I managed it so simply), so we just went into the little streets by the road and had a tea. I was feeling, despite the noise and chaos, quite keen to stay in Delhi a while longer and explore a bit more. There was another foreigner waiting for the bus, although at first I thought she might be a hippyish Indian. She had a nose piercing, a single dread and was smoking bidis. She was Greek but lived in Belgium, presumably for a long time, based on her accent. She’d been at the beaches, so was deeply tanned. She has a tranquil, dreamy manner. We had been assigned seats together, so we had chance to talk although we mostly tried to sleep. This was difficult due to a large group of 18 yr olds (off to Kasol to find a secret rave) talking and laughing, one of whom possessing such a piercing hoot that he sounded like a demented grandma on acid (looking for a rave). Luckily I had my earphones (for the duration of their battery life) and ear-plugs. Everyone else seemed very pleasant- all young people off to Kasol for a holiday I suppose. One guy with a cool hairstyle beckoned me over at the dinner-stop to eat with him and his friend. He was swigging a beer and told me he’d finished studying and was enjoying life, off to Kasol to smoke weed for the first time. Kasol is known as Little Amsterdam/Israel, for obvious reasons- this is probably why Navin wanted to come here. The suspension of the bus was soft and squishy and the roads, after a while, began to wind and hair-pin, swaying us one way, then the other. This continued through the night, through dawn (dark trees, misty river down in the valley) and through the morning- about 14 hrs in total. Maria was struggling for the last couple of hours- will Kasol ever appear? I gave her a plastic bag, and she made a commendable job of not requiring it. She was off the bus pretty sharpish once we arrived.

We reconvened in a little cafe where her friends were gathered, one of them, a teddy-bearish Indian, had a huge swaying dread-ball in his beard. I had a tasty coffee (4 kinds were on offer: Indian, Italian, Ethiopian, Colombian) and then went off to find my hostel, leaving them pondering where best to scour the mountains for magic mushrooms. It was a fair trek in the midday sun, but the area was beautiful: steep hillsides, snowy peaks seemingly not far off, a roaring river down below. I crossed a bouncy little bridge across the river, made way on the path for a flock of sheep, a large, wary goat bringing up the rear (we stared at each for a while before it skitted past at speed) and carried on through the village, up the steps to the Nest, perched garish-green on the hillside. Mostly since arriving I’ve been drinking tea, sleeping and reading. I met some of my nestmates yesterday: a geeky-looking Iranian in specs with wild hair and hiking boots who likes Berkeley, Hume and Russian Literature and a trio who’d been out tripping in the mountains and returned still finding existence pretty amusing.