My first friend in McLeodganj moved into the Yellow Guesthouse two days after I took up residence. He rented the room directly below mine. We met while each standing on our balconies and looking out at the same vista, one floor apart. I heard him sneeze and, surprised that someone else was around, hung my head over the balcony and looked down. He was unfazed at the appearance of my face, looming from above. When he smiled it took up most of his face.
He was busy cooking something and invited me down to share his meal. John had been on the road, solo, for nearly ten months. He had just crossed Mongolia by train and on horseback. When he landed in India he bought an old motorcycle, a Royal Enfield, and was planning to explore this expanse on two wheels for as long as it held his interest. His mother was South African, his father British and he grew up on a kibbutz on the coast in Israel. He was stitched through with many different threads of geography and culture. We meshed instantly.
We ate an Israeli dish made with a combination of eggs, vegetables, spices and anything else that you might have, simmered together in a pot and sopped up with flat pieces of bread. He preferred cooking to dining in restaurants. He had gotten use to the habit of preparing his meals in Mongolia, where that was often the only option.
He traveled with a cooking stove. He also traveled with a large tripod for his camera and speakers and a small guitar that he had picked up in the market when he was shopping for vegetables and aimed to teach himself to play. When you have to carry everything on your back, it’s fascinating to see what people deem necessary.
After dinner, I went back upstairs to fetch my sleeping bag and we sat on his balcony listening to music and talking while he rolled himself cigarettes from a pouch that contained leaves of tobacco.
“So,’ he says, ‘tell me your story. What brought you up here? You running away from something or towards it?”
“Neither,’ I sighed contently, ‘just trying to be in it.” I add, “It’s a big world and I just feel that I have to see some of it before I can know it. And know my place within it. “
He nods. He explains that Israelis very often take a year off to travel after they get out of the army. “You know, you take each new generation and tell them that that they are among God’s chosen people, make it mandatory to enroll everyone in the army at eighteen, teach them to shoot, arm them mightily and then tell them how many enemies they have and that a fair percentage of the world wants them dead just because of who they are and that a smaller percentage is actually willing to kill them. Makes for some confusion. Then, after two years of service, you get out and are free to go to school or work or whatever. People usually take a year or so to travel and see things for themselves and sort things out before they figure out what they want to do.”
“Is that what you are doing?” I ask.
“I stayed in an extra year. Trained as a sniper. I moved up in rank, trained those beneath me. Just figured, I’d take some time off before the next step. Probably University. Did you go to school?”
“I did. I just went the other direction. School, work, and then walk-away-from-everything-I-know to figure out what it is I want to do. Maybe it’s actually wiser to go your route, to think things through earlier? To figure out what it is that you want out of this life.” I say.
“Ah, maybe,’ he says, ‘but I slept with a gun under my pillow every night for three years. I needed to check my perspective, to take some time to get redirected”.
“What did you do for work at home?” He asks, licking the edge of a thin rolling paper to seal it down with saliva.
I laugh and look over at him.
“Fashion,” I answer.
“How so? What kind?”
“Magazine work. The fancy kind, ball gowns the price of cars, heels the price of rent,” I explain.
He smiles at me. “I was slinging bullets; you were slinging clothes. And now we are here.”
We stare out over the valley whitewashed in the moons light.
“I’m only here a few days, but I like it so well that I might have to swing by this way again in a few weeks. What about you?” he asks.
“I’ll be here. I’m planning to stick around for a while,” I say.
“Good. Dinner tomorrow night, then?”
Sure.
“You know, he says, I have been a lot of places lately. But this view is really, truly not at all bad.” I nod in agreement.
I rise and gather up my blankets and layers and make my way upstairs to my own doorway. I look down over the railing and can see his breath a he exhales into the cold, clear night.
“Night, sharp-shooter,” I call down.
“Night, frock-slinger,” I hear back.
Postcards from the Perimeter: NOTES ON TRAVEL 