The Rocky Road to Dublin. I Mean Manali.

I'd taken the bus ride from Pushkar to Ajmer so many times now it was almost boring. As the bus wove and bounced its way up one side and down the other of the small mountain separating the towns, my knees automatically adjusted to every bump and sway of the vehicle as it turned, stopped or accelerated. I almost didn't have to hold on to the railing any more. Standing, cramped, in a mass of sweating bodies, we passed the all-too-familiar sights: the women and children balancing enormous bundles of wood on their head walking between towns; the advertisements hand-painted on the rocks for various guest houses (my favorite: Hotel Pratful Palace); the temples; tentative Indian couples nervously holding hands on the spiraling, cement overlook perched amidst the stone near the mountain's top; the barrel of black-faced monkeys grooming each other and occasionally fighting; the dogs lying blearily in the sun, and the cows, cows everywhere. The bus lurched and pulled onto an unfamiliar road. The buses from Pushkar to Ajmer and back seem to deposit their passengers almost at a whim; also, sometimes the fare is ten rupees, sometimes it's twelve, and sometimes it's fifteen. Occasionally I don't get charged at all.

Suddenly, the bus lurched into reverse and began going backwards, the wrong-way down the street. Slowly, haltingly, we reverse-avoided beeping cars and trucks, and then U-turned and began to head back the way we'd come, before jerking into a strange dirt road leading seemingly nowhere. Perplexed, I looked around. The faces on the bus were eager.

We trundled onward through the darkened narrow streets, squeezing around turns that I was sure were impossible, avoiding concrete pillars and walled courtyards by less than an inch. The ticket-taker was throwing himself on and off of the bus every few meters to guide the busdriver, screaming "Chalo chalo chalochalochalo!"

Occasionally there was a jarring screech as he misjudged, delighting the passengers, who were grinning and laughing and standing up and pressing against the windows to watch the seemingly-impossible task handled. The left rear tire went off the road and the bus lurched precariously, finally righting itself, to much general applause. I tapped the shoulder of the gentleman next to me.

"Uh, excuse me," I asked. "Where are we?"

He grinned and pointed out the window. "Old town."

"But, erm, we are going back to the main street, right?" He waggled his head and turned back to enjoying the ride. I considered getting off the bus and hailing a rickshaw, but at that point we'd left any other traffic far behind us and taken so many turns I didn't know where the hell I was. To my relief, we eventually turned back onto the main street and continued the journey. No one had entered or exited the bus the whole time. I guess everyone on the bus had simultaneously decided we were going on a little tour of Old Town for fun, or something? Maybe we'd been ahead of schedule and had time to kill. I don't know. We finally got to the main bus stand (after another two or three likewise detours).

I pulled myself out of the window to avoid the line to the door and hopped into the street. A rickshaw skeeted around me, horn buzzing like a cacophonous swarm of mechanical bees. I looked around and quickly found my bearings - woefully amazed that I could, having been here so many times - and set off in the direction of Mangilal tailors. I hoped the damn coat would fit, was fit, and rocked. I hopped the ramshackle remains of a demolished building, littered with piles of garbage waist-high, and clambered over them. Mangilal's was a strange sight; a giant glass building plastered with images of models in stylish attire, a mere glance at the place suggesting imposing wealth and power, yet the quickest way to get there was to climb over this ruined building and trash piles. India all over.

I hopped the second wall, slipped a bit on a cow patty, collected myself, and entered. Without even acknowledging the men in suits standing around to help customers - I knew the drill by now - I walked straight to the Employees Only section, pulled open the door, and skipped up the stairs. The polite old gentleman in charge of the place stood and warily shook my hand.

"I was expecting you on Saturday," he said, a slight tinge of scolding disappointment in his voice. I shrugged.

"Yeah, sorry, I got caught up writing my blog and I even caught the bus all the way here to Ajmer, but then I realized it was nearly 8 o'clock already so I had to just catch the bus right back." That had sucked.

"But I was expecting you Saturday," he continued, as if he hadn't heard me, his eyes filled with shame, as if I were a wayward son of his who'd disgraced the family name, "and we are open until 9:30. And you did not come also on yesterday." He said this pointedly, as if I'd been a bad, bad, boy, and motioned for his assistant to collect my coat.

"Sorry. Someone told me the bus quits running at 8 and I did not want to pay for a rickshaw back. And the general consensus in Pushkar was that you'd be closed on Sunday." I flashed him an apologetic smile, which went unreturned. The assistant produced my coat with a flourish and helped me put it on.

Sweet. Very nice. I looked pimp. We'd argued for days about the width of sleeves on my coat, and he'd finally acquiesced to an extra inch of wrist room, but unfortunately and unrequested, had made them longer as well. They stretched almost to my fingertips and just looked as if I was hiding something in them already. Oh well. I'd get some other, cheaper tailor elsewhere in India to shorten 'em.

"Perfect," I said. "Absolutely perfect. Thank you. How much do I owe ya?" I was sure that they'd upped the price a bit for all of my tweaking. The assistant scrambled off for the bill, but it was surprisingly two thousand rupees cheaper than they'd originally said. A mistake? I tried to hide my shocked smile of enthusiasm as I opened my wallet and peeled some five-hundred rupee bills off the sizeable wad of cash within and handed them over.

"You come over the wall?" The elderly man asked.

"Aw, yeah, you were watching me, huh?" I grinned and nodded proudly.

"You should not do that. It is dangerous."

"Nah, it's not dangerous. It's way more fun than walking all the way around," I said.

"Someone could follow you, rob you. It is dangerous. Go around," he said with a glare. I frowned dubiously at him. It took less than 20 seconds to walk across the open lot of the destroyed building, and I was in full light and full view of everyone on the street the whole time. Not exactly a mugger's ideal zone.

"Uh, ok," I said. We shook hands, both pleased that our business together was finished. He invited me to come back any time I needed a tailor, quite unconvincingly I might add, and I responded "Of course," with the same inward 'yeah-right'. I left the store, quite happy that I had my coat and could now leave Pushkar, and climbed over the wall and the piles of trash, ignoring the elderly tailor's parting advice.

"Hey," said a voice. I turned to see a couple scrawny adolescents walking slowly toward me, holding a knife. They threatened me with it and slashed at my cheek, leaving a bloody gash, and, crying, I opened my wallet and with a grimace took out my debit card and cash- 

Oh, wait. That didn't happen. I hopped the wall and joined the chorus in the street, thrilled to have a magician's coat, wonderfully happy I was at last continuing my journey.

The train to Delhi was relaxing and peaceful. I had a lovely sleeper bunk without the hellishly-cold AC, and the eight-hour journey would take place as I slept. Then, wake up in Delhi catch a five-hour bus to Chandigarh, which I knew next to nothing about except that it was in Punjab. It sounded pretty dull from the travel guide, but I figured I could bum around the city for half a day, eat some tasty Punjabi food, and then catch the ten-hour evening bus to Manali from there so I arrived nice and fresh in the morning. A sound plan, I thought, and drifted off to sleep. It went smoothly. I arrived in Delhi at five AM, caught an almost immediate bus to Chandigarh, and arrived at ten-thirty, ready for breakfast.

Chandigarh freaked me out. It was so.... clean. It didn't feel like India at all. Where are the cows? I thought to myself as I watched the passing streamlined, tree-lined avenues through the smeared dirty bus window. Where are all the people? There were little bits of trash here and there, and a few piles gathered together, but it looked like someone was actually going to do something about them. Weird. The buildings were spaced far apart from each other, as opposed to being built on top of each other, and surrounded by high, tasteful walls. It seemed vaguely imposing and bereft of welcome. Or life, for that matter. I shook my head. At least there were liquor stores around, so there would be no necessary twenty-minute ride to Ajmer for reasonably-priced intoxication; and oh yeah! I could eat meat outside of Pushkar! Dead things! Awesome.

I caught a rickshaw to the most interesting-looking attraction in the city: Nek Chand's Rock Garden. Apparently this dude Nek Chand had a bit of time on his hands, and began to collect discarded bottles, tiles, rocks, glass, concrete, sinks, electrical waste, etc, from abandoned half-demolished building sites around the city. Like a true gangsta, he recycled all this stuff into 'his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani' in hidden spot in the city's surrounding forest, despite the fact that the site had been designated as a land conservancy and his work would, therefore, be illegal. It didn't faze him. He spent eighteen years fashioning these items into a twelve-acre complex of linked courtyards, filled with statues and sculptures. His life's work was discovered by the government in 1975 and set to be demolished, but public outcry in favor of the rock garden eventually overturned that decision and it became an established attraction.

Entering the garden, at first I was disappointed. The walls were kind of cool, made up of thousands of tiny little rocks all stuck together, and it must've taken ages. Occasional stone bumps rose from the walls and floors at regular intervals, catching your eye in various guises. You'd swear you saw a humanoid shape glaring at you, and then it would turn out to just be a strategically placed rock. It was aight. But ultimately it was just walls with protruding shapes.

As I kept going through the labyrinth of stone passageways, however, it got cooler and cooler. You could see Nek had improved his technique over the years. Now there were figures, looming, staring, grinning with joyous expressions. Some had two heads, some more, some less. Patchwork tiles covered everything, and I eventually found enormous, man-made waterfalls, splashing out of the rockwork and dripping enchantingly around twisting ropes of stone that resembled tree trunks or vines. It was like something from Carrol's Wonderland, and just got more and more spectacular as I kept moving. Bridges, columns, towers, little houses, waterfalls, figures, sculptures, faces, animals... they all seemed woven into some kind of wonderful dance that had been frozen at its most epic moment, the mirrors and shards of glass glinting at me as if inviting me to join in. I was impressed. Good going, Nek.

After a couple hours of wandering the Wonderland, I stepped outside and decided to walk back to the bus terminal. It was still early. I had plenty of time. The sparseness of the buildings and the vast spaces between them had made the town look huge as I first rolled in, and forgetting to check the overall size on the map in my travel guide, I'd hired a rickshaw unnecessarily. Oh well. Walking would be nice. I passed a liquor store and bought a quarter-pint of rum, which I sipped as I strolled back through the enormous, beautifully maintained rose-garden, which boasted over 1,500 varieties. Marijuana plants grew like the weeds they were alongside the little stream running through the garden. I threw on some headphones and rapped along with Biggie as I meandered through the garden, finishing off my rum and hesitating about what to do with the bottle. Anywhere else in India, I'd just throw it, but Chandigarh was so clean... But amazingly, I found an actual trash can some paces later.

It was nearly time to board the bus as I returned to the terminal. Pleasantly tipsy, but far from drunk, I bought another quart of whiskey this time, as well as a sandwich from a little corner store. I got on the bus and began to read "Senor Nice", Howard Mark's sequel to his smash-hit autobiography "Mr. Nice", which I'd picked up in Varanasi. Marks was a dope-smuggler from Wales who'd got busted in the late eighties for bringing in thirty-tons of hashish. He'd worked for MI6 and the Mexican secret service while selling hash to the IRA. The tagline from his first book went: "He was Britain's most wanted man, He has just spent seven years in America's toughest penitentiary... You'll like him." And I did. I'd also read his second book, "Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories," which was a collection of his favorite drug writings from everyone from Hunter S. Thompson to Aleister Crowley.

When I'd bought "Senor Nice" from a bookstall in Pushkar, the guy working there had gotten very excited. "Howard Marks! I know Howard Marks!" he'd exclaimed.

"Yeah, he's awesome. I think a movie just came out about him," I had said, half-listening. The man hadn't let go of my hand.

"He has come to Pushkar. He likes Pushkar. Howard Marks, great man. I am good friends with Howard Marks!"

"Uh huh, sure, dude," I'd said. Everyone claims top have met the rich and famous in India. I'd shaken his hand off and reached for my change.

"No, sir, believe me! Howard Marks! He was here! Look!" He'd spun me around and forced me over to the wall, where there was one solitary picture: sure enough, Howard Marks, grinning, wrinkled, Rolling-Stone face, joint in hand, with his arm nonchalantly around the shoulders of the bookseller, had been standing in this very spot.

"Holy shit, dude, you do know Howard Marks!" I'd exclaimed, astounded and a little jealous. The bookseller had swelled with pride and pointed to the floor behind us.

"He smoke with me, right there. Great man."

All these stories about dope made me wish I hadn't left my last spliff as a present for the little dude at my last guest house, who'd obviously been crushing on me. Oh well. I stretched out as much as I could in my bus seat, opened the window, and let the kilometers roll by. Soon I would be in Manali, amidst some of the best hash in the world.

The luggage rack on the interior of the bus ended just above me, while the exterior rack hung on the bus’ roof less than a meter over that. The window was big enough, and I was getting bored. I’d been getting on buses way too early since arriving in India, which meant either grabbing myself an actual seat or standing in the aisles. The most fun way to do it is to wait until the whole bus if full, so you have to swarm with the rest of the mob up and onto the roof. I hadn’t ridden on a roof since arriving in India, and it was getting to me. I swung myself out the window, to the shock of the person sitting next to me, and clambered onto the roof, where I basked in the wind and sense of freedom. Being the only one up there, I got the immediate impression that this wasn’t a roof I was supposed to be on. Yet it was cozy, and built with being up there on whoever’s mind. 

I realized that if this was my chance, I should film it. I scooted over the side of the roof and back through the window into my seat, unzipped my backpack, pulled out my video camera, and climbed back up before anyone could say otherwise. I filmed myself happily spouting off joyous and extremely witty tidings which were unfortunately rendered incomprehensible over the sound of the wind. After a few hundred meters, the bus slowed down and stopped. Okay, time to go back in then, I suppose. I swung for the fourth time through the window to be greeted by a sea of grins, all turned my way. Even the ticket-taker was smiling as he slowly pushed his way toward me.

“OK, I won’t go back up there again. I promise,” I said. He shook his finger at me in a mock-scolding. I bowed. He chuckled, and we resumed the journey. I settled back into Howard Marks’ post-dealing days and his search for the Welch connection to South America.

I looked up from my book at some point, startled out o my engagement by the sudden loss of electricity in the bus as it hit a particularly nasty swerve. Outside, it had grown dark. With a start, I realized that the slow increase in side-to-side, up-and-down motion of the bus over the past few hours had been due to us entering the crazy, legendary road up the beginnings of the Himalayas towards Manali. I remembered as a child the insanity of the bus to Laksman Jhula, and I used the vivid imagery of that memory often in attempting to describe India to people:

“So, you’re on this kind of junkyardy bus, right, with people literally everywhere, crammed in like sardines, and also sitting on the roof and hanging off the sides, going up this crazy, windy mountain road covered in potholes and rocks and all kinds of shit, and it’s just nuts. The road doesn’t even seem like it’s big enough to even fit the bus, right, but this is a fuckin’ a two-way street. And you like look up and see another bus or like a semi-truck even heading right at you, and you’re like, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, and your bus kind of inches over to the left, right on over to the edge of just a sheer cliff dropping down hundreds of feet. And you’re just like, oh my god, I’m gonna die, but all the Indians aren’t even phased, of course, and the bus drivers just wave at each other and tootle on the horn (actually, ‘tootle’ is the perfect word for these horns, cause they don’t just go ‘honk’ like American horns but they go like TEEdleDEEdleDEEdle and all kinds of other ones) and then they fuckin’ go past one another and one of your bus’s wheels literally goes over the edge of the cliff and I swear, you can look down sometimes and see these fucked-up remains of other crashed buses down there, and you really think you’re gonna die, but you just gotta trust that you’re gonna make it, and of course you do, and when the bus stops the driver pops the hood and the whole engine is held together with rubber-bands and duct-tape. True story. Fuckin’ India, man.”

That description was based on hazy childhood memories of busing up the mountain - and like all good stories contains a degree of hyperbole - yet I was surprised to grok that the description was ultimately accurate, with one crucial added factor I’d somehow forgotten about: the bus drivers all think they’re Dean Moriarity. They bomb up and down those mountains at speed, almost like they’re on speed, careening around the sharp turns like they’re playing Mario Kart. I put my book away. I didn’t need any other entertainment.

I was a little miffed at myself for taking the night bus, now. I kind of wished I could see the great big drop and the growing mountains. But even under the darkened sky, you could see it was there. Little twinkling lights like grounded stars shone from the peak across from us, and they went down, down, down. The edge of the road was also visible bounding away right beside the rear tire, and even shrouded in darkness it was very apparent how steep and long that fall was.

As we ascended the mountains, more and more people got off at villages along the way, and people began to move about the cabin and stretch themselves out on the seats, shutting their eyes and trying to ignore the impossibility of sleep on a ride such as this.

I did the opposite. I stood in the aisle and grabbed onto the luggage racks on either side, then swing upside down and stayed that way for a good long time, grinning ear to ear and madly jerking this way and that like a bat on a roller-coaster. The ticket-taker grinned at me and waggled his head. Two guys sitting near me laughed and thumped my back when I re-righted myself.

When we stopped for chai around two in the morning, they shared a biri packed with hash with me. It was much stronger than the stuff in Pushkar or Banares. In return I offered them a swig of whiskey, which one accepted and one declined. We conversed as much as possible in pidgin English, then rejoined the little group standing around a small fire, adding cardboard. A little Tibetan girl who's face was swollen from some kind of burn on her left cheek grinned at me and we played peek-a-boo and run-away-from-the-monster for about half an hour. The ticket-taker offered a swig from his whiskey bottle. The sky began to lighten slightly. We reboarded a different bus, a little more crowded, for the last leg of the journey.

When we arrived, two British guys who'd been on the second bus seemed to know where they were going as they were immediately approached by a rickshaw driver and gave him an address. I sidled up to them.

"Hey, mind if I share a rickshaw? My name's Hoku. Where you going?" I asked. They told me. "Is it cheap?"

"Oh, yeah, fantastic price." I shouldered my bag. Another rickshaw driver grabbed my arm. "Please, sir, just around corner, very cheap! Three hundred rupees!"

A mocking laugh burst out of me. "Three hundred! Dude, I haven't paid more than two hundred rupees a night, like, anywhere."

"Ours is three hundred," said one of the British guys. A moment of silence.

"Two hundred OK, please sir!" I waggled my head and followed the rickshaw guy, who as it turns out wasn't a rickshaw guy. The place really was right around the corner. A light drizzle was misting my face, clouds drifted gently in front of the shadow of the mountain. It was nice. I checked in, downed the last sip of my whiskey, and went to sleep.