I Want Stinky Feet

My feet are clean and it freaks me out.

Let me rephrase: it’s been 48 hours since I’ve tied on my stinky boots at dawn alongside my crew members and marched myself up the side of a mountain, and I’m feeling withdrawals.

I miss the pine smell, I miss drinking the untouched glacier water, I miss my new friends from the trek- but honestly, they feel more like family. There’s something about you all collectively deciding to go to the bathroom in a dirt hole for a week and get bruises on your hips from your 15 kg backpack that makes the 7 days you’ve known them feel like a lifetime.

Recently, it feels like there has been someone or something coming along every day that opens up my heart just a little bit more. Like a surgery that tucks a little extra love in there, just because.

My most recent operation goes by the name of Rupin Pass, a 54 kilometer trek to a max altitude of 4,650 meters (15,250 ft) and begins on my overnight train from New Delhi up to Dehradun, in Uttarakhand, India. This is my first trek I’ve been assigned to cover as the new Content Writer Intern for Bikat Adventures, a Delhi-based trekking company, and I’m pumped.

“Meet Jeelani at the McDonalds in the Kashmiri Gate metro station at 9:15pm,” says the text.

Okay. I’m an intelligent adult human… I can do that.

So here I am standing at the Kashmiri Gate McDonalds at 9:30, sans Jeelani.

“Running late, meet you on bus,” says the text.

Okay. I’m an intelligent adult human… I can do that.

Jeelani, by the way, is the trekking guide for another expedition about to head out at the same time as mine, so our tickets up to the starting point were booked together.

The nocturnal bus station is a vortex of sensory input. Neon signs flash bus arrival times in Devanagari that I can decipher about 56% of, shoeless salesmen holding 40 books stacked in their arms make their pitches in the seating area, vendors call out to you the items they have for sale.

“Pani, tundi pani, pani!” (Water, cold water, water!)

“किताबें!” (books!)

It’s a little hectic, but all I have to do is find the bus that goes to Dehradun- not too bad.
“Dehradun! Dehradun!” I hear it called out like a life raft and head toward that bus.

“Dehradun! Dehradun!” Calls the conductor of the bus next to the one I have gleefully hoisted myself halfway into.

Three of the buses on the other side of me have signs in the window reading “देहरादून”- aka Dehradun.

Well this is fun.

Side note: whenever I am intently staring at something written in Devanagari intently trying to sound it out, I always notice a peculiar look I get from a lot of people. Something kinda like, “there’s no way this chick actually has any clue what she’s reading,” at which point I will amusedly sound something out loud enough for them to hear me from the thing I am reading. The raised eyebrows I receive in my peripherals always make me giggle.

Although public transport in India is every bit the same chaotic beehive it was three months ago when I first entered this country, I feel a kind of confidence and peace while maneuvering it that I did not have before.

After showing each of the bus drivers my ticket, one finally claims me as their passenger and up I climb.

A man comes dashing up, “Hello! You’re Cambria, right? I am very late! Here take this patisse- eat it while it’s warm and put ketchup on it!”

I have found the elusive Jeelani.

His is ever-constantly wide-eyed as if he always has something very important and exciting to tell me, it makes me smile. We settle into our seats, and I begin the next 9 hours of sleepless gazing out the window that I always experience on these night buses- just me and my iPod.
At 5:00 dawn, we pull into the station and Jeelani, who still looks like he’s dying to tell me the biggest secret in the world, bolts across the auto rickshaw-choked road and beckons me to follow.

This guy literally looks so pumped which, I gotta say, I can’t blame him- he’s kinda got the best job in the world.

Under a sign, he, with eyes wide as ever, tells me he is leaving now, and for me to find breakfast and be back under that sign in 90 minutes to meet my crew and transport jeep.

Okay. I’m an intelligent adult human… I can do that.

One stuffed पराठा for breakfast later (and accompanying stares wondering if I can actually read the menu board I’m staring at), and I’m dutifully back under the sign.

Alone.

Okay, well not alone because that doesn’t really happen here- there’s a lot of humans- BUT my crew and jeep are nowhere to be found.

Goooooooood.

“Ma’am! Taxi??!”

“Shimla!”

“Mussoorie! Hello, miss?”

A throng of eager taxi drivers excitedly call out to me all of the marvelous destinations they are ready to whisk me away to.

It’s too early for this.

Eyes scanning, I see another man approaching me wearing a large trekking backpack- I feel a pang of hope.

“You coming to Rupin Pass?” he asks.

YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY- I think to myself.

“Yes!” I say out loud, better not freak out the new guy yet with my 2-year-old-on-Christmas-morning levels of enthusiasm…

Later on the trek as I got to know Tarun, he admitted that he had second-guessed whether to approach me about 6 times because he didn’t want to make me feel uncomfortable being approached by a strange man asking me to get in a car with him. He said he was surprised when I unquestioningly followed him into said car, smiling, without thinking twice.

“You’re gonna get yourself kidnapped,” he tells me towards the end of our trek in reference to our first meeting.

In my defense, who seriously would’ve been wearing a hiking backpack AND just happened to know EXACTLY which of the hundreds of treks the Himalayas offer that I have been assigned to?! Also, obviously if the rest of the crew who was obviously awesome had not shown up to the jeep with their backpacks obviously intended for hiking, I would also not have gotten in the jeep.
Obviously.

See, I’m not totally dumb.

So Tarun, Shwetadri, Sourav, Alok, Vin and I all pile in, pack strapped to the roof, and begin our 10-hour ascent into the Himalayas. It’s been 5 days since I left the school I was volunteering at up in these Uttarakhand foothills, and it feels nostalgic and good to drive right through my home again.

Normally I act like a golden retriever with my head poking out the car window and hands bracing against the open frame so I don’t smack my temple around every one of these thousand hair-pin turns, but the sleep deprivation is getting to me.

My exhausted head (there is no headrest behind me) falls partially asleep, begins to plummet toward my chest, and then snaps back up again as I regain semi-consciousness.

Tarun watches this nonsense for about 14 minutes, then decides he’s just going to physically hold my head up for me with his own hands.

That’s what a crew is, by the way, you hold each other up.

Realizing that it looks a lot like he’s trying to pull off some fortune teller voodoo shit, he switches his method to holding a pillow up for me to lay on. I half-consciously say thank you and snuggle in.

Our other crew members in the car begin to reveal pieces of themselves, as does happen when you realize the carful of strangers you’re in are about to smell your nasty-ass feet for the next 7 days (and steal your water bottle- you know who you are).

Shwetadri and Sourav have been best friends for years- they are Bengali but live in Delhi right now. Their shared interests include tigers, which they are somehow able to have a conversation about for 2 hours straight.

It’s awesome. I know a lot about tigers now.

Sourav is the coolest nerd of all-time. He has read all the books on the Earth and can speak the elf language from Lord of the Rings, which he is mad at me for never having seen.

I tell him to watch Harry Potter. We agree to disagree.

Alok is off on his last post-graduation holiday before he begins his new life in the corporate world.

Vin is quiet and I can tell he really values moments of introspection, which normally would be perfect for his current serene mountain destination, except for the fact that I’m coming too. And I don’t shut up- which Tarun has laughingly mentioned to me about 7 times already.

“You like to talk to people, don’t you?”

Obviously.

We reach the sleepy village of Dhaula, 1,555 meters high into the Himalayas of Uttarakhand.

There we meet Sushant and Rukmini, the last of our crew who had just arrived from Mumbai. Sushant will tell you like it is, even if you don’t want to hear it, but he’ll have your back if you need it, no matter what. Rukmini is a lawyer/aspiring journalist, the only other girl on the trek, my confidant and one hell of a tent mate. You don’t sleep that close to someone for that many nights and not swap a few secrets.

Manjeet, our trek leader with an enthusiasm for nature and laugh that’ll make your heart smile, greets us all.

After sharing a delicious dinner of aloo mutter (potato and pea vegetable dish), daal (stewed lentils), rice, and chapati (the Indian tortilla), we all retire to our temporary cabin home to prepare for the early morning.

Finally, sleep.

“Chai, chai, chai!”

I recognize the wake up call well from my first trek to Har-Ki-Dun a few weeks back.

Well, nothing lasts forever.

I pull myself out of my warm cocoon and join my crew on the balcony, dunking biscuits into early-morning chai that gives you life.

It reminds me of my previous trek, except now I have this new camera in my hands, a tripod and interview equipment in my bag and a job to do. And I want to do it well. I play around with the camera all morning, trying to get the settings where I need them.

And so it begins.

The sun is still rising from the pines that surround us. Boots tied, packs adjusted and strapped tightly to our tummies that will be a little smaller a week from now, we head off through a heard of goats toward our first-night’s camp.

The hike today is 8 kilometers of freshness- I welcome the smell of rushing water and breathing trees back into my lungs for the first time since I left Delhi.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a certain charm about inhaling airborne industrial waste and shoving your body onto the metro with 2,000 other people, but a week of clean peace away from the bustling streets of Delhi is a welcome hiatus.

The weight of my backpack feels good on my shoulders.

Amidst apple orchards we find our first camp- a homestay cabin in the village of Sewa, which is situated approximately 50 feet away from and ancient Shiv temple. The story goes that the local God of Mahasu visits one of twelve neighboring villages every year, and so the Sewa temple opens once every 12 years to welcome the returning god with a mela (a fair of sorts).

Eh. That’s cool. I guess.

That night erupted into what will be forever known as the first of the “great debates.” Rukmini may have been the lawyer amongst us, but hell, we all liked a good argument.

The topic exploded into a friendly but heated discussion on feminism and arranged marriage and the existence of a patriarchal society.

Rukmini and I had each other’s back defending the girls’ point of view, reminding the boys that “feminism” should be called “humanism,” because it’s all about equality of the sexes, not one rising above the other.

The boys, in turn defend their stance that feminism is no longer necessary because they now find it harder to get hired as a result of gender quotas imposed by the government to get more women into the working world.

The exchange of opinions and ideas about important topics like this needs to happen more often. If we understood the other side of the debate, we’d get a lot more done.

It goes on and on, and it’s awesome.

We eat our dinner by candlelight, with a new local vegetable to try- the Fiddlehead Fern (apparently you can eat ferns!) and fall soundly asleep.

The rising sun brings with it the smell of paranthas wafting up from where the cooks are making our breakfast.

Wait. PARANTHAS.

I fling myself out of bed. Y’all, I have a #ParanthaProblem. I’m obsessed with them. Like, I become Gollum from Lord of the Rings and if you try to take my paranthas, I will bite you.

Anyways, I’ve desperately been wanting to learn how to make them, and I waltz into the smoky kitchen and ask for a lesson. The cooks all crack a grin, but willing accept me as their apprentice chef.

“Yeh mai kya hai?” I ask (what is in this?)

The grins grow wider, and I’m unsure if it’s in appreciation for my attempts to learn Hindi or amusement because my accent is crap. Doesn’t matter, I’ve got warm parantha dough under my fingernails and I’m happy as a clam.

That’s another check on my Indian bucket list!

We head out , covering 11 kilometers today to our next night’s location of Jhaka, aka the hanging village for the way it vertically climbs itself up the mountainside. Deepak, our dutiful local guide is excited to show us where he grew up.

After a particularly vertical section, we stop by a tea shop for Maggi (the Indian Ramen) and our packed lunches. The paranthas were extra delicious- the chefs must have done an extra excellent job that morning…

Sourav and Manjeet spend about 35 minutes watching a woodpecker peck wood- and I find myself feeling very happy to be around the kind of people that will spend their lunch break fan-girling over a bird. These* are the kinds of people you want give your time to.

*not to be confused with people who think they ARE birds. #StrangerDanger

Ascending up into Jhaka, barely escaping the afternoon rainstorm rolling in, we pass a group of women gathered around a water spigot washing their clothes. A little girl spots me and, terrified, runs behind her mother.

Now I know it’s been a few days since I showered and all, but I’m not THAT bad.

“Mai aapka dost hu,” I tell her (I am your friend), hoping to earn her trust. Her cautious face breaks into a soft smile and she leaves the safety of her mother’s skirt. Success!

Circled around dinner that night, the Great Debate continues. In the heat of a discussion, all English would vanish and rapid-fire Hindi became the medium of every argument.

I don’t know what they were talking about, but some of the word combinations I could understand were pretty freaking weird.

“…pedophile”

“…torture…”

“Trump!”

Maybe it’s a good thing I can’t understand…

Someone would eventually notice that I had zoned out and was staring at the freckles on my arm and would remind everyone, “English, English, English!”

The next morning over freshly-collected honey and pancakes homemade from a local crop, I make yet another discovery; no one on the trek has ever seen their parents kiss (besides me).

What.

My parents would smooch extra obnoxiously in front of me just because they knew it freaked me out (thanks mom and dad, love you too). This is equally unbelievable to them.
Heading off toward our third camp, I begin singing “I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys (naturally) and Manjeet busts in, enthusiastically belting out the chorus- it makes my day.
Our campsite that evening is nestled in a valley full of purple rhododendrons. The running joke, since we always seemed to be hungry, was to yell “#LunchKahaHai?!” (where is lunch)

Manjeet pulls a game from his never-ending supply and we gather round to play “Big Fish, Small Fish.”

Then we move on to “Zip-Zap” which mainly relies on quick reaction times for people to whirl around and shoot each other when the hear the word “zip.”

I of course, with my Texas gunslinger heritage, blow the smoke off of my non-existent revolver in victory (mwahaha).

We huddle up in the tent, as we have every night, and amidst snaking on pakoras dipped in ketchup and sipping on hot chai, we share our favorite card games with each other. War, ERS (that one got a little out of hand. Okay sorry, if you know this game, you realize that I just made an impressively jaw-clenching pun), Crazy 8’s, Jabbu…

Quick note on Jabbu, if you are not Indian, you will not be able to pronounce it correctly. Believe me, I’ve tried. Every time I think I’ve finally nailed it, some always says, “no, it’s Jab-bu!”

Which sounds (to me at least) exactly the same as what I had just said. I’m starting to form conspiracy theories in my head about these people- they’re all just pretending I’m wrong to drive me nuts…

Also this game makes literally no sense. It just looks like everyone is throwing cards everywhere and making sounds. I comply with the nonsense, feeling like a lost puppy.

I win the game every time.

Ignorance is bliss, I guess?

Jabbu and I have decided to see other people- it’s just not working out.

Taboo, which is a total language-based game, and I find myself desperately trying to decipher bilingual Hinglish clues.

“Okay this word is something ki sundar hai aur tundi hai!!”

ALRIGHT CAMBRIA, you can do this…

What is beautiful and cold?!

“Snow!”

Boom, nailed it.

Once. Because let’s be honest, I’m nowhere near bilingual yet and am usually confused as hell when people switch into Hindi mode from English.

Deciphering cross-cultural clues also provided a few laughs to our dingus selves. During Sushant’s turn, he sees his word, freaks out and yells, “Oh!! This is a non-vegetarian pakora!!”

Pakora = vegetables covered in dough and fried crispy.
So we start guessing things that ACTUALLY slightly resemble his clue, when his time runs out and he informs us that the word he in fact was trying to get us to guess was “meatball.”

Meatball?!

Man, we tore him a new him a new one for that. “You think a meatball is battered and fried?? Dude, I don’t think whatever you ate was a meatball… Did you miss the day in kindergarten when everyone else learned the food groups?”

I think the true sign of friendship is excessive amounts of abuse toward one another. Aren’t humans great?

Meanwhile, Sourav and Alok have resorted to having a light saber war with their trekking poles, making Star Wars sound effects with their mouths.

We are mature, functional adults that contribute positively to society, I promise.

Plus Sourav can draw really kick-ass pictures of dragons.

We’re basically the coolest kids on the block. You want to be us.

We welcome the morning with a round of stretching and yogic breathing exercises by the rhododendrons. And then, because boys are weird, Manjeet and Tarun run off and have a competition for who can do more push-ups.

I fully believe that behind every fully-grown adult human is a complete weirdo just waiting for their chance to shine.

By those standards, we were brighter than the sun this week. You could freaking see us from International Space Station.

Bags on our slightly-sore shoulders we head up toward our goal for the next to days that has now appeared far in the distance- a roaring high-altitude waterfall.

Everyone is giddy. We’ve seen photographs of this thing for weeks anticipating the trip, but man, there’s nothing like standing right in front of it.

Up we go!
We stop again and again just to look. It’s so beautiful, we feel like we’ve been photoshopped in- because this majesty can’t possibly exist in real life, can it?

I assure you, it can. And thank God for that.

Nothing else will refill your soul faster than a prayer or a mountain.

On the way up, I play “Devil Went Down to Georgia” for Sourav and Manjeet, who’s surprisingly into country music- Texas is his favorite state (I can relate) even though he’s never been there.

Why, you ask?

Wrangler Jeans makes his favorite pair of jeans, the Texas Edition.

I tell everyone if they ever want to come, they’ve got a home in Texas with me. I get asked about the rodeo and whether cowboys exist a lot.

A perfect snow slope beckons to our inner child, and we all drop our backpacks and run (literally) for the hills- exhaustedly sprinting our way up the vertical snowdrifts and glissading back down at max speed, using our own two feet as skis.

I won’t name names, but some very graceful face-plants and butt slides definitely occurred.

I don’t think we value the mountains enough for their ability to let the child out of us.

Before we know it, our day has come to conquer Rupin Pass itself.

Our altitude at this point yields less oxygen than trees require, so we find ourselves having completely left any vegetation or greenery down in the rest of the world that we have left behind.

Before us lies only the white of the snow, the black of the mountain peeking through and the most vivid royal blue sky that eyes have ever seen.

Upward we climb.

We see the pass high up in the distance, a jagged little “v” cut into the top ridge that towers above us, banked on all sides by 55-degree inclines of deep, deep snow.

Bring it.

But after I pee. Because we’ve all been pounding back water in order to acclimatize to the altitude (Acute Mountain Sickness is not your friend), we all have to go to the bathroom about every half hour.

Except there’s no bathroom.

Because you can’t really hide behind something when there’s nothing to hide behind- kinda how logic works.

So we get creative with the lumps of snow that we have to work with, and most of the time it’s fine, except once.

Thinking the coast was clear, I squat down until I can’t see my crew marching on and upward ahead of me.

If I can’t see you, you can’t see me, right?

Pants down, Mother Nature ensues, and I’m about to re-clothe myself when I freeze, and not from the snow.

I hear footsteps behind me.

Damn.

I stand with my dignity glowing around me anyway and turn to face the human who has now seen my butt.

The porter carrying a load of sleeping bags quickly darts his eyes away, but we both know what happened here today.

I can see you, you can see me, right?

Unless of course, it was so white it just blended into the snow and he actually didn’t see anything.

Yeah, we’ll go with that theory.

The next 2 hours is slow and agonizing progress. We need to traverse sideways across a severely-tilted snowbank that funnels right off a cliff (aka you better not fall). For obvious reasons, the strength of your foothold means everything at a time like this, and Deepak selflessly forges our trail, taking care to forge a path of footsteps we are meant to follow with his ice axe, stamping each foothold into condensed powder for good measure.

Manjeet has taught us the methods of snowcraft (how to use your feet effectively on the snow) with care, but even with spikes on our shoes, there are some close calls as feet slide where they should not.

We proceed slowly. And then up. And up and up and up.

We’ve reached the bottom of the final climb, a practically vertical scramble up the 150 meters of snowy cliff above which lies Rupin Pass.

Trekkers above us gasp for air, wiping out and sliding ten feet backward and down before being able to perform a self-arrest and stop the complete tumble off the mountain.

Looks fun. Should be a walk in the park.

I go into full perseverance mode, exhaustively shoving one foot after the other deep into the drifts and hoisting myself and my backpack upward. One, two, one, two, one, two- the rhythm helps.

One, two, one, t- shit.

The snow-hold gives way under my foot and I desperately fling my whole body against the slope to keep from sliding God knows where.

Jairam, one of our kind and faithful local guides, sees my plight and comes to my aid. The rest of the crew is down below, and I figure we’ll just wait here for them to catch up, but he has other ideas.

With his soft eyes and voice, he reaches out his hand to mine and calmly but firmly says, “challo.”

(Let’s go.)

You can’t not trust him, he’s so sincere, so I take his hand and up we labor, side by side, taking breaks to gulp down some air and then proceed.

He catches me every time I quaver, and I feel his hand tighten around mine in assurance that we will reach the top.

High above somewhere I hear another guide calling down to us, “Shabash! Shabash!”

(Good job! Good job!)

He’s encouraging us.

There is no suitable sentence I can create to describe the utter selflessness and dedication of these people who were by our sides every step of the way. Nor can I find the right words to express my gratitude.

Thank you doesn’t feel like enough.
Finally he turns to me breathlessly, with a smile in his eyes, and says in broken English, “ten meters more.”

Thighs and lungs burning, hands held tightly, we tear over the summit and suddenly, we are victorious.

And our reward is a never-ending 360-degree panoramic view of snow capped mountains.

And a Snickers Bar. (Shoutout to Shwetadri and Sourav)

God bless.

Seriously.

One by one, our crew reaches the summit greeted by cheers and watch as a small pooja (prayer) is held at the makeshift stone altar up here, prayer flags fluttering above. We are given pieces of coconut as prasad (offering) and a man places a tikka (fingerprint of colored powder) on our foreheads.

Everything is perfect.

Except nothing lasts forever.

“Mausam karab hai.”
The weather is bad. And they’re right, dark clouds were swirling toward us- time to move forward.

And down.

Because there was literally nothing left to climb. My neck begins screaming as I pull my backpack on and I realize that a muscle has been pulled- the pain crawls up my neck and into the back of my head where it stubbornly festers and holds, making me extremely disoriented.

Which normally would’ve been fine- but we were stumbling down an icy mountain in an approaching snowstorm.

Ain’t life grand?

A lot of that descent is still fuzzy to me, but I remember hand after hand reaching into mine, making sure my loss of balance didn’t make me lose something far more important.

I marched on for 2 hours toward the promise of Advil.

That night, our last together, huddled around a camp lantern and our dinner, we talked about our favorite memories of the trip.

I look around and can’t help thinking how much I will miss these people. That’s the really sucky part about trekking- your crew becomes your family and saying goodbye stings a lot more than you could ever imagine on that first day when they are still just a carful of strangers to you.

They’re dorks, but they’re my dorks.

Jairam and Deepak tell us stories that they’ve been told since they were children about the shepherds of the area.

Apparently one man had discovered a patch of healing grass up here in the Rupin range of mountains after one of his lamb’s broken legs was mysteriously healed. He called a meeting with the village’s shepherds and made a bet with them.

“I will slit my throat and save myself by wiping the healing grass across my wound,” he said.

“If it works, I get all of your sheep. If not, you will get mine.”

The other shepherds eagerly agreed.

So he slit his throat, and died immediately.

“He couldn’t even reach the grass in time,” says Deepak.

I can’t help but laugh at Deepak’s and Jairam’s giggles to one another as they tell me the story of this ridiculous man. It did make me wonder though, did any of the other shepherds try to put the grass on his throat for him, or did they all just want his sheep?

Don’t slit your throat, people. Don’t do it.

They also told us that they had been chased by a power at this exact campsite?

Power?

Apparently a power can be released to the area if an animal is sacrificed or someone worships a stone, they tell us.

“We made to much noise and it got angry and started a cloudburst and an avalanche.”

Don’t anger the mountain power, people. Don’t do it.

And then they said something that almost made me cry. A few years back, a hiker was in peril and a shepherd saved their life by sacrificing their own.

Deepak tells me that the people of the Himalayas have the purest hearts.

“If you are in trouble, we will die to save you.”

I have no words.

I’m forever in debt to Jairam, Deepak and all of those in the Himalayas who have taken me (and anyone else who knocks on their door) as an unquestionable member of their family.

Our last few minutes together during our final descent were spent in a green meadow under the peaks, with a picnic of paranthas and locally-made lassi a shepherd brought to us from his own cows’ milk.

I can’t make this stuff up, people.