The July my best friend came to India to meet me, we rode ram-shackle buses and jeeps from Delhi to Manali to Leh and to every tiny village we could find once we got there; we forgot to eat and got too-thin and too dark in the high altitude sun. We drank homebrewed chang when we felt like it, wore sleeveless tops without blinking, learned hilarious catch phrases in as many languages as we could get our hands on ("two mosquitos don't fuck, just like that" triumphing as the most bizarre and wonderful of them all). Inevitably, we befriended two wind-swept Ladakhi dudes over fried noodles and cigarettes, hotel staff with some English under their belts, and drove with them to a festival several hours north. I rode with Champa, a man of few words and awe-inducing cheek bones. Our bike kept breaking down. At one point, the sand beneath us got too deep and we tumbled, softly but not un-painfully, over. I loved every second. The smell of motor oil and dessert, Himalayan temple smoke and petrol, sweat and altitude. I hoped it would never end, that I could hunt for Ladakhi chaam dancing festivals from the back of a motorbike, hands tented over my eyes, forever.
Fast forward five years: my motorcycle is another bill I'm struggling to pay and I never get to be the passenger. In this little city on the border with Burma, I navigate crowded weekend streets, maneuver from my apartment to the 7-11 to Hong Long Grocery to the mechanic to the photocopy shop. My "new" bike is old and acts older--it's nearly impossible to kick start when the engine's cold, it hates third gear, it makes a waooow, waooow, waooow noise that's starting to get on my nerves. You could say that the romance went out of our relationship, except that it was never there.
But. Every now and then, I leave town--to drive my friend to the bus station, to search for a cheaper gas station, to wind pointlessly through corn fields and rice paddies and feel, temporarily, untethered--and I see the murky crest of mountains on the horizon, let up on the break, and entertain a stirring of something, a feeling like I'm about to laugh or cry.
Here's something I'd like to know: do motorcycles still breed equal parts black smoke and happiness in the mountains of Ladakh? I hope there's a girl without a sense of obligation, of genuine fear, straddling the back of an Enfield with her eyes closed, hands lifted in the air, fingers spread, sun so-hot on her neck, wondering where she's going but satisfied with any answer, satisfied just by asking.
Fast forward five years: my motorcycle is another bill I'm struggling to pay and I never get to be the passenger. In this little city on the border with Burma, I navigate crowded weekend streets, maneuver from my apartment to the 7-11 to Hong Long Grocery to the mechanic to the photocopy shop. My "new" bike is old and acts older--it's nearly impossible to kick start when the engine's cold, it hates third gear, it makes a waooow, waooow, waooow noise that's starting to get on my nerves. You could say that the romance went out of our relationship, except that it was never there.
But. Every now and then, I leave town--to drive my friend to the bus station, to search for a cheaper gas station, to wind pointlessly through corn fields and rice paddies and feel, temporarily, untethered--and I see the murky crest of mountains on the horizon, let up on the break, and entertain a stirring of something, a feeling like I'm about to laugh or cry.
Here's something I'd like to know: do motorcycles still breed equal parts black smoke and happiness in the mountains of Ladakh? I hope there's a girl without a sense of obligation, of genuine fear, straddling the back of an Enfield with her eyes closed, hands lifted in the air, fingers spread, sun so-hot on her neck, wondering where she's going but satisfied with any answer, satisfied just by asking.
No comments:
Post a Comment