After a refreshing cold shower, I sit out on the grassy courtyard of the hotel drinking tea and reading. For the past couple of weeks, I have been reading Slowly Down the Ganges by Eric Newby, a delightful story of a trip made by Newby and his wife down the Ganges by boat in 1963. The book is written in a wonderfully sardonic tone with exquisite attention to detail that makes very good reading. One passage in particular is especially memorable. It deals with the penchant that Westerners have for going to India and suddenly deciding to become Hindus. It reads:
“However well-intentioned he might be, and however anxious to participate, for a European to bathe in the Ganges at Benares was simply for him to have a bath. It was as if a Hindu, having attended a Mass out of curiosity, decided to take communion. For initiation was difficult. There was no joining Hinduism in the same sense that you could become a Roman Catholic, with your name on a list somewhere, for there was nothing to join. No one ever suggested to another that he should become a Hindu. Nor was it enough to read the books. It was like trying to enter a theatre by the exit.”
Mid-morning, Linda and I walk up to the Saddar Bazaar. The shops are full of goods: fruit and vegetables, meat and offal, souvenirs and jeep tours for the masses of tourists who pass through Gilgit on route to and from the trekking areas. I buy some spice from a merchant on the street, sitting amongst sacks of brightly-coloured spice: turmeric, chili, cardamom, coriander. I buy 250 grams of chili and the same of coriander for a total cost of ₹25.
At the GPO, a man shows us the way to a tailor who sews the spice and the garam masala I bought in ‘Pindi into a package which the post office subsequently refuses to send. I resigned myself to carrying it all the way out to Hong Kong.
On the way back up the street, we stop to look at the wares of a boy selling knives. We buy two small pocket knives for ₹20 each: one for me, one for [Linda’s brother] Shane. Back at the Hunza Inn, we relax out on the veranda until 4:30 PM when a group of us sally forth to the Gilgit Serena Lodge expecting to watch a free video while munching cheese and tomato toasties. But the free videos are no longer a feature of the Serena scene. The toasties, however, are still quite nice. Outside the hotel’s large windows, a spectacular show of light is taking place across the flanks of the mountains beyond the Gilgit River. The stern, triangular peak of Haramosh is wrapped in cloud as darkness draws its black veil over the valley.
CurseOfTheTraveller 