Maya by C. W. Huntington

Author:C. W. Huntington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

The ride from Delhi was a grueling twenty-four hours by bus through the dusty, flat expanse of Haryana and the Punjab, up into the Terai and, finally, along a poorly maintained road that wound northward through the Kullu Valley. It was almost dark by the time we reached Chandigarh, and there was still an entire night and part of the next day in front of us. Most of that time I was half-awake, smashed upright into a crowded seat, my head bouncing and jerking with the motion of the bus as it rounded one sharp turn after another, following the switchbacks that clung to the steep walls of the Beas River. By the time we arrived at our final destination, early the following afternoon, I had long since sunken into a kind of hypnogogic trance. My eyes itched and burned, and the muscles of my neck and back were contracted like iron straps. It was pure joy to climb off the bus and find myself standing in the relative silence of the Manali bazaar, breathing in cool, clear mountain air.

On both sides the valley rose in a network of terraced rice-paddies and apple orchards that gradually gave way, at higher elevations, to deep forests of Deodar pine, fir, and spruce. To the east was the towering peak of Deo Tibba; to the west a craggy line of snow-covered mountains leading off into the Solang Valley and the source of the Beas River—an immense amphitheater of glaciated ice and rock situated over twenty thousand feet above sea level. Looking northward, I could just make out the striated cliffs of the Rohtang Pass, an angular rock wall thrown up against the mind-boggling emptiness of the Lahauli sky. The Rohtang is closed by snow most of the year, but as I stood there outside the bus, I could sense the presence of the vast Tibetan plateau as it spilled over the pass, charging the northern Kullu Valley with its elemental power. The village of Manali stands guard like a sentry here at the boundary between this world and another, alien realm of monstrous proportions, a land of ice and stone sliced by frigid torrents of foaming whitewater.

Outside the wooden storefronts, men in baggy woolen pants and short coats clustered in the street smoking and talking, every one of them wearing a kind of small, brimless cap with a swatch of brightly colored fabric sewed along the front. The women, too, were all wearing versions of the same dress: a plaid wrap-around blanket fixed in place at the shoulders with two brass pins. It seemed like every other person was carrying an amorphous ball of fluff tucked into the waist-belt of their clothing. While they talked, they worked it with their fingers, stretching and pulling the fuzz into a single long strand that led downward to a whirling wooden top that twirled just above their feet. It took me a moment to realize that they were spinning yarn.

I had no idea where to stay; all I wanted was to find a room where I could stretch out and get some sleep.

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