From Gangotri on a Royal Enfield

'Let's hire an Enfield and go to Gangotri', I said to Oshan. It was getting hot in Rishikesh and we were stuck, as it is so easy to be in this town. The nice people, cool river and sunny weather always delightful, but too comfortable. So perhaps, we thought, a trip up into the mountains to the headwaters of the Ganga would prepare us to leave for Himachal Pradesh. I also felt confused as to where to go and how to proceed with the cycle tour. I needed an answer from somewhere and having spent a month living by the Ganga, it seemed that if there was an answer anywhere, it would be at the beginning of this amazing river. Should I go to Varanasi to study music and delay passing through central Asia towards my goal, Iran? Should I stay longer in India or push on quickly to make it to China before winter? I was in a state of confusion.

We found a motorbike shop in Rishikesh and tied everything up, before riding back to the guest house with the 350cc bike. It was always something I thought I would never do, ride a classic motorbike up into the mountains, but that evening I took the bike for a spin up and down the riverside. The Royal Enfield motorcycle is among the most distinctive things the British left in India, an archaic design in current production and a favourite of travellers all over the country.

In the morning it rained and we delayed our departure. I wondered if it was an omen, since I was not without fear of riding a bike. Soon enough though, the skies cleared, and we were on the way, two of us and our bags lashed in the luggage racks, the powerful throbbing roar of the single cylinder engine echoing off the blurring mountainside to our left. Oshan had ridden before, but I was a novice, and though confident, I was uncomfortable in the train of traffic along the mountain road, so he drove us up towards Uttar Kashi and the first night spent in the tent listening to the drums and cheering at a wedding celebration on the other side of the valley. In the morning we pushed on towards Uttar Kashi to get our permit to hike up to the glacier where the Ganga starts flowing at over 3800m above sea level, and then I took over riding and we headed on as evening fell.

I saw the dog as we approached. We weren't too fast, but as we were about 5 metres away it was walking slowly across the road, then it hesitated and in a timeless fraction of a second, I saw in my mind's eye the dog hearing the motorbike and stopping, turning around and getting out of the way, but reality had split from my vision, and before I knew it, the dog was under the front wheel and we rode directly over its back and fell to the left side, the road tearing at my leg, hand, hip and shoulder as we slid 4 metres to a standstill. It was a hard impact and as I cleared my head and made sure noone was badly injured, I could hear the terrible crying of the dog behind us. She was lying on the ground , her back broken, in total agony. My shock and pain cleared for a second as I knelt down by her side.

'I'm so sorry', I whispered. But she couldn't understand. In five minutes she was dead. I sat by the side of the road quietly distraught, villagers surrounding us as Oshan brought me the medical kit. Luckily he was fine, but I had grazes and a deep cut to the wrist that needed stitching. It hurt a lot and I felt very strongly that the dogs pain and mine were linked in more than the obvious sense that hitting her had thrown us to the ground. My ignorance and inability to react had created a moment where energy could flow outside the physical world. Instantaneous cause and effect, perhaps.

We drove back to Uttar Kashi to repair the bike and sleep, but I couldn't rest. I had inadvertently killed an innocent being and felt very guilty and shocked. But in the morning we continued up the valley, winding up steep switchbacks and bouncing over washed out sections of road. At nightfall we passed a huge hydro-electric project in construction and then stopped to pick up a small man who was wearing a skullcap. We were both taken aback at his meekness, touching our feet with his hands and skullcap in supplication. Later we discovered that he was part of a community of Afghans who had been living at Gangnani for 30 years with their cows and buffalo, coming down to sell milk every day and going up again to their village.

The bike lurched over rocks, scraping its underside violently from time to time, and the small man and I craned our necks to the side to see where we were going as Oshan steered the heavy bike and avoiding teh lorries on the way down, the pitch-black sheer drop to our right only a couple of metres away. At Ganganani we dismounted and stumbled about, while our legs recovered, and Oshan and I discussed hiring a room with Anil, a local young man, with whom Oshan had been talking while I unloaded the bike. The Afghan disappeared in to the night.

'This is Lady, he has a room for a hundred and fifty rupes,' Oshan informed me.

'Lady?' I queried.

'No!' objected Anil. 'I asked if he is with a lady! My name is Anil!'.

We laughed together for a few seconds, the confusion over his name cleared up, and so we hauled our bags up the cliff to a small wooden room. Behind were the famous hot springs, and soon we were soaking in the sulfurous water. My raw wounds were agony, but it felt as though it would do them good, so I tried to enjoy the water. In the morning hundreds of Indians bathed in the two square pools of steaming holy water and made their puja in the temple above them. We relaxed and ate thali, chatting amiably with all who we met, and spent some time with four sadhus who were on their way to Gaumukh.

And so after a day resting, we continued all the way to Gangotri, giving dogs and people a very wide berth. We arrived in the late afternoon to see the temple, one of four sacred temples in the Indian himalaya, which was built by a Gorkha commander in the early 18th century. Back then there was already a wooden temple standing for 3 hundred years, at the beginning of which time the glacier had not yet retreated. It is a beautiful V shaped valley, clothed in pines, with the milky-hued Bhagirathi river rushing over the rocky riverbed. After a couple of days, we hiked up to Bhojbasa to stay in an ashram before attempting the walk to Gaumukh. We all ate together with a stunning view of the Bhagirathi peaks as day faded away. The baba in charge of the ashram struck up a beautiful chant before the meal, and I felt myself drift in to the sound of the words, I was for a moment in an ecstatic spacious emptiness, and then we ate heartily and thankfully, for it had been a hard walk up the valley. That night the moon rose from behind the mountains and all the people stood outside in the cold to watch.

From Gangotri on a Royal Enfield

The Bhagirathi is one of two rivers that make up the Ganga, but it really is the Ganga in all but name. And 18 kilometres uphill the glacier sits with the holy Gaumukh, or 'cow's mouth', spewing forth a great quantity of water at the base of some huge mountains. It is strange to see so much flowing out of a solid glacier. I wondered where it was all coming from.

From Gangotri on a Royal Enfield

The walk was pleasant, and we stopped to chat to many Sadhus, all making the pilgrimage to the spot where the river fell into the hair of Shiva, all serious men, and indeed women sadhus too, beautiful, clear-minded, kind people. Awe-inspiring. And it is only one of the four 'Char Dham'. So most of them were walking back, barefoot to head to the other temples at Badrinath and Kedarnath and Yamunotri. Oshan and I sat down and watched hunks of ice shear off the wall and land in the river, to be swept reluctantly over the shallow stony bed towards Bangladesh. He went over and looked at the ice, before wandering away at a most fortuitous moment, 10 seconds after which a few metres of ice and rock came crashing down at the exact spot where he had been standing!

From Gangotri on a Royal Enfield

After some nerve-steeling, we made our holy puja in the river, immersing ourselves in the 1 degree water. It was quiet and beautiful, and soon there were many pilgrims, sadhus and people, a family from Rajasthan and among others, French too. Then we started climbing up the collapsing glacier towards Tapovan, up above at the foot of the Shivling peak, a stunning pyramidic monolith towering high above us. The sun receded behind a wall of mountains, just as I was attempting to scramble up the side of the waterfall, my hair on end and chest marked with an invisible sign of the cross, drawn in a sudden moment of superstition, as I risked being crushed by any loose boulder that might free itself from the sandy bed of rubble in which it sat. Oshan had crossed the waterfall, as instructed by a painted sign on a rock, and then gestured to me, suggesting that the left side might be easier to climb. It was not, but I made it and we emerged triumphant at the top, with enough daylight to take pictures of each other leaping across a small stream, breathlessly but gleefully. The night was spent in the ashram, or rather stone house, of a most extraordinary baba, 22 years old and silent for the last two, a man who spends his summers at the base of the Shivling meditating and worshipping Ram, (the 7th incarnation of Vishnu, who chose birth to free the earth from the cruelty and sins of the demon King Ravana) and his winters in Bhojbasa, 6 km down the valley. Before us was a living example of deep compassion and warmth, of a life of concentration of mind and heart, and we were greeted with a hug and the radiant shining delight in his mesmerisingly beautiful young eyes. We were overcome, and enjoyed the evening with the Baba and some other travellers from Israel, Australia, Basque Spain and the US, eating and then sleeping deeply beneath the silent mountains.

From Gangotri on a Royal Enfield

While we sat by the cow's mouth the day before, I asked the Ganga to give me the strength to find and pour forth kindness to the world, as does the river, that feeds the spirits of countless souls in this land, to allow me to break free from my selfishness and fear. Then I jumped in. And on reflection afterwards, I realised my path, realised that I had nothing to wait for, but that I should make my way towards Pakistan directly by bicycle. The rest would become clear in time, the scars of the past, and my failing to be as tolerant as I would like. I had found what I was looking for, and had the answer to my question. It was time to go.

And so we started walking down, and the wind in the pines spoke its approval. 'Go,' it said.

From Gangotri on a Royal Enfield