The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck, page 9
“I am nothing more than an old man doing penance.”
“But you do practice Tumo, don’t you?” I say, pointing at his bare feet. Novitiates in Tumo are required to pass a test; they are wrapped in a wet sheet at an altitude above 12,000 feet and must generate enough body heat to dry the sheet in a matter of minutes.
“Ah, you know about Tumo and gompchens?”
“Very little, but I would like to know more.”
“It is the same for me. Now let me ask you a question. Why do you write in your book all the time? Can you not remember?”
“It’s a habit. I can stop if you want.”
“No, keep writing,” he says, standing up in an effortless motion and excusing himself to finish his morning prayers.
I tend to Partner, brushing her coat with a comb given to me as a joke by a friend in Gangtok. When the mystic returns to the fire, he declines breakfast, explaining that he eats only one meal a day. Berries and edible roots are his main diet. Occasionally the yak herders bring him barley flour and some tea. There’s always wood from the rhododendron forest to keep a fire blazing, and the brook is only fifty yards away.
“Do you see the yak herders much?” I ask, hoping they keep their distance.
“They respect my solitude, but a lama is needed for horoscopes and at times of death.”
When a herdsman dies, he tells me, the body must not be disturbed until the lama arrives. The manner of death and the position of the corpse are important for the formulation of the last rites. First the priest commands the spirit to quit the body and sever its attachments to this world. He then plucks several hairs from the head of the deceased to provide a vent for the spirit’s escape. Afterward he draws the horoscope of the dead to determine the most auspicious date of burial or cremation. Until then the body is kept in a seated position inside the family home and treated as if alive.
“Please stay the night,” he says. “We have been brought together for a reason … will you join me in prayer?”
From the pocket of his robe the mystic draws a totreng, a rosary of miniature skulls carved from 108 separate human skulls. It is said that a totreng is able to invoke the spirit of each of the deceased. He patiently corrects my posture so that I can assume the lotus position without pain. He tells me to relax, coaching my breathing, explaining that tension can be released every time I exhale. I begin to feel the air circulate inside me. The muscles in my back unknot, as if I’m being massaged. However, try as I might to sustain this feeling, I tighten the moment he stops instructing me. When I’m left to my own devices, relaxation comes from alcohol, smoke, music, books, and female companionship. I finally gather enough courage to admit this.
“Ah, you are a flesh eater, eh?” he says with a smirk.
I tell him how refreshing it is to hear a joke from a lama. After my experiences with Sonam and His Holiness, I assumed all lamas were deadly serious. The mystic is taken aback when I mention His Holiness, whom he knew as a child. At this point I mention my hopes of finding the Valley of Bliss and of sighting Me-Gu, as well as the pink-headed duck. He asks me to describe each of my goals, prodding me with his searching eyes whenever I pause. I show him the picture of the pink duck.
He looks at the bird and says, “I hope you find your duck.” His eyes glance upward, noting the position of the sun. A moment later he’s off to say his afternoon devotions.
I wait awhile before starting dinner. I’m planning to cook enough rice and lentils to last him a week. While I’m at the brook scooping water into the pot, a shriek pierces the air. It’s a frightening sound, like the cry of an animal caught in a trap. Again the noise cuts the air, and this time I locate its source. Perched on the crown of a rhododendron is a great Indian hornbill, almost four feet in length. I run to get my cameras.
The holy man follows me and sights a second hornbill in another rhododendron. Though they prefer the jungles, they’re occasional visitors around here, he tells me. Both birds start calling. I’m still twenty yards away when they take off, thrusting their casqued beaks upward, flapping their giant black-and-white wings, rustling the air.
The sun sets as I wait for the hermit to return from his prayers. Dinner has been ready for several hours when I notice him standing on the other side of the fire. The flames appear to lap his robe, and in their light he looks ghostly. From my angle his feet don’t seem to touch the ground. As he circles the fire, the amber light causes his gray beard to appear blond. He eases himself onto the ground beside me and begins telling me about Me-Gu.
“Once,” he tells me, “I was traveling down the mountain to visit a sick man. People ran from the sight of me. They shouted Me-Gu! Me-Gu! Then a kind man gave me these robes.”
He eats very little rice before resuming his prayers. I stare into the fire and continue munching, wondering about Me-Gu. The first recorded sighting occurred in 1887, less than fifty miles from here. The guides of the Englishman Lawrence Waddell pointed out the giant footprints, but Me-Gu remained an obscure mountain beast until 1920, when it was christened the Abominable Snowman by a newspaper writer in Calcutta. The clever journalist enhanced the story of a British Everest expedition that had reported seeing “dark forms in the distance.”
At dawn the mystic directs me eastward, away from the pastures of the yak herders and toward the river, my former pathway. I offer him a flashlight as a gift, but he refuses it. I open the silk pouch containing the holy relics and ask him to share a piece of the Bodhi Tree. He protests, but I split off a piece, which I place inside a Ziploc bag. The mystic clutches it, a happy man.
After several hours of following the edge of the rhododendron forest, searching for a natural break or a path into its heart, I stop to rest. A Himalayan mouse hare, a tailless rabbit covered in glossy russet-colored fur, springs from the edge of the forest. It doesn’t see me, but when it stops to twitch its nose and catches my scent, it runs for cover.
If a rabbit can enter the forest, I say to myself, so can I. There’s no need for a path; I’ve brought along a machete and a folding saw; I’ll blaze my own trail. When I was researching the rhododendrons of Sikkim, I found only one description of an attempt to cut through such a forest. It occurred almost 150 years ago, far to the west of my position. Thomas Hooker, the man who brought rhododendrons to Europe, gave up after two days of what he called in his journal “miserable work … the forest is impenetrable.” Knowing that the rhododendron forest is less than a mile wide, I calculate that it will take me no more than four hours to reach the other side and another two, possibly three, to retrace my steps.
I hobble Partner and choose a few items of equipment, including a compass, a flashlight, the machete, and a saw. Attaching one end of a fishing line to a rock, I put the spool in my pocket, ready to pay out the line as I go to mark my way back.
Like the rabbit, I zigzag around the large tree limbs near the edge and cover ten feet without trouble, never using my saw. I knock an hour off my estimate. Hooker had to cut a swath big enough for donkeys and more than two dozen porters, but alone I can wiggle through. My confidence is high, even though it takes twenty minutes to travel the next several feet.
It’s as dark as night inside the forest. No sunlight penetrates the thick layers of leaves. I’m crawling now, sliding on my back, trying to inch forward without sawing or hacking the wood. Every time I grab a branch, armies of ants drop onto my head and fall down my shirt. I can’t see a thing. The flashlight is useless, the branches so close together the beam is blocked inches from my face.
Working by feel, blindly grabbing one branch after another to drag myself along, I lose track of time. Progress is slow, but I remain convinced that it will get easier. Of course, it only gets worse, denser, branches growing closer to the ground. Finally frustrated by one limb that forces me to move laterally, I head back, coiling the fishing line as I go. Take heart, I tell myself, there will be a payoff once the line is measured. As long as I made it halfway through the forest, I can claim to have explored the heart of the world’s largest body of rhododendrons.
Partner is waiting, but the sun has gone. According to the markers on the guide line, I traveled a pitiful ninety-three feet in seven hours. I build a bonfire, feeding it with tinder, hoping the flames will have a cathartic effect and chase away the gloom. The burning rhododendron smells like primrose, and the wood cackles as the resin pops and sizzles. Orange cinders zoom toward the Pleiades. Stepping back from the blaze, I assess the achievement of the day: I’m the first New Yorker to be defeated by a forest of Rhododendron giganteum. Let the record books take note.
In the morning I head back down the steppes, following a course toward the river. A piece of yellow cotton flickers in the breeze, marking the point where I turn. As I descend, I start picking up speed, dragging Partner along. Running now, I trip and tumble into a crumpled heap. I lie on my back panting, watching the clouds passing over Mount Kanchenjunga. It is said that somewhere on Kanchenjunga and its four attendant peaks mounds of gold, silver, rubies, and emeralds are hidden. Over the years many men have looked for these celestial treasures, and without fail they’ve been lost in the mountains. Kanchenjunga, god of the gods, deals swiftly and unmercifully with anyone breaking taboo.
We reach the stream about four hours later, and within three kilometers we encounter our old tracks. Downstream a flock of blue-throated barbets, gaudy birds with crimson heads, greets us. The barbets are feverishly pecking at the seeds of a karya gum tree, a rare sight at this altitude. In the distance I hear the screams of a pack of Himalayan monkeys. Their chatter is loud, but my pink-headed duck call silences them. I decide to rest here and watch the birds winging to and from the gum tree. I sight a white-winged ground thrush, a blue rock thrush, blackbirds, and, surprisingly, a pair of large cuckoo shrikes.
The next day I push on to the cave, arriving well after sunset. The bats flap their wings and settle back on the ceiling. I start a fire, feed Partner, and turn my attention to the leeches on my body. Somehow, one or two always escape a body search, lodging in places like the small of my back, unnoticed until they reach the size of small bananas. A pinch of salt on the head and a tug on the tail is a messy but effective way to remove those that are beyond range of a lit cigarette. I lie down to rest for a moment, before preparing dinner, but when I awake it’s the next morning.
Since this is my eighth day on the trail and I’m slightly ahead of schedule, I decide to spend the morning lazing in the sun and fishing. My first few casts don’t even draw a nibble. I change lures, adding a tuft of hair from Partner’s left ear. The new fly looks like a hairy tadpole and spins well.
“Do you know anything about fishing? That will never work!” booms a voice.
“Who’s there?” I ask.
“Let me show you how to do it,” says Padam, stepping out from behind a tree.
“How did you get here? I never heard a footstep.”
“Once I was a good soldier… Give me the stick and the line, but take this first.”
He holds out a bottle of scotch. One gulp and I’m doubled over, coughing.
“Sip it, my friend, sip it,” he says, casting the line, speaking Lepcha to the fish.
No luckier than I, he shortly hands back the gear, saying, “You scared away all the fish.”
As we walk to Yumthang, he relates his week of wild boozing and sex, and I ask him why, if he was having such a good time, is he here?
“My friend got tired.”
“Phuchung?”
“No, no, my girlfriend got tired of me. She threw me out and Phuchung is with her now.”
For Lepcha women, sexual relations are not binding in any way, being considered simply a natural response to a natural desire. When a woman becomes bored, she may seek out another partner. Padam calls his sweetheart “Tigress,” and we both wish the best for Phuchung.
The frontier, Padam. tells me, is still closed, the troops on alert, and all smuggling on hold.
“We would have played a lot of card games waiting at the pass,” he says. “Hey, did you find your duck?”
“I think I was close.”
“What?”
“I think it was right in front of me and I missed it.”
As we continue walking, the conversation drifts to the Gurkha National Liberation Front. As a hillsman, Padam supports any mountain group struggling against people from the plains. Although he’s a Lepcha and a Buddhist, he sympathizes with the Gurkha fight and confides that he has transported materiel across the border for the insurgents. Many of his friends from the army are involved in the battle. He suggests I forget the duck and instead find out more about the Gurkhas.
A mile from Yumthang, Padam scouts the path for villagers before escorting me to my old hiding spot. I’ll wait until he returns the donkey and retrieves Phuchung.
Several hours pass before I hear the distinctive rattle of the Land Rover. Padam appears to be alone. Where’s Phuchung? Padam lifts the tarp in the back and points to his snoring friend.
“The Tigress has struck… Under you go. He will keep you warm.”
We drive on through the night. Near the border of West Bengal, Padam stops at a teahouse and pours several hot cups down Phuchung’s throat, and he revives enough to climb into the passenger seat. The border police wave us through.
“They probably smelled us coming,” Padam quips, noting my woodsy odor and Padam’s scent of beer and sex.
Once we cross the border and leave the Darjeeling district, I’m a tourist again and no longer have to hide. We breakfast in Siliguri, or “Sillyugly,” as Padam refers to it. At the airport I retrieve my bags from storage and find that there are seats available on the next flight to New Delhi. The plane leaves in thirty minutes, and we hurriedly say good-bye, exchanging addresses and embracing. As I head to the security area, Padam shouts, “Don’t forget the duck…” He smiles and waves as the customs officer leads me into a separate room.
“Open your bags.”
“The plane leaves soon…”
“The duck. I want to see the duck.”
“If you insist,” I respond and take out the illustration. “You see, I’m searching for the pink-headed duck, the rarest…”
6
The Grand Life Hotel
The thirty-minute drive from the airport into New Delhi drags on for three hours, yet another lesson in navigation: rely on the numbering system posted above the bus windshield and not the driver. As usual, the brightly lit lobby of the Grand Life Hotel is empty, but the TV room is packed. Twenty people are sprawled across the couches and chairs, all eyes fixed on the pulsing screen. Rani, a beautiful woman who works at the hotel, notices me in the doorway and shouts a welcome. Mahout disengages himself from several companions to shake my hand.
“The great white hunter returns. Come, sit by me and we will talk after the news.”
“I’d better go up and shower first.”
Looking at his watch, Mahout pats the sofa cushion. “Please, sit. We were not expecting you … your room is being used, but not for long.”
As I plop down, he asks Rani to speed things up in room thirteen. The evening news, broadcast in Hindi and repeated later in English, is featuring the Indian army. Sri Lanka, once the “Eden of the East,” is now a grisly battlefield. Soldiers from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have checked the recent advances of Indian troops. Closer to Delhi the Golden Temple, the holiest Sikh shrine, is encircled by soldiers trying to flush out terrorists. The new army contract for the Bofors gun is turning into a national scandal that threatens to topple the ruling party.
Two women saunter in and snuggle up to me on the couch. One purrs, “Are you ready for me?”
Mahout introduces the hotel’s newest employees, explaining to them that I’m not a customer but family. Turning to me, he suggests that we dine together in an hour.
As I head up the stairs, Mahout yells, “Hey, wait a second, did you find your duck?”
“Maybe.”
I peel off my soiled clothes, which can almost stand on their own, a reminder that my last bath was more than two weeks ago. I stay in the shower until my skin is pulpy; afterward, wanting to look my best, I don my jacket and least wrinkled trousers. The door to Mahout’s suite is open.
As I enter, he stops fiddling with his stereo and purses his lips. “Dear me,” he sighs, “you must buy some proper clothes.”
During the past month, while I was on the trail, Mahout was staying in four star hotels, having traveled literally around the world: Hong Kong, Vancouver, London, Paris, St. Moritz. Business has its rewards, he confides, pouring me a glass of vintage wine. The velvety Bordeaux makes me shiver a bit; only two days ago, dinner meant gruel and tea. He’s astonished by my trek in Sikkim. As I might have guessed, the romance of walking with a donkey has never entered his mind.
“Here, try to be civilized,” he remarks, handing me a plate of caviar. “You know, I thought of you when I was in Switzerland. There were these Nordic blokes at the hotel insisting that the only time to ski was at night during a full moon.”
The sumptuous meal devolves into a small party as other guests join us. Rani is wearing a sari of diaphanous silk and thin silver bracelets that tinkle with every movement. Her toenails are freshly painted, ten cherry half-moons, and gold bands circle her ankles.
I drink far too much, and the next day I awake to a pounding headache. As I stagger through the lobby, Mahout, looking dapper, chirps his salutation.
“What a beautiful day, eh? Where are you going?”
“Ministry of Home Affairs,” I growl. “How come you’re so sunny? You drank more than I did.”
“Here,” he says, “take one of these.” From a shirt pocket he pulls out a pill the size of a subway token.
“What is it?”
“All I know is that they work,” he says with a convincing smile.
The walk perks me up. After my tramp in the hills, strolling these flat city streets seems almost effortless, but I have to force myself to stay alert for speeding motorists, inconsiderate bicyclists, and open manhole covers. I make it to Lok Nayak Bhavan without incident, and the director finds me on the lawn talking to the office workers. He accepts my invitation to lunch as long as we have separate checks. More than ever, I’m glad I avoided offering him baksheesh.
