Check this box
poem and photo by Gemma Mathewson

Still on the plane,
21 hours since Delhi Airport
the steward hands me a customs form
to fill out before the plane lands.
"Have you crossed any fields
or pasture land, or come in contact
with any wild or herd animals?
Check this box yes or no."

Let's see. In the city itself,
where my traveling companion lives
there was sacred brahmin bull crap and
generic feral dog crap everywhere,
and visiting a medieval step well I picked
my way between guano mounds
and dodged aerial bombardments
of the bat colony suspended
from the well's protective dome.

But we didn't spend much time
in the city anyhow, most of the trip
we hiked the agricultural and pastoral and natural
valleys and slopes of Himachal Pradesh.

Evening activity in Kalpa included
following a flock of sheep
herded through the main path of the village
to a pen surrounded by
marijuana which grows
in every margin and crevice,
like the optimistic weed it is.
The sheep stalled at the gate
for one last rumination before
being crammed into a stone enclosure,
it's muddy bottom
lined with empty spring water bottles.
My eyes were more
in my camera display than
on their trail of pellets
and the open drains I crisscrossed in pursuit..

Early the next day we climbed
high above Kalpa past deodar cedars
into alpine meadows
trying to keep the stream beside us
as a landmark, but frankly, losing it
a few times on the way home
and crossing the edge of
rock terraced apple orchards
under-planted with potatoes and snap peas,
(well manured), where families worked,
a mother paused to nurse her baby,
and everyone waved and sang out "Julayyy"
Our hiking strategy was that having lost the stream
at least following the irrigation ditches
would return us to the village.

Then in Kibber we were not actually
in the pastures, but above them,
where we walked the main path of
the village upslope until it just ran out
beside a cairn mounded with animal horns.
From there we looked down on
the flat roofed houses
of the town claiming the highest elevation in India,
which were edged with brush twigs,
so that the snow melts faster
above the air pocketed brush mass and wicks off
the roofs instead of collapsing them.

And from that vantage,
a family plowing and sowing fields
with a pair of yaks. The farmer
sang a series of tones in free rhythm
with a loud and long sustain
ascending and descending, which directed
his yoked animals to go forward, reverse,
turn, rest. This yak plowing song
wove the clear and cold wind around it,
resonant and ethereal, and we then heard
more distant pockets of the same music
not echo, but antiphonal variations.

Dung in Kibber was dried
in sun maximizing arrangements
on stone walls and against the sides
of houses and pens, and we were mostly able
to avoid it. Three little girls
hanging laundry asked for a picture,
and one went inside her home
and returned to offer me three fossilized,
worm holed nuts which I palmed
while I pretended to chew appreciatively.
They may still be in a pocket somewhere in my luggage.

A kitten pouncing on the shadows of prayer flags
on the roof of the monastic cliff fort in Kye
brushed up against my legs, and paused
for an ear scratch, but anyone could see
by her jewelry that she was a the pampered
pet to a colony of monastic lamas.
When I inquired about the earrings, a wizened monk
answered "a gift" but I'm still not sure if he referred to
the kitten, her earrings, or both as a package.

On the hard scrabble roads
switch backing up and down the mountains
of the Kuzum pass (over 13000 feet)
I fought off elevation nausea
long enough to stop and admire
the famous horses bred in the Pin Valley
known for their sure-footedness.
Not sure in the swoon where I was putting my feet,
but I may have come away from that encounter
with more than just a photo of colts nursing in tandem.

And in Manali, I paid 50 rupees to have my picture taken
on the back of a saddled yak
but it was a very fluffed up, brushed out tourist yak
undoubtedly much cleaner than me after
nine days sleeping in Himalayan hostels.

Reducing the adventure of a lifetime into a
scatological analysis for possible disease vectors
is no vacation reminiscence.
I am exhausted and the guy behind me
in 14A has been kicking into my seat
at intervals precisely timed to interrupt
my REM phase, so my perspective
is temporarily skewed.

But I forgot the monkeys. Happy to report that
monkeys no longer steal visitors' sunglasses and cameras
at the Taj, (a day trip south ).
Apparently the trick is to get a langurwallah
to roam monkey infested areas with his leashed langur,
because monkeys will never return to a place where
they have seen a langur, but there were
bands of monkeys traveling the walls
of the city parks in Chandigarh, and many more
loitering on the road to Shimla.
Not to say I knowingly encountered any monkey business
but the number of chai stops we made
crossing their paths supports the probability.

When my friend returned to Delhi
she told her housekeeper, who makes the best yoghurt
that I ever curled around my tongue,
to wash her shoes, I briefly considered
asking her to do mine also.
After all, she kept making scrubbing motions
offering to do my laundry,
but a formative conviction resurfaced
that if one steps in it, one deals with it,
so, one pair of hiking boots, one pair of
running shoes and one pair of sandals
are contaminating my luggage
and I hope the sniffing dogs keep their noses
pointed on drugs and bombs, and betting on this,
I get out my pen and check "no."