I went on the leech walk I spoke of in my last post. There were three of us, and we were prepared. We had long socks and tucked our pants into them (quite a sight…) and salt, and lighters to get them off if we encountered them. It turned out that the leeches were the least of our problems…
We left around 10 AM after a large pancake breakfast at Char Dukan (literally “four shops”, the only four shops around where we stay). We hiked down the mountain in search of the beautiful stream that others had told us we would come across. At the stream, if you take the trail past it you will end up at flag hill, a beautiful side of the mountain covered in Tibetan prayer flags. That was our goal and we had packed a nice picnic lunch. However, we took the wrong trail at the stream. Our feet were covered in leeches by the time we reached the base of the mountain where the stream was and we simply went the wrong way. Before we knew it, we were on an entirely different mountain. We hiked along the beautiful green terraces through the clouds and fog (all the while throwing salt all over our feet to keep the leeches off). It was gorgeous, but we knew we were not headed in the right direction. One hour, we said, and we would have to turn back. It took us two hours to climb down the mountain, and would surely take us more to retrace our steps back up. We headed onward, hoping we would stumble across a larger trail leading us in the direction of flag hill. No luck. The trail ended. We looked across the valley to the mountain we were supposed to be on and decided that it would be quicker to continue forward than to retrace our steps all the way back. After all, it was mid afternoon and we didn’t want to spend the night out there. So, we continued on a small animal path and it suddenly ended. We had made it too far at this point to turn back; we would be walking in the dark. So, we decided to push our luck and hope that we could make our way back to the river and follow it to the trail we came down on.
The guy we were with (a mountain man from the Appalachians in his 5th year of grad school at Harvard) had a large umbrella that he used to “bush-wack” for us, and we followed behind him as he made a trail. We came to a cliff and decided to scale it, so he went first and made it to the bottom. He was covered in mud and leeches, but there was no other way. We followed. We continued on and found the river. All we had to do was follow the stream and we would come back to the trail we had started on. A small bridge served as a marker point, once we could see the bridge we knew we were safe. We followed the banks of the stream, but in most cases there were no banks and we were climbing over rocks and down waterfalls. Thank god we had a guy there because he scaled each waterfall, then put his hands and knees out to catch us on our way down. We were all soaked from head to toe.
I was no longer worried about leeches, or getting dirty, or breaking anything in my pack as we jumped waterfalls. I simply did not want to be stuck there during the night. I was tired, but didn’t think about it; I was wet, but ignored it; I was dirty and covered in leeches, but it didn’t phase me. I simply wanted to find the bridge that would take us to the path back up. Finally, right when I was starting to freak out, as it was nearing 5:00, I saw the tiny foot bridge in the distance. It was hell hiking straight back up, and at times the slope was so steep I felt like I was crawling. We could feel leeches in our shoes and clothes from swimming through the water and hiking through the brush, but we decided to wait until we made it to a leech-free spot higher on the mountain to take everything off.
Two hours later we made it to the top and I ran to the nearest shop for water. We looked and felt like hell, and everyone laughed at us. Anil, the shopkeeper who fed us breakfast and knew where we were attempting to go just laughed.
I do not regret it, as I think it made me stronger and the views from the green terraces at the top of the other mountain were amazing. However, I do not think I will be doing it again anytime soon. It was not what I expected for my third full day in Mussoorie, but it sure was a blast. I think the things that try us and the experiences that test our will ultimately make us more accepting to similar things in the future. Granted, I still don’t want bugs in my room, but I am okay with them even more now when I see them. I can’t say I won’t be dreaming of leeches for the next few months though….
Classes started this week and are already quite overwhelming. I started on chapter 7, though I should really be somewhere close to 14. The easy grammatical things I learned in my first two weeks of Hindi two years ago never stuck, so I am re-learning them now. It’s a lot to handle; I have class from 12-6 everyday and four different teachers all designated to work on a different thing. Its nice having one-on-one classes (even though they’re more expensive) because we work at my pace and when I don’t understand something I can ask a lot easier than if I were in a group. There is much more work outside of class than I anticipated. I am spending every free second on flash cards and grammar exercises, but I am excited to be able to converse a bit more freely in Hindi when in the bazaar or someone’s home.
So for now my free time on weekdays is spent doing Hindi, and reading this cool book about the man-eating leopard that was 800 km away. Leopards and leeches, who could have asked for better nightmares!
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