Srinagar has gone to the dogs.

Like in the rest of India, strays are everywhere in the city. But unlike in Delhi or Varkala, where they almost all have the greyhound-on-crack mien of Santa’s Little Helper, here they are dopey, lumbering mountain dogs with shoulders the size of a cement mixer.

Tonight they’re raising a racket, which gets louder when I open the uncooperative window looking over the lake to catch a breeze that might dry my shampoo-washed clothes a little faster. The barking and howling skips along the surface of the water like a flat rock. It seems like a turf war is being snarled out in the Old City and, on another front, on the opposite shore of Nageen Lake. It almost—almost—freaks me out.

Srinagar is excessively dark tonight. Not a single light breaks the blackness across the lake, even though countless houseboats are tethered to the shore, and a dozen large houses rise behind them on the hill. It’s only 10:45 pm. It’s too easy to imagine fangy packs roaming the alleys of the city, the humans nervously locked indoors. As the barks richochet around the lake, the dogs get more excited, working themselves up like a crowd looking to become a mob.

It’s too wild. Maybe I am freaked out.

But really, it’s unfair to blame the mutts. It’s the humans who unnerved me an hour ago by doing one of their exclusively human things. And that’s worship.

Like in Egypt, India (which seems a wholly separate country from Kashmir), the UAE, Turkey, Brooklyn—and, of course, any number of Muslim countries I haven’t visited—the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer five times a day (salah). This being the 21st century, his voice is broadcast from loudspeakers on the minarets, or towers. Some muezzin have soulful voices that carry a genuine spiritual dimension that is compelling. Others are ear-tormenting croakers who perhaps got the job by, say, being the imam’s brother-in-law.

Regardless, the muezzin is not answered in voices but bodies. Men head to the mosque, where they ritually wash their faces, heads, hands, and feet, take a place on a mat, and direct themselves towards Mecca. Then they recite prayers.

From the outside, you generally can’t hear these prayers: They are between a man and his god. Even if they were loud, they would probably be drowned out by the sound of life going on around the city: cars honking, women bargaining, the humming soundtrack that is unique to every place.

But tonight in Srinagar, things went down a little differently. Shortly after the evening call to prayer, the last of the day, a sound rose in the city. First it started in one area of the city, and then another, and then a third. Thousands of voices shouting, calling out. Nothing organized, yet spontaneous and communal. Aaah, ehhhla, ohhhhheee.

And then I realized what the sound was: religious ecstasy. The sound of beings willing themselves to transcend. And it definitely freaked me out. As they got more excited, were they working themselves up like a crowd looking to become a mob?

Perhaps one reason so many religions prohibit intoxicants is because there is no better high than religious ecstasy. It fills you with both physical and spiritual thrill. Whether it’s induced by rocking, chanting, meditation, prayer, singing, whirling, or fasting, the religious high must be better than most out there. Forget the opiates stunning you into a stupor, or the frazzled fleeting fun of cocaine. I like to get my drink on periodically, but I can’t say that a cabernet-shiraz blend puts me in touch with the Eternal.

But the religious high gets you off and right with your God simultaneously.

Transcendence: the God Erotic.

Years ago, a friend—one I had never suspected to be a candidate for fuzzy thinking—told me about his experiences at a sweat lodge in Long Island. As part of his training as a new member of the Bear Clan, some quasi-Native American New Age group, his spiritual leader, one Harvey, had suggested he go on a vision quest. So he sat for eight hours in a dark underground pit, the temperature rising, suspiciously aromatic smoke hanging on the damp air. He had visions of forests and wolves. He seemed to search the woods for three days.

I asked if they dicussed the physiology of his experience. Did they talk about how his blood pressure dropped, how his brain chemistry changed, how starvation and smoke and suggestion can induce remarkable reactions? Was there no wonder at the things the body will create under stress, its malleability, its astonishing ability to interact with the world in clever ways? Was there no amazement over the creativity of the brain?

No. They were too busy deciding whether the wolf was his spirit animal to appreciate these more mundane examples of the wondrous.

By 11:30, the dogs have quieted down. It’s still profoundly dark, and now nearly silent except for the twinkle of fish that thrust their gills out of the water for a moment as if aiming for instant evolution. Maybe I’m letting my imagination get the best of me. Maybe I’m being too influenced by what I’ve read about Kashmir. Maybe I’m looking for evidence of of zealotry where there is none. Maybe I’m the suggestable one.

But. I find this place sinister. Zealots try to remake the world so that it can be an endless wellspring for their religious feeling. Some take whatever steps they must to ensure its presence, to tap again and again into that delirious blend of righteousness, physical thrill, and mystery. We all know they will kill and die for it. The Abrahamic traditions are particularly eager to shed some blood for a Good Cause.

If there’s a more dangerous intoxicant than one you kill or die for, I’d like to know what it is.

Tomorrow, I leave for Sonamarg for a three-day trek in the Himalayas. If an Asiatic black bear eats me, at least it won’t tell me first that it is divine justice that I am to be devoured, and that it is the mere instrument of God.

Kashmir’s capital hides in the mist and watches.

The international airport at Srinagar, I am told ad infinitum, sees at least 10 flights a day. But Srinagar itself does not want to be seen.

The view from the plane as we make our final descent into Kashmir Valley says it all. Buildings near the airport are painted in camouflage—sand beige, olive green, and UK gray that do nothing to hide the structures. Better they were blotched the yellow of the saffron and mustard fields; the vein blue of the lakes, rivers, and sky; the bleach white of the cumulus clouds; and the surreal green of the firs on the Pir Panjal mountains to the west and the pines on the Himalayas to the east. Then, maybe, the city could disappear.

And then there is the mist—the everywhere, all-the-time mist that helps Srinagar hide. Is it the mist that makes people squint at me, and then, when my decidedly non-Kashmiri features register, gape in shock? I think that for them, I am the ghost of people past. A tourist haunt.

Pest-like in their numbers, the eagles over Dal Lake wheel in the mist in unrushed figure eights, as if they can’t remember where they parked their cars. And then, suddenly, AHA! They swoop.

This is my first impression of Jammu & Kashmir, the northernmost state in India.

It was slashed in half in 1947, just months after India gained independence from Great Britain and even fewer months after Partition carved Pakistan out of India. The ruling Maharaja dithered about whether to cast his lot (and that of his overwhelmingly Muslim populace) with India or Pakistan. When tribal raiders from Pakistan invaded his lands, he went with India.

Pakistan rules the northern third of Kashmir; the Line of Control that divides the state is about 200 kilometers north of Srinagar. The eastern border with China is also under dispute, but that’s a whole other story.

Since then, the countries have fought three wars over the state. In 1989, separatists entered the fight to demand Kashmiri independence; or to create a militant Islamic state; or to just blow shit up in revenge for predations by the Indian Army, which has long been accused of torture, assassinations, and disappearances. The separatists have been helped by muhjadeen from Afghanistan and money from Pakistan. According to Amnesty International, since 1989, 60,000 people have died. Locals say it’s more like 100,000. Check out Human Rights Watch 2006 reports on Kashmir in both the Pakistan- and Indian-controlled regions. Be ready for your blood to curdle.

Tourists have periodically been targeted by militants tired of burning down local schools and villages. Favored tactics have been beheading Westerners, shooting Indians, and lobbing grenades into random crowds.

Since 2002, when elections considered less rigged than those in previous years brought in more moderate voices, the situation has improved. Now there is much less violence. However, the “troubles,” “turmoil,” and “problems”—there are lots of euphemisms here—continue. And despite a conference going on right now in Delhi, it’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

You can find more information here. Be aware, however, that it’s very difficult to find objective information on Kashmir. Take into consideration that virtually all sources have deeply impassioned agendas.

Everyone insists to me that Srinagar is now safe for tourists. They less frequently argue that it is safe for Kashmiris themselves. When I ask people to recall the last incident of violence, the reply is almost always the same. “Oh, there is nothing, nothing,” the person will say, as did Majeed, the owner of the houseboat I stayed in. This will be followed by a concessionary, “Well, there was that one incident last year…”

The thing is, no one ever mentions the same incident. Everyone can recall a different, and recent, event.

“It hasn’t stopped,” Majeed eventually admits.

After 17 years of war, Majeed says, when there is violence, “we can smell it. And that is why we always go with our guests,” he says as we sit in the living room of the houseboat on Nageen Lake, just outside of Srinagar. “If something, God forbid, were to happen to you,” he continues, refilling my cup with more cardamom-and-cinnamon dense Kashmiri tea, “we would be the first ones behind bars—and no inquiry.”

Srinagar watches, and I am not excluded from the gaze. The first night, I want to go to an internet café. I’m pretty insistent. But I am delayed for various reasons. It’s not safe. There is no car. The cafe is closed. We have to wait for manager to come back. Wouldn’t I rather buy a carpet?

It’s impossible to know which of these, if any, are true.

I can’t decide whether it’s a logistical issue or I’m specifically being sidetracked. Furthermore, I can’t decide whether this is for my safety or because the Dilshan Group is one of the unsavory Kashmiri tour operators Lonely Planet warned me against. (Majeed, who will give me his priceless perspective over the next week, does not work for Dilshan.) It’s clear they only want me to go to certain places and to see certain things.

Thus my technical difficulties.

What I didn’t know was that these fanatics are always lurking. I’m sure as hell glad I had saved my “licentious” behavior for another day. I dodged a bullet there—after all, I’m a woman, and my salacious true nature might have slipped out at any moment, warping nearby good men with demonic female rays.

Who knows better than a woman herself how dangerous we are? “Last year, Kashmir’s leading women’s separatist group Dukhtaran-e-Milat or Daughters of Faith raided some internet cafes and destroyed equipment to prevent what it said were ‘immoral activities’ in the outlets.”

On his deathbed, the 16th-century Moghul emperor Jehangir is said to have pined for Kashmir, his summer retreat: “If there is paradise anywhere on earth, it is here, it is here.” A couple hundred years later, one of his successors built the fort that overlooks Srinagar. Last week, Hari Parbat fort opened for the first time in 17 years.

While the fort watches from Shikara Hill, the town looks at itself in the mirror of Nageen Lake.

My first morning in India, I rise from my bed at the Kashish Hotel in the Paharganj area of Delhi and do what all we all do: part the curtains to let in a little light. Good morning, world! Hello, new country! What adventures will today bring?

On a rooftop across the street, a tall man shoves and slaps a crying woman while two indifferent boys look on. He slaps her into the little brick rooftop room, and then shoves her out again. He shoves her through the doorway to the stairwell, and then slaps her back into the sunlight. He grabs her arm and throws her to the stairwell.

This is where she makes her stand. Apparently there is only so much violence he’ll inflict, and she knows it. She tries to brace herself in the doorjamb, her arms bowing like a cartoon cat straining to keep itself above the rim of a tub of water. He menaces her with a closed fist. She sits down abruptly. He pauses at this turn of events, standing over her while she dabs at her eyes with the hem of her purple-flowered sari. He raises his fist again, shouting at her. She moves only to put her forehead in her palm. She weeps into her wrist.

He puts his hands in his pockets and looks around expansively, like a man waiting for a train he’s in no particular hurry to catch. Sitting on a pile of bricks, the boys chat like it’s Saturday morning.

A few minutes later, he steps over her and down the stairs, off to work in his crisp blue button-down shirt and shoulder bag probably stuffed with lunch. She dries her eyes, rises, and slowly walks back into the brick room.

The boys begin to play cards.

********

I spend the day walking around Connaught Place with Alan, a fortysomething Belgian musician wearing the most ridiculous orange hippy pants. If he weren’t so sweet, the pants would be a deal breaker. They’re like a beacon for touts and beggars and fashion police.

Delhi is so insanely polluted I can’t stand it. Within hours, I have a lump in my sore, scratchy throat, a nasty nose, a corset-tight chest, and burning eyes. The noise, the smell, the heat—I cannot stay here. It’s impossible.

Looking for a better map of Delhi than is in our guidebooks, we stop in what deceitfully bills itself as a government tourist office. We leave with two packages for Kashmir. (If Kashmir seems like a step up, you know the place you’re in is bad.) He plans to leave for Srinagar the next morning. I’m waiting until Monday. I think I’ll see Alan in Srinagar, but I won’t. After my experience there, I’ll wonder what happened to him. Those fleece-me pants, his inability to shake the touts and beggars—I’ll hope he made it out of Kashmir safely, with money in his pocket.

That evening, I go to Noida, a suburb of Delhi just across the border in Uttar Pradesh, the neighboring state. An acquaintance, Mona is putting me up for a few days until I leave for Srinagar. We are looking for a neighborhood called Sector 31. The autorickshaw driver gets lost, and then more lost. The headlights of the rickshaw tunnel through the smog; somehow it reminds me of the Hale-Bopp comet.

We pull into what is supposed to be the entrance to Sector 31, but it’s blocked with sawhorses and barbed wire. A dozen bored but heavily armed police officers lounge in parts of uniforms—shirt removed here, pants removed there—who eventually, sullenly, pause their card game to give him directions. This is set-of-directions number four. We cross the road again, find Sector 30, and phone Mona. I put the driver on the phone with her—let’s start this again, from the beginning.

When he brings my bags into Mona’s apartment, he points to a plastic stick-on design on the threshhold. It is a pair of feet and a swastika. He tells Mona she should remove it. A swastika, he says, is a holy symbol and shouldn’t be placed where people’s feet, deeply unholy, tred every day. He knows because he’s not only an autorickshaw driver, but a pandit—a Hindu priest.

In Sector 31, I relax. It’s lovely to be in a home, a home with parents; it makes me miss my own terribly. I want to have a bit too much wine with my mom and make bad puns with my dad.

Mona’s mother feeds me vegan Bengali food, which is fiery and delicious, while her diabetic father saws wood in one of the bedrooms. Eventually I camp out in the living room. The room is astir. The air conditioner is broken, so the two ceiling fans are cranked up to helicopter. The elephant-tribal throw rug draping the couch on left, the English-language magazines on the couch to the right, the fabric flowers in their dry vase, my hair, the oxblood curtains as a tall as a teenage giraffe—everything flutters in the fan wind. Only the dozen statues of Ganesh are still.

********

The next morning, Mona’s mother peels the swastika from the floor as she’s leaving for work at the pharmaceutical company where she met Mona’s father. Though it’s a Saturday, Mona, too, heads to the office to interview a potential hire; an HR manager for a software company, she’s understaffed. I linger with her father over chai and a bevy of English-language Indian newspapers and magazines; India’s polyglot nature and colonial history have made English the lingua franca.

“Indian English is proper English,” Mona’s father booms at me, and then offers me a container of biscuits.

What a wonder it is to be able to read so much about what’s happening in a country right at the moment I’m there. The media are in an uproar about the week-old decision of the Supreme Court to put a stay on the 27 percent Other Backward Classes (OBC) quota law, which holds spaces in universities for these castes. It’s India’s affirmative action, and reactions to it are just as impassioned as they are in the US. There are protests against the stay and rallies for it on campuses across the country.

When Mona comes back, we head for one of the many malls in Noida. It’s a Saturday afternoon in a blistering heat that’s unusually intense for early April, and the Arctically cool malls are the place to be for the Growing Indian Middle Class I keep reading about. Mona and I eat at Ruby Tuesdays and shop for kurtas. I buy one in black and another in orange.

Later that night, we have dinner and drinks with two other Delhi natives. There is a lot of talk of music, and a lot of laughing. The atmosphere changes when they find out that Mona lives in Sector 31. “Ah, the Killer Sector,” one of them says.

“The Killer Sector,” Mona repeats ruefully.

Mona explains. It was in Sector 31 that at least 20 children were raped, killed, and partially eaten by a psychopath. They were children from the poor village nearby. They had been lured by promises of sweets and money. Though their parents had gone to the police about their disappearances for several years, they were ignored until bones were discovered in a drain behind a Sector 31 home.

The night before, we had been at the correct turn-off for Sector 31. It was where the police were playing cards.

********

As we drive back to Sector 31, I think about Alan in his silly orange pants and ready hand in his pocket, handing out rupees. I think about every time I’ve waved away a child asking for baksheesh, tips, pens. If I had given them these things—so small in my economy, so cheap—would they have asked just one less other person? Because the next person could be an Alan, or could be a killer.

Most likely the next person could be like me. I tell myself to donate to charity instead, to on-the-ground programs that provide homes and schooling and safety. I tell myself that Indians themselves will tell you not to hand anything out because it encourages begging, and that many of these kids are exploited by adults who force them to beg.

But I know that my hand stays in my pocket because it feels like once it starts, it won’t stop—as if the floodgates of need will be irreversibly opened, and the masses will collapse on me. I know that it is because I am ashamed that everything I have is everything they need, and I am not generous enough to part with it.

I may be selfish, but I am not dangerous. But does my callousness increase the danger? After all, who is quickest to parcel out what desperate children need—the Alans of the world, or the killers?

Before I left for this trip, I wondered how much I would change. The undertaking seemed so huge, so monumentally challenging, that change seemed inevitable. And that was partially the point—to shake my perspective. But I worried. What if the world so altered me that I didn’t recognize myself anymore? What if, in the end, I became a stranger?

“Christ. I hope I don’t find God or something,” I fretted to Justin, an old friend, one night over drinks. He, bless his heart, laughed at me. “That’s unlikely. You’re the biggest atheist I know,” he said.

“Halle-fucking-lujah,” I agreed, and we clinked our wine glasses.

Kindness moves me. Mountains move me. Love moves me. Dogma does not.

However eh-leaning-to-hostile I remain towards organized religion, its accoutrements are nevertheless compelling. Temples, mosques, and cathedrals often have a very of-this-world opulence—so distracting, it seems to me, to the contemplation of the numinous, as Sagan put it—that fascinates me.

Plus, they gleam. Ooooh. Shiny things.

The most famous temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is Wat Phrathat, a glistening tower of gold atop the mountain Doi Suthep, which you reach by climbing 309 dragon-flanked steps.

A white elephant is said to have brought a bone sliver from Buddha’s body to the top of the mountain in the 14th century. After completing the arduous task, it died.

Gold paint reflects the blazing sun on the temple walls. Gold ribbons festoon the grounds. Flowers and designs are magenta and mauve and overripe orange, greens and blue like a park in paradise. It’s a banquet of color. It makes me hungry, and it fills me at the same time.

How are you supposed to remain calm in all this glitter? It’s very stimulating.

The walls of the temple are lined with metal bells the size of kids grades pre-K–4. Visitors are encouraged to ring them.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? Couldn’t tell you. The Zen koan has persisted for a reason, I guess, though I’ve always found it a bit gimmicky.

But this is the sound of one bell ringing: Doi Suthep Bell

And this the sound of twenty monks chanting: Monks Chanting

When you enter a Buddhist temple, you should get low to the ground. Not prostate, but perhaps lower than the depiction of Buddha. On Doi Suthep, I sat on my heels. I kept quiet. I tried to avoid eye contact with the monks. But this jostling family had no such qualms. As the monk put his hands on the crowns of the boys’ heads and chanted something quietly, they fidgeted and laughed and demandingly poked at their mothers. And they all laughed: Kids and Monks

Their cheery ease reminded me of something. I’ve always said that if I had a god, it would look like one of those jolly fat laughing Boddhisattvas, not a creature strung up and tortured as a testament to humanity’s cruelty, the brutality sanctioned by a god who would kill his own son to make a point.

Yet even after months in Asia, I remain godless. I’ve had thousands upon thousands of Hindu deities to chose from in India alone. The Elephant-snouted Ganesh is tempting, with his oversight over beginnings, obstacles, arts and sciences, intellect and wisdom, and writing. So is the monkey Hanuman, with his exuberant love of leaping a moral force in its own right, put to good use to save Sita from the demon Ravana. Plus, I like primates, regardless of their poo-flinging tendencies.

Still, I’ll take my nourishment from the kindness, the mountains, and the love.

Perhaps my most spiritual moment came when I got food poisoning. My body went into full-on storm-the-Bastille revolt. I didn’t call out for my maker, but I did get a little pagan. I believe I caught a glimpse of a Platonic ideal of physical misery. It seemed like a white beam of ephemeral light among the foul substances that accompany food poisoning. Wow, I thought. Now I know how bad this particular variety of misery can be. And it’s really, really bad. But it’s not killing me. I can handle it.

One less thing to be terrified of in this world.

And of course, I lived to tell the tale: altered by about two pounds, but still plain old me. Songthaew

Over the course of the day Katie left for New York, I would periodically calculate where she was in her flight. The first leg was from Bangkok to South Korea, the second to New York. Christ! I would think. She’s still flying! And then I’d float on my back in the pool.

Perhaps around the time she landed, Amelie and I headed north to Chiang Mai. The goal: elephants.

There are several camps around Chiang Mai. For various logistical reasons, we headed to Maesa Elephant Camp. We drove there on our rented Honda motorbike. It cost about $8 for 24 hours, including bare-bones insurance (for the bike, not our skulls).

Speaking of the motorbikes: Amelie imposed a gag order that keeps me silent about The Potted Plant Incident, but when mum is no longer the word, I’ll let you know.
At Maesa, we bought a bundle of bananas and another of sugar cane to bribe the beasts. They get their sugar fix by wielding these things.

I wish I had one. They seem so, er, handy. Every once in a while you’d get thumped with a trunk or snorted on with what sounded like disdain.

Handy, I tell you.

The benefits of the bribe are interesting. For instance, if due to some disaster you are rendered incapable of placing a hat on your head, this baby elephant can be your Jeeves. (photo by Amelie)

Have you ever been smacked on the back of the head by an elephant, a la Dad telling you to knock it off and stop acting like a smart ass?

Amelie has.

And then it was bath time.

In the water, the elephants frolicked like enormous puppies. So exuberant and joyful.

I’ve never been so close to elephants before. They have more intelligence in their eyes than any other creature I’ve encountered besides gorillas and chimps.

After the bath time came the show. This is where things got confusing. I felt ashamed for the elephants, for all of us, as they rocketed soccer balls at a netted goal and painted still lifes of flowers (though one did Jackson Pollack his canvas). Even the segment where they dragged wood logs – their former employment – was more sad than impressive.

The whole thing seemed so undignified. Isn’t it enough to just watch them being elephants? That’s pretty damned amazing on its own.

However, Maesa has a good number of juveniles and a few babies. Breeding in captivity is a good indication of health and happiness, right? But all those bananas and stalks of sugar cane – do the mahouts regulate how much they eat, or is it just all-day gorging?

Maesa also has the dubious distinction of having made it into the Guinness Book of World Records in one of the many extravagantly stupid and pointless categories that constitute the GBWR: “the most expensive painting by a group of elephants.”

Do you know what I want? To be in the GBWR for the number of times I haven’t tried to set a world record. Every moment of my life, every breath and step, I am not trying to break a world record. The number must be in the billions.

Merit-wise, that has to be on par with the world’s largest slice of pepperoni pizza made with organic spelt flour by blind Dutch nuns and baked in a solar-powered oven.