Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Wherever I looked there was a different kind of face floating along
in the river of humanity in the bazaars: cheerful Tibetans come to
trade their woven carpets; an entire range of hybrid Occi-Oriental
mugs from the various Soviet Central Asian regions; sly, hawkish
faces from Kashmir with Shrewd Negotiator all but stamped on their
foreheads; ill-tempered, swarthy Iranians, seemingly ready to kill to
close a deal if that was what it took; and little impish Nepalese,
disarmingly shy, and using this innate inoffensiveness to their
advantage.
The only major railway stop between that panorama of nations
and races spreading out north of India and the subcontinent's
capital, New Delhi, Amritsar has always been a meeting place of
worlds. And where worlds meet, much is traded, not all of it legal.
Besides the silks and spices, the ivory and copper, there was wool -
pashmina wool from the downy-soft throats of Himalayan
mountain goats, and just as eagerly sought out in Amritsar as it was
up in Srinagar, Kashmir. But the towering, burly figures with their
aggressive beards and stately turbans also wore leather bandoliers
plugged with shells in a forbidding X across their chests, holding
the rifles that required these shells like sceptres, symbols of office. It
was probably not wool they were trading. Booze, guns, hashish - it
all came through Amritsar. And hardly a week passed without some
Indian newspaper reporting a shoot-out between such smugglers
and the border guards who were their occupational hazard. It was
not always the border guards who emerged victorious.
'Pathans,' Ray mentioned, pointing out one walking arsenal nearly
seven feet tall. 'Pathans or Swatis, most of 'em.'
I could see why few people wished to travel into Swat.
After a meal of stewed bones with a pleasant man called Singh -
which in the Punjab was much like introducing someone as 'person'
- Ray bought a collection of seventeenth-century Tibetan coins
from him, then announced that we ought to visit a whorehouse he
knew with Burmese girls who would 'tickle your heart with their
tongues - from the inside .'
I declined an offer at last. The longer I remained in India, the
more romantic my ideas about sex seemed to become. Instead, I
arranged to meet Ray later, heading off to the temple - not guessing
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