The Road to Happy Valley 3

                     “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful
                       stroke of luck.”
                                                                                                    Dalai Lama


We spotted the big red Bandar-log monkeys on our final ascent through the clouds. In the upper reaches of the Kangra Valley, the dense green forest of Deodar cedars rose almost two hundred feet above the rhododendrons and rivers, into the aerosol coolness of the Himachal Pradesh air.
Earlier that morning, two manpowered rickshaws peddled furiously towards the exhortations of a departing driver. We had just enough time to throw ourselves after our packs, and onto his J&K bus to Dharamsala. Except for the three quick sweet cardamom chais and potato caraway carry away pakoras at a picturesque collection of shacks in the hill country, the shifting gears pitched us up and down without reprieve or remorse, along the contour lines of the Dhauladhar mountains.
Dharmashālā, derived from Sanscrit, means a spiritual dwelling or sanctuary. In more common Hindi usage, it refers to a rest house for spiritual pilgrims. Less than twenty-five years before we arrived, it became the penultimate rest house for the ultimate spiritual pilgrim.
In March 1959, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was chased out of his Himalayan realm, and established his government-in-exile at McLeod Ganj, forty minutes higher. Robyn and Julie and I finally stopped in the sky sanctuary of Little Lhasa, or Dhasa. We checked into a twenty-five rupee triple at Rainbow Lodge, with a panoramic view of the town, a sigh of relief, and an urgency.
In the émigré era of the Tibetan banana pancake, the Himalayan Restaurant was the epicenter of expatriate excellence. The Dalai Lama had told us that happiness came from our own actions. Sixty cents and a stroll through his neighborhood, took us right there. They were the best pancakes in the world.
The afternoon monsoon rain caught up with us on the way back up the hill, providing a perfect white noise excuse to reflect, recharge, and read, the rest of the day. Scrabble turned into sleep. Time passed so quickly when you arrived at a destination in India; and so slowly during the journey to get there.
McLeod Ganj was one of those places that swallowed time to nourish souls. Every morning the mist rolled down the lush terraced hills. We spent three days in its cool mountain air, spinning giant prayer wheels, eating our way through the Himalayan menu, and meeting Tibetans and fellow travelers. We ascended from banana pancakes to roasted barley porridge tsampa, which we spooned into the bottom of our buttered tea, and rolled into spherical morsels, trying to get the balance right. There was calm.
A Peruvian let me borrow his guitar, to entertain some children on the steps of the Rainbow. A wealthy Dar es Salaam daddy's boy boasted of his Tanzanian superiority.
“We have no beggars, no shortages, and no corruption.” He said. I told him how much I had made on the black market in two days.
One of my favorites was Yorkshire Dave.
“Ee, by gum.” He would say, before each sentence. One evening at the Himalayan, I pointed out the gigantic spider slowing crawling up his leg.
“Aye.” He said, and went on eating. There was another spider the same size, in our loo at the Rainbow. You could always tell a giant spider, but you couldn’t tell him much.
One morning, I sat in on a clinic under the tin roof of the Tibetan Medical Institute. Inside the yellow boards, I watched a Tibetan women doctor spend almost forever, listening to the wails of a large Indian lady in a gold sari. She put three fingers on each pulse, tore a hastily written prescription off her paper pad, and rolled two eyes at me as the Hindu hysteria left. She had more to give the turquoise and coral patients who followed.
Julie and I bought yin-yang rings, and I got two Tibetan books, one of medicine and one of language. Our last morning found packs on our backs, clouds on our shoulders, and Himachal verdant green Pradesh at our feet. We walked past barking dogs, down Jogiwara Road, to the inwardly sloped white walls and projecting black window casings of the Tibetan Library. Here I spent time with the rGyud bZhi, the definitive Tibetan medical textbook written by Yuthok Yonten Gonpo in the 12th century. His chapters were not organized much differently than the 20th century Harrison’s I had studied in medical school, except that he had written in black ink for his disciples, and gold for his sons, probably more than Harrison had done for his. Yuthok eventually left for Happy Valley with three hundred fellow travelers. I continued down the hill, toward the same destination, with two.
In Dharamsala, three lazy men behind a ticket counter, told us that the bus to Manali would leave at five am. The Hindi-speaking parrot outside was more informative. We found a bleak corner room in the Rising Moon, and ventured out for vegetable fried rice and the cloudy green fluorescent contents of a ‘veri veri Lime & Lemoni ’ Limca, the soft drink of choice in the subcontinent at the time, and the sponsor of the Limca Book of Records.
One record we were unaware of, was that Limca’s wonderful cloudiness came from brominated vegetable oil, a cause of bromide poisoning, the symptoms of which included restlessness, irritability, confusion, hallucinations, psychosis, weakness, and stupor. Since that could have been any day in India, no one was suspicious. Bromism also caused constipation, an extremely rare but welcome day in India. Limca’s popularity was unsurpassed, until the government in Delhi banned brominated vegetable oil, five years after we left.
At 3:45 am, Robyn and Julie and I escaped through the iron grate at the bottom of the Rising Moon stairs, into a black but eerily calm trudge to the lights of the bus stand. We chugged a hasty chai, heaved our packs onto the roof, and helped push jumpstart our bus on the road to Happy Valley Manali. The driver was an obese, blasé, chain cheroot-smoking unbuttoned medical disaster, but he took the curves in his sleep. We passed through the mountains, beside shacks and stalls and waterfalls, idle cows and goatherds, under circling hawks that seemed to be passing their reconnaissance on to the next circling hawk. The suspension towers of the hundred year-old bridge at Mandi were scraped with deep wounds, by decades of maneuvering buses. A ‘breakdown delay’ slowed us in Kullu, and a window shattered all over Simon, a third year British medical student, who cradled his hand painted thangka like a baby.
Following the towering pine and cedar covered hills along the Beas River, we finally arrived in the Valley of the Gods around five-thirty in the afternoon. Smiling Steve had recommended a particular mountain sanctuary. The girls and I retrieved our packs, and set off on an uphill path to find it.
Surrounded by orchards and flowers, we emerged into a clearing with a Victorian white-peaked hill station on the left, and late afternoon clouds descending down the soaring conifer-covered peaks to the right. We had arrived at the Sunshine Guesthouse. The British had introduced trout to the rivers in Manali. When they first introduced apple trees, they grew so heavy so fast with fruit that branches, unable to bear the weight, would collapse. After an ice-cold stream freezing shower, a dinner of roast chicken, potatoes, and apple crumble, we did too.
Manali was home to the Saptarshi  Seven Sages, the seven rishi patriarchs of the Vedic religion, represented by the seven stars of the Big Dipper. The Dipper rose high above the guesthouse night sky, across from the constellation of the creator god, Prajapati, who’d had an incestuous relationship with his daughter, the Dawn. In the major Hindu epic, the Mahabarata, Orion was also the warrior Skanda, six-headed son of Shiva, and god of war. Riding a red crested cock and blowing fearful sounds on his conch shell, he thrust his three belt star spear into the White Mountain, splitting the top off into the sky, creating the Milky Way, and restoring Peace.
After all this chaos and trauma, on my own long three-year road to Happy Valley, the peace was its own reward. I had entered the best time, a calm unfettered rest time. Destiny was mine to hold. With no possessions or priorities, our souls unburdened. There were singing crickets and birds, and the smell of wood fire and mountains. For just this span of time and space, across the Himalayan foothills, from the eternal struggle between success and death, was refuge. We would never be so free again.
The Mona Lisa smiled on the wall above us. She was named after the restaurant (or it may have been the other way around). A steady procession of shawl-weavers, thangka-painters, and other artisans, paraded their wares in succession, before our morning ritual of omelettes and bitter corn flakes. We hiked the paths in the hills above the rustic houses, with their overhanging wooden balconies and sandstone roofs, beyond the old Manu temple and newer Buddhist ones. A young boy asked us if we wanted to buy ganja. We pointed to the coarse hedgerows of wild marijuana growing as far as one could see all around us, along our trail.
“Not finished.” He said.
We returned to the guesthouse, just as the invading late afternoon clouds began their descent down the slopes around us. The evening dissolved into homemade tuna casserole and Scrabble games.
We woke next morning to the bell of a tricycle, vigorously thumbed by a little Sikh boy, chasing his Tibetan puppy in the courtyard. After our Mona Lisa breakfast, we began a long hike down the emerald Valley, beside the Bea's torrent to the Vashisht baths. Robyn and Julie and I got a deluxe family tub with a sewer pipe-sized hot gushing sulfur inlet and a small cold one. We jostled each other to stay under the cold one. After twenty minutes of splashing about, I left the girls to cool off on the terrace outside, watch the wall lizards, drink apple juice, and wonder why anyone could stand to be anywhere else. The incense-blackened interior of Lord Ram’s stone temple contained wonderful woodcarvings.
We picked apples and Himalayan strawberries on the way back to the Sunshine, and the calm unfettered rest time. Clouds came floating down, adding color to our sunset sky.





     Edgar Bergen: “Well, they didn’t have radios in those days.”
     Charlie McCarthy: “Yeah. That’s why they called it Happy Valley.”
     Mortimer Snerd: “Uh... Happy Valley?”
     Edgar Bergen: “That’s right, yes. Now, just try to imagine it. Can’t  
                                    you just close your eyes and see it?”
     Mortimer Snerd: “Well, I can’t see very good with my eyes closed.            
                                        My eyelids get in the way.”
     Edgar Bergen: “Well, you create a picture in your minds eye.”
     Mortimer Snerd: “Oh.”
     Charlie McCarthy: “That’s not easy for him. His mind gets in the way.”
                                                                                 Fun & Fancy Free (1947)