a glass of glacier, please

8.31.2012

Just after six a weary-eyed Suraksha comes to room six to do homework.  Right.  We finished the toffee and she’s staring at the chocolate raisins.  Twelve hours later she has just eaten three pieces of dark Dutch chocolate that says it is 75% pure on the outside wrapping and the intrepid nine-year old has, in a matter of minutes, become possessively obsessed with eating the remaining 17 disc-shaped pieces, discarding the kit-kats, Cadbury chocolate macadamia bars, and the others with more sugar for the near purity of a mind-altering, palatably organic satisfaction experience. 

Does this happen to other women?  Yes, I saw the movie “Chocolat”.  

At 9am I went down with Suman and met the taxi just as we reached the elementary school.  The driver dropped him off at his boarding school forty minutes later and then took me to immigration where I got another one month visa.  I’m afraid to admit I’m always writing something spurious on these forms, like now, what is my permanent address, Salalah?  Where else for the worldly homeless can I say is my permanent home?

At 3pm we picked up a tourist from the UK at the bus station and up we went to Sarangkot.  I carried the woman’s huge back pack up Moti’s Way and it felt good to sweat and feel the cool air.  Hannah didn’t know we’d be walking up and by the time we’d reached the steps to the view point she declared she was asthmatic.  ‘Well, there are only 84 steps to go.  You’re almost there.’  I didn’t tell her those countable cement steps were uneven, some at femur snapping heights.

The rain pounds everything at 9pm.  The new dining room ceiling is holding steady.  If anything leaks now is the time to catch it. 

While at immigration Ramesh came and I gave him photos and money for the trekking permit.  Right now I’m raring to go in a week’s time.  I don’t know who will be my guide or if I will go alone, either way I need to walk into nature.  I would like to drink from a glacier.  What does glacier water taste like?  Is the water free from the usual minerals you find in the purest bottled waters? 

I would like to see a snow leopard but I think I’ll be going in the wrong direction.  I’d like to wrestle with one and get it’s holy fur in my nose and then have masala chai afterwards.  Thunder booms outside, Tame Impala travels inside.