“High” Mountain Roads
It’s hard to describe to you how high the Himalayan Mountains really are. How do you describe in written words what you audibly gasp at when you see it? Your jaw drops open and you find yourself saying out loud “Oh my God…”
I grew up in the shadows of the High Sierras in California. I lived about 30 miles away from these mountains, and they dominated my view as I grew up. Like many people who grow up in the shadow of high mountains, it always bothers me to be someplace like Kansas or Nebraska where there are no mountains. When you’re surrounded by a flat horizon in all directions, there is just something in your head that’s always there saying, “something’s weird with this place; I’m uncomfortable.” I’m used to high mountains. High peaks in the Sierra Nevadas can range up above 14,000 feet, but are commonly 10,000 to 12,000 feet in elevation. One way you could measure my youthful sunset view of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west of my desert hometown is with your fingers. Looking to the west at what was frequently a beautiful sunset over the mountains, if you lined your fingers up at arm’s length with ground level (where the horizon would be were there no mountains), the mountains would appear about four fingers high. These are high mountains reaching well above timberline, and they are starkly beautiful at these elevations.
I remember being out about 30 or 40 miles from the Himalayas in India one afternoon on some low foothills as we were making our way towards the mountains in the bus. I was talking to the lead geologist about the mountains and he was commented to me about how high they were. I was used to seeing high mountains. I looked in the distance and there they were, high mountains as I would judge about four fingers high. And I remember saying, “Yes, those are high mountains. They are very much like the Sierra Nevadas where I grew up.”
And he said, “no, not those mountains, those mountains,” as he pointed up in the air. I didn’t understand what he was saying at first. I could see the mountains in front of me and above and behind them the air was thick with clouds. And I kept looking up where he was pointing thinking, “he’s pointing into the clouds?” And then I saw them; high peaks popping out way above the clouds, and I was astonished at how high they were! The mountains in front of me were like the Sierra Nevadas about 10,000 feet high, but these were only the Himalayan foothills – not the Himalayas themselves! Put your hand out in front of you but now don’t use three fingers, use both hands – twice! If you think you just blocked out about half your view, that’s how high Himalayas are when you see them. It’s incredible to see anything that high and know that it is still attached to the ground! A picture can’t do it justice; a description can’t do it justice. When you see them in real life they comes attached to an emotional sensation of immensity – shear and utter immensity.
We were driving up through these mountains. We passed the waterfall (from my earlier description) in the early afternoon and continued driving up and up and up. Occasionally the road switch-backed, but more frequently it just wrapped along the mountains cut precariously into the side of the slope and going higher and higher. I remember near sunset I couldn’t take pictures down into the valley anymore with my camera because it was getting too dark, and I remember marveling as I look down the slope below me. It was fairly smooth covered primarily with grass and it must have descended for thousands of feet at a very steep angle; it had to be close to 60° or 70° from horizontal. Slopes like this are typical expressions of a wet, warm climate where bedrock exposures are completely weathered away into soil. Smooth, long, grass covered, an exceptionally steep, the view simply dropped away below me for 3000 or 4000 feet down into the valley below.
The road we were driving on was quite narrow. Both lanes were narrow and the road itself was paved right over to the edge. There was probably not one foot of unpaved road before it dropped off into the slope below us. And needless to say, there were no safety guard rails. We were driving to the south, and that meant that we were driving on the outside lane next to the slope – wonderful if you wanted a view, but not so good if you wanted safety. It was about this time went to my surprise I smelled pot. And I remember being shocked thinking, “who in their right mind would be smoking marijuana?” Half of the people on the bus were students and would be receiving a grade at the end of the trip, and the other half were trekkers who could get kicked off the trip. Were they thinking that the lead geologist wouldn’t smell it? Or that because it was twilight no one would be able to see who was smoking marijuana? I turned around in my seat and began looking all through the back of the bus. Some people were sleeping, others were reading, and still others were looking out the windows into the quickly fading twilight. I couldn’t see anyone that was smoking pot. So I looked around in front of the bus, and still no one. But I plainly smell it, it wasn’t just a faint odor in the air, someone was definitely doing a joint. I look to the back of the bus again but still no one, and then I looked at the people in the front of the bus once more. That’s when my eyes glanced through the window at the driver of the bus and I noticed a haze of smoke around him! I thought, “Oh no! This can’t be!” And as I watched I saw him suck in another deep hit, hold it, and then blow it out in the air. The bus driver was blowing pot! We were on a high mountain road next to a slope that was practically a cliff for thousands of feet below us riding in a wide bus on the outside lane of a narrow little road with no guardrails, and the bus driver was smoking marijuana.
I thought, “My God, we’re all gonna die!”
Next week: The Oncoming Truck