I Can't Understand You Because Your Mouth is Full of Food

Left for Kargil (on the way to Leh). We said goodbye to Rasool - we hugged, and Sarita was like his daughter and I was like his brother.

The trip to Kargil was the toughest to date. But also one of the most beautiful. The only vehicles that move between Srinagar and Leh are army vehicles (trucks) and a few taxi Jeeps.

We got to Sonemarg very easily. We drove along a river for most of the time, with forests on either sides, and mountains so high they took up all of my field of vision. Some mountains have snow and glaciers on them. At Sonemarg the pass ... The Pass begins. It is a one way pass, and traffic from our side starts from one o'clock. I wanted to get ahead of the hundreds of army trucks to have an easy drive.

But first was a little bit of incredibly infuriating administration. We had to fill out tourist forms. We filled them out over lunch. Then when we got to the pass again, another officer told us we need police permission. Where from? From the police office two kilometers back. Ok. We eventually found it. A tent. Some horses were in the fields. The glacier high up in the mountains. A cold river rushing down below. Laden horses. Nomads. Rain. All the trucks were busy proceeding up the pass.

I walk down to the tent, pissed off. In the tent are two beds. An officer on each. The one guy has his legs folded and is filling in forms for another driver. The other guy, is eating food with his hands. His hands are covered in curry. His mouth is full. He says something. I say I can't understand you because your mouth is full of food. What I really want to do is scream, and tell them that they're idiots and their rules and regulations are idiotic. The other guys is helping me now. He wants my registration number. I read it to him from my registration papers. (The mughshot on the papers is not a mugshot of me). The other guy mumbles something again and wants to grab my papers. I hold on to them as I don't want curry on them. I say tell me what you want, and I'll read it out for you. The other guy wants my chassis number for some reason. Curryhands wants the paper again. I hold on, but he gets hold of it. He then tells the other guy to cross out the registration number he has already written down. Then he asks me for my engine number. In the meantime he reads out the registration number for the other guy to write down (again). He asks me if I'm going to Leh. I say no, to Kargil. How long will you be staying in Kargil for? Between one and thirty days. The writer then tears out a piece of paper from his book and stamps it with a police permission stamp.

We get back to the pass - we're now part of the middle crowd. And the pass is full. At the pass nobody wants those tourist forms we had filled in earlier, and the police permission gets us through.