Vaporous Borders

As I gazed into the heavily opiated eyes of the tie-dye clad Tharu tribal and his 200-strong army behind him, their arms laden with bulbous rocks, one question ran through my mind– How did I get here?

The irony of his symbolic (of peace) choice of clothing, coupled with the fact that we were situated not 2 miles from the Bodhgaya forest – an irridescent Maya birthed Baby Buddha, here – was certainly not lost on me.

It starts simply. A ‘small’ detour on the way to Himachal Pradesh, leads our weary minds to a shoddy white board that reads – “WELCOME TO NEPAL.” After several hours of being groped by doe-eyed men, feigning innocence, on the stuffy train to Gorakhpur, muddy nothingness is a comforting sight as some friends and I cross the Indo-Nepal border on dilapidated bullock-carts. A pot-pourri of nationalities, we are mauled by testosterone-charged taxi drivers. But not a check post in sight.

I wonder: What then, makes a border any less fictitious than a winged, one-horned unicorn?

Just a few hours into my arrival in Kathmandu, I watch the worry-lines crease a hawker’s face as he predicts countrywide fuel shortages and rampant rioting by maoists, while wandering the picketed lanes of Thamel market. Against the colourful tapestry of Nepal’s culture, the fear is palpable.

News of closed borders shake any teenaged haze out of us. We lay low for 10 days by the glassy Pokhra lake, relying on kind locals, before making our way back towards the border.

“Leave?” laughs the border patrol as we pull up at SInauli. Their twinkling eyes and wiggling moustaches say it all. As sticky as a spider-web, the same border that allowed us in so easily is hardly prepared to let us out.

We drive through the breadth of Nepal – a risky but unanimous decision. As I suppress the urge to scrape the passing knotted trunks with my fingernails and feel their lumpy barks, we head right into a road block of raging tribals led by their hero of hope. Ah, so that’s how it happened.

Though their anger seems viral and our doom inevitable at first, our outwardly cool tempers and genuine empathy toward them, softens the hearts that lie beneath those muscled chests. We are set free with a single, stern promise – “ Tell the world that Nepal’s government does not treat her Tharu people right.”

I humbly agree though my heart feels inconsolably parched, even soaked in it’s own blood. I feel as though I have delved far deeper into the seedy underbelly of Nepal than a nomadic wanderer usually might.

After 36 grueling hours by the side of the road, the Nepalese army comes to our rescue. Concealed within monstrous ‘goods trucks’ we escape the country as anonymously as we came in.

As I look back at the seemingly vaporous line that just
‘Welcomed’ me to India, thoughts of a borderless world infiltrate my mind once again. Somehow, through its sheer nakedness, Nepal has become Indian soil. It has become home.