Oh! Mountain how big are you

Rising high and touching the blue sky
Higher than even an eagle can fly
So stout and strong are you.
Oh! Mountain, how big are you

Your white crown of snow
So radiant in its glow
Rising even above the clouds and proud
Oh! Mountain, how big are you

Those green forests at your base
Climbing the slope as if in a race
Loose breath before they reach the top
Oh! Mountain, how big are you


You can be seen from miles away
To many you have shown the way
A million storms could not break you
Oh! Mountain how big are you


Can you guess the reason for this seemingly childish poetry? No big deal there. Meant as a part of school work, these old bones wrote it for his niece who was promptly caught by the teacher at not having written something ‘herself’ as instructed. Squeezed between teaching and learning, the poor poem got a raw deal. Until I re-read it months later and got caught in the profound simplicity of the rhyming lines.

Riding on a motorcycle to them and across them and amongst them is one way of experiencing mountains. Though not as ideal as walking cause the motorcycle remains limited by the availability of at least a basic road, it is nevertheless not devoid of its own brand of charm. And needless to add, a strong element of adventure. Moreover, the habit of travelling among the mountains, like all good and conformable habits, is the hardest to break.

Close proximity to the mountains brings about a dramatic shift in one’s perspective. It is a landscape built by giants, the commonplace small elements like dust, mud, shale and rock, all mixed and muddled and fused into gigantic proportions. Mother Nature’s malls. Rich in beauty, life, variety, colour, climate and mystique, it is no wonder that most great mountains invite great reverence. Way above the tree-line where only the proverbial eagles dare to venture, names like Khardung La, Tanglang La become incantations of adventure. The throbbing comfort of the engine beneath the saddle is both companion and life-line, the engine’s beat an extension of the riders cardiac rhythm. And just as man only becomes aware of his heart beating when it trips or worse, threatens to stop, the rider remains cocooned within the safety of fires within the combustion chamber and remembers them only when they either threaten to flame out or go cold altogether. But an engine failure is an engine failure any place and anytime? No, it takes special meaning miles from home, miles up and nary a place to go to be warm, to rest and to get that flaming pulse of the engine going again.

The mountains become all the more bigger when seen from the saddle of a motorcycle. The exposure to the elements is akin to that on foot, only more so, as the wind chill grows exponentially with speed. Up there, it is like sitting in a cold draught. The mental exposure to heights is more. A road 30 ft across gets reduced to nothing in a slide. A skid at ridiculously low speeds could take both the rider and his steed over the edge. Add mud, slush, gravel, water and at places even ice to this and the edge gets closer still. Landslides, that a trekker will nonchalantly walk across, could hold up a biker for hours, even days. Streams gushing across the road, especially above snow line and in the afternoons can be fordable but not necessarily with the bike.

But a rider gains heart when he sees someone ‘driving’ across them. The cost/benefit ratio gets more skewed. In exchange for weather protection and the need for balancing, the 30 ft wide road gets narrower still. The inertia is greater and so stopping a lot more difficult. Landslide debris needs to be ‘totally’ cleared for the 4 wheeler to pass through. And fording a swollen melt-water stream becomes a bigger question mark, not just because of the unwanted buoyancy but also because of the hidden rocks that could poke a hole in the oil sump.

But irrespective of the manner and means of locomotion, all who venture into this landscape of the giants get touched by the spirit of the elemental survivor. The silence and space of the lofty mountains thrusts life into bright perspective. There is an immediacy to it amongst them. Balanced by an equally paradoxical placidity and calmness. This living contradiction is right before your eyes and every day is new and different. You are truly biting into life, and this feels tantalizing, intoxicating and frightening all at once. A land where even for the best of riders, God is on call. A land where one needs no prayers to meditate upon. As the mere sight of such natural beauty is meditation enough.

The motorcyclist chases the rhythm of the twisty tarmac. A rhythm in symphony with nature herself as the road follows the inborn contours of the mountains. He is a mere atom to scale in nature’s magnificence that mountains are. He rides with knowledge, experience, equipment and the efforts of hundreds upon thousands who have built those roads. He rides over their top and yet can never actually conquer them. All remain subordinate to their unyielding massiveness. Oh! Mountain you are eternity uncaged. Oh! Mountain how big are you??

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