Day Four Continued

The trodden path branches and splits across the sunny, sloping breadth leaving us to navigate by the towering walls of the mountains. To the north the valley narrows, passing between two adjacent cliffs. Naturally, I visualize skull-crushing boulders streaming through the air, our hapless bodies like empty soda cans obviating a gigantic pounding palm. Another riotous explosion and subsequent growl rolls around us. What else could it be? Despite my desperate pleas to wait before continuing, Troy and I keep trodding the incline north towards the chasm, our heads slung skyward searching for the origin of this deafening cacophony.

Another 15 minutes brings us back to a clear trail, and we can see the white, rectangular entrance arch to Tal. A gentle path, easily traversed, stretches to the top of a small ridge flanked by a quaint wooden guesthouse and garden restaurant. As we reach the top and descend, approaching the gravel-lined, languid river below, a couple soldiers sporting loaded rifles loiter on a small stone wall. Upon spotting us, the adolescent pair swathed in ill-fitting fatigues, jogs boisterously towards us.

"Boom boom”

They chant and gesticulate ambiguously, fervently, as if the vigor in their manner assists in being understood. We offer a smile, and I giggle, these boys younger than my baby brother, but they block our path, waving towards the eastern cliff. This sheer face looms 1000ft overhead, blanketing sky with jagged boulders and sparse shrubs, only a crescent of celestial blue escaping from above. To our right, in the courtyard of the garden restaurant, we notice a handful of trekkers clustered together, strangely, shadowed by the west wall of the building. Coming closer, I notice they all face the eastern cliff and have their fingers plugging their ears. One trekker spills the valley’s strident secret: the soldiers are rebuilding the trail. Late monsoon rains washed away what the soldiers recreate artificially, dangerously, tediously with explosives. High on the cliff, boulders and stones plummet in virulent tributaries; rocky, jagged piles bridging, again, the queue of everlasting organic traffic.

3-2-1

Another wild shockwave quakes and ripples through the deep valley. My ridiculous expectation of spectacular, action-movie-esque annihilation (a vision equating volume) lessens the effect of showering smoke and rock, isolated and far away; plumes of haze dissolving into blue-bright light. The mighty explosion, seemingly a rapid succession of multiple detonations, splicing atmosphere from high to low pitch, is painful at such short range; a violent, echoing rocket engine. Observing the capricious expression of awed locals, their children riled into ecstatic hyperactivity, we wait through one more blast before being permitted back to the trail.

Minutes into resuming our pace, we fail to consider further effects of late monsoon downpours, plodding absent-mindedly through lackluster Tal. A yard of sand, four colorfully adorned Clydesdales and a few bland structures later, we are again in the open, sizzling valley narrowing between sheer stone walls. We veer from the intensifying, churning river, following the track of smooth stones slightly east, ascending to steps wedged into the mountain. Further back we passed a throng of mules and their herder; our alacrity to retain a lead catapults us, speedily, breathlessly, into solitude. I steal a glimpse of someone distant continuing north by the river and we start, again, into heavy, sweat-slogged climbing.

The stony, slick staircase extends up several hundred feet; each step losing width and gaining height. Nervously, I paw the wet mountain to my right, carefully securing my footing before heaving myself skyward. My heavy pack makes me cumbersome, top heavy, so I lean forward, almost brushing the vertical surface, literally hugging the path. Step by step I inch higher, and as the precarious staircase trickling with water narrows, my periphery vision is filled with nature from a blurry distance: the river, gravel and dry brush all around, far below us.

Twenty minutes of escalation bestows disquieting height and we are dripping from our soggy shirts. My heart, zealously knocking and pumping, flutters up a dry, swollen throat. I swoon in sweltering heat and vertigo. With better judgment, and a firm acknowledgement of my debilitating acrophobia, I fix my pupils straight ahead, but they defy me, falling straight down the hot, sheer edge to a fixed point directly below me, inches to my left. The familiar stiffness of panic slowly, apathetically, bleeding breath from my lungs and locking down my spine, extinguishing all motor skills, solidifies; I am frozen, hunched over these steps. Droplets of sweat slither down my forehead, streaming from my eyebrows. Blinking the salty moisture away, pleading for confidence, I struggle to relax, stay in control. Breathe.

SHI&^%@!!!

Troy is annoyingly far ahead of me, and he can’t hear me shout. The disjointed, archaic trail we climb continues to deteriorate, eventually disappearing into the rough of the mountain. I glance up 100 feet and see the stairs are barely the width of Troy’s body; a fact which he seems to pay no mind despite (for all intents and purposes) hanging from a vicious precipice. I am convinced we are not technically qualified to be doing this. Further up, straight above us, loose boulders jut from the craggy surface, bathing us in their unwelcome shade. A sickening, tightening fills my stomach. Keeping grip on the rock with my right hand, I turn my head back, very slowly, over my right shoulder. I can feel shreds of tense neck muscle croak and ping into motion.

I can’t see anyone.

During the next minutes, I spend my reserves of logic and calm rehearsing, rehashing, repeating, why I cannot die here.

Why are we using this route?
Why won’t he look back here?
Why the hell am I paralyzed, teetering on the cusp of rocky obliteration?

In an excruciating, panting beat, where I taste the utter desperation of mental collapse, there is a figure; not far from Tal, approaching from the south, slowly advancing by the river. Focused on this little ant of hope, I hold my ridiculous pose on the staircase: half crawling, half embracing, my head locked backwards and down, staring at this distant man. A few minutes pass as he comes into closer view. Is he jogging? Compelled to wave down to him, but clinging to the mountain side in an unhealthy panic, I decide to waste my breath and scream:

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey"

He's waving his arms through the air, like an umpire calling safe, but I know he couldn't have heard me. Troy is out of sight now, probably waiting at the switchback I will never reach. I loosen my grip to ease down the next step, smooth and slick with water. Turning around to face backwards, I rest my pack on the steep trail taking care to lean left, away from the edge.

It finally hits me: He's saying....NO! Get down!