The Story of the Cheeky Donkey

Lateef assured us "no problem...you have problem you come back and see me." It's like I've never been thrown for a loop before. And so, we arrive at the airport, manage to botch no less than 4 orders of airport operations and in a matter of a couple hours the Himalayas loom below us in their enormous splendor.

As it turns out, Himilayan regions are cold in the winter time. As it also turns out, Genna and I are prepared for an idealized India of dry heat and possible monsoon rains (yes mom, you told me so). On the plus side, this means that we are the only white people for miles. On the down side, IT'S FRIGGIN COLD OUT HERE! Here begins a week of me and my Lufthansa pashmina.

Now let me just say, for the record, that it was all Genna's idea. Thats right, Miss Walk On The Safe Side told ME that we should go to Kashmir. And so, here we are dining on chai made by our man-servent Rashid who also "gets the heating" ready for frigid catwalk down the hallway to the icebox that is our room. The man humbly enters and stuffs our shared bed with four boiling hot water bottles that we promptly wedge between our hairless human limbs. It's rather a pathetic site how dependent we are upon the man - and it's awesome.

As is only possible with girls like Genna and myself, Rashid slowly warms up to our disheveled Americanness and begins to chat with us in broken English about this that and the other thing we don't understand. I convince the man to show me how to make paratha that evening and he invites us to the kitchen! 3 days in India and I've already found myself in a kitchen. The rolling pin is a solid and well oiled miniature of its US counterpart and does the trick of rolling round chapatis on a marble slab with perfection. With a few attempts of my own I'd say I rather mastered the technique.

Later that evening as Rashid begins to open up again as we have a discussion about Kashmir's quality of saffron. Kashmir, incidentally, is famous for the ludicrouisly expensive stamen: a lingum of sorts, how appropriate. Rashid tells us of the poor quality that is sold in Srinigar and passed off as the real thing. Soon, our rapt attention and his trust in us evokes possibly the best luck I have ever come across. The man opens his wallet revealing a wad of fresh saffrom threads from his home village that farms the flowers. He removes two barely dried strings and places them in my palm. As we let them melt on our tongues the man explains the infinite healing qualities of the magic stem and how this relates to the Koran. SAFFRONGASM!

And so, with a craving stomach we head for the journey of vashvan today: vashvan being a Kashmiri dish to whcih we have been invited by a townie. News to come, more eloquent and better structured. Ciao for now!