To Pee or not to Pee

I often feel as though this entire experience could be conveyed through the lens of my bodily functions. There are so many places that I could take this hunch; however, to keep my grandmother alive and sheltered from the shock such a description would inevitably deliver I will keep this PG...13.

The bus to Jammu stops for the first time in 4 hours, not because the passengers may want to rest their cramped legs, but because we are stuck on a cliff in a traffic jam. I try to gauge whether it might be safe to skip out and duck into some bushes to relieve my flummoxed bladder. Last time Genna and I left the bus it was to check on our free-flowing packs merely plopped on top of the bus. We were nearly left upon its roof and it was only by scaling the ladder 3 rungs at a time that we jumped into the bus's moving door in time (leaving our luggage as free as a hippie girl's breasts).

So this time, needless to say, I was a little wary about hopping off the bus. Even if we were the only white girls around for miles, our fares had been paid and the bus was cramped. My body begged to differ with my careful consideration so I hopped off the bus with men who had heard the same nagging from nature for the past 3 hours.

Of all the reasons why I hate men I think at the top of my list lies this peeing while standing up phenomenon. If there is one thing that gets me really pissed OFF it's that men CAN and DO piss ON anything they damn well please to. This holds especially true for developing nations. So, while I have to scurry around the cliff's edge for a life-threatening 5 minutes, they get to pee in the middle of the road which I then have to walk across. Furthermore, my only chance for relief comes at a time when our bus has just rounded the inside nook of this mountain making my choices for privacy rather limited.

So here I stand, err, squat, above me a grid-lock of buses, hopefully in solid tetras form until my return, and across from me another long line of traffic undoubtedly gawking at my white behind dressed in fleece pajamas, a beacon of chubby hairless pale tissue, great. Finishing my business is another fun system in which I sit, as per usual, deliberating between that eternal choice: wipe with snow or shake it off. The vroom vroom of the bus makes that decision right quick for me and as I haul up my knickers squirming with the disgust of feeling those last droplets sprinkle my thighs.

Struggling up the mountain, it isn't until I hop the ladder that fences off the road from the ledge below that I realize I'm in trouble: not only has my bus moved, but there are at least 10 just like it both behind and in front of me. Brown face after brown face peer from their windows staring at me - because I belong on their bus or because I'm a lost white girl on a national highway in the middle of the mountains? Eeny meeny miny moe will have to work for this one. I pick a bus a few lengths up from where I imagine I dismounted and hop in the door. From the back seat where Genna and I are crammed in I see her relieved face smile back at me. She informs me that the bus's population did their best to calm the girl down when she jumped up for fear that I would be left behind. Lucky I didn't bring T.P. I suppose.

The next 8 hours reveal much of the mystery behind our being stuck in Srinigar these past weeks. Trucks are wedged bumper to bumper along the miles of mountain passes. Some bring water, others bring mountains of foodstuffs depleted from the city and villages alike during the snowfall. The view down the side of the switchbacks is unparalleled. Grass roofs are visible on the cliff side exhaling trickles of warmth from their small chimneys. Into the mountainside are etched steppes green with vegetation, each a massive hand crafted tier of velvet. Below weaves the strong of what I imagine to be the Jelham River. It's current brings both the Kashmir Valley and the surrounding mountains alive with a deciduous forest unrivaled by any other region.

At times Genna has to close her eyes as we wobble to and fro on the bumpy pass. Highway signs read random messages some about road safety others just basic advice like, stay clean and your friends will love you.

My next inappropriate description begins 18 hours later and yes, I'm still on a bus. In Jammu, for a reason we will never quite figure out, we let ourselves be herded from one 12 hour bus ride to the next only realizing why everyone has warned us to the contrary when we attempt to lull ourselves asleep. With an ajar window, no blankets and a road that bounces us to a height halfway up towards the ceiling there is little chance that we will do anything but suffer for the next haul of this seemingly infinite trip.

Somehow regardless of how parched we let ourselves become Genna and I find that we need a bathroom every 4 hours. This rarely happens. 12 hours, however, is pressing upon our sanity. So at hour number 11, when the bus finally stops to allow us some respite, the men and two little disheveled white girls erupt from the bus. Yet again, we pass the queue of pissers slide into a ditch and deal with the fact that most of the world can glimpse our gleaming behinds while we water the arid Delhi ground. At this point I would thank Krishna for so much as a hover toilet with the pitcher I have finally become accustomed to.

And so it is that we say Kuda-ha-fis to Kashmir, the land of piercing black eyes, succulent meatballs, and 16 year old minds in 25 year old bodies.