Operation Desert Mountain

17th August 2004

Getting things done!

After breakfast we tackled the task that was becoming a regular activity now - to get our luggage carrier repaired. The add-on carrier was just trouble. But then it’s hardly fair to blame the carrier when we were putting it through the most rigorous tests. Getting it fixed would be a minor task for any fabricator but here we tasted the real flavour of life in a small mountain village.

The previous night had been the finale of the 3-day Independence festival in Keylong and most people were still in a drunken sleep. There was only one shop where we could get our carrier fixed and the owner of that shop was…you guessed it, sleeping off last night’s booze. It befitted a civilised, considerate group of people to let him sleep in peace.

Unfortunately for him, we were not that group of people. We didn’t have the luxury to wait for him to wake up naturally. So, we got his address from his neighbour shopkeeper and went to his house.

We knocked and knocked, but there was no response.

“Are you sure, he is home?”, Vijay asked, unnecessarily.

“That shopkeeper said he drank a lot last night.”, Fazil supplied.

“Well, he’s not going to wake up like this.”, Vijay said.

“We really need him, there’s no other shop in that market who can do this.”, I added some unnecessary information myself.

“There must be a way.” S.B. said running his eyes around the narrow street looking at the one- and two-storey houses.

We found a way!

We went into the adjoining house and climbed to the rooftop adjoining the mechanic’s bedroom window and started shouting! Oh, it took time, what with the booze in his head, our language differences and him interested only in rolling over and going back to sleep…but finally he got it through his head that we were not a hallucination and we were not going to leave him alone until he heard what we wanted. Poor chap!

Then, it took us some time to explain to him what we wanted but he listened. Once things were progressing on a coherent, no-shouting basis, I left my team-mates to parley with him and I went on an errand of my own – to transfer photos from my camera to another media.