Three Images

The crisp fall temperatures were perfect for camping. While on an afternoon hike, we’d already enjoyed the fall palette of colors God had splashed throughout the trees. Then the sun set, serenely washing the sky in pinks, oranges, and blues. Now a full harvest moon illuminated the night sky.

All the breathtaking imagery of a perfect October evening in Indiana was heightened as I glanced over at Bernie, tending the campfire in his cowboy hat, denim shirt, and jeans. Leisurely pouring himself a cup of coffee, he looked so different than the man I usually see in Tokyo, whose schedule finds him running from meeting to meeting, always clad in dress shirt, necktie, and suit, often pressured because the expectations are far greater than can possibly be accomplished by one man in one lifetime. Nevertheless, he tries, and the resulting tiredness often is as evident as his blue eyes and mustached upper lip. But I saw nothing of that this October night at the campfire. The “real” Bernie had returned and his satisfaction was as soothing as the hot cup of coffee he was soon sipping in silence.

Shortly afterwards, I met another blue-eyed, mustached gentleman. A generation older than my husband, he obviously suffered from Parkinson’s disease and the inevitable physical decline that comes with more than eight decades of life. Nevertheless, this descendent of Scandinavian forefathers had recently become the pastor of a church—not a fill-in, temporary until someone else could come, but the full-time leader. Granted, the flock he was shepherding was small, but helping people—no matter how many or how few—is never a small task. And at his age and condition? It was not the peaceful image of an evening around a campfire.

Neither was the toddler’s hand that grasped at the unyielding padlock which tightly held shut an old wooden door in a rural Indian village in August. No matter how her chubby little fingers worked at it, no matter how many times she tugged at it, the square silver lock obstinately refused to give in and open. Consequently, the door would remain closed to her.

But that’s as it should be. One cannot fault a padlock for doing its job. Yet I am haunted by that vision. The tiny, milk chocolate-colored hand on that lock paints the picture of the difficulty of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in so many parts of the world, Japan included. Who will introduce the key to the uncompromising locks that bind so much of our world today? Jesus declared, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). But who would quickly open a door to a stranger? Not many people I know. Yet we would all warmly welcome our friends. I’d like to be that friend, bringing Jesus along with me as I visit. It can’t be left to eighty-something year-old people in ill health, no matter how willing they may be. Where are the others who will join me in this mission?

A Himalaya Motorcycle Experience: Part 3

The toilet plant of the Himalaya Mountains

A chapped cheeked cherub

A shepherd in front of his smoky shelter

O—Oxygen and outages. When you’re up nearly 14,000 feet in the air, oxygen is something you think about frequently—as in, is there any oxygen up here? Yet we saw children running with abandon, never tiring, and shepherds moving across the hillsides as effortlessly as leaves floating down mountain streams. Obviously, feeling like there was an oxygen outage was our problem alone. The only real outages we experienced were with electricity and water. We had neither in the “hospital” in Kaza and no electricity for two days in a row in Manali when overstretched transformers exploding into magnificent fireworks displays across the street from our guest house.

P—Picnics, prayer flags, and potholes. Our daily routine included a picnic lunch wherever we stopped along the way—sometimes in fields of barley, potatoes, or green peas. If it happened to be a windy location, Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags would flutter nearby to punctuate the landscape with bright blues, yellows, reds, and greens. Prayer flags decorate the Himalayans as surely as potholes characterize the questionable roads.

Q—Quest and quality crew. We began saving for this motorcycle trip more than 30 years ago, just after we first went to Japan as SAMs (special assignment missionaries). Our plan was to motorcycle around the British Isles on our return to the United States. However, I was eight months pregnant by the time we left Japan, so we postponed our dream. Finally our quest of long ago was realized in August. We are so grateful for our top quality crew of six men who helped make the experience possible for us.

R—Rain, Rohtang Pass, and rupee. Generally, we loved the ride—except in bone-chilling rain toward evening the first day. (We also had two nights of dripping tents, thanks to the rain.) On our return loop, the rain turned to sleet as we crossed Rohtang Pass, a tourist spot famous for beautiful scenery—or so they say. We never saw anything but clouds, food stalls, saddled yaks, and other attempts to coax rupees from visitors. (One dollar equals about 40 rupees.)

S—Sleeping bags, switchbacks, and shepherds. Not only did we snuggle in sleeping bags in our tents, but we also used them in guest houses. No doubt our 25-year-old bags were in better condition than the bedding offered us—and certainly far cleaner, although after long days of riding on dusty roads defined by switchbacks carved into rocky mountainsides, we were dirtier than the bedding. But at least it was our own personal dirt. Finally taking showers after three days on the road was as thrilling as falling in love. Every day we shared the roads with many shepherds coaxing along their herds of long-haired goats, sheep, and donkeys. No sleeping bags for them in their rocky dugout shelters and, I surmise, no showers, either.

T—Toilet, tetanus, and tingling hands. A most amazing sight was the toilet plant of the Himalaya Mountains! Too bad the canvas outhouse erected nightly by our crew only had a freshly dug pit inside. Still, it was a far cry better than the outhouse Chiyomi visited—where she cut her forehead on the rusty tin roof and ended up needing a tetanus shot. Outside of camp, it was always far better to go behind a rock or bush. In addition to the toilet facilities, another inconvenience was our morning bouts of tingling hands, one effect of altitude. Imagine the feeling starting to return to your hands after they’ve been asleep for a very long time. Then multiply the pain by 100 or so. No wonder I couldn’t force them to pick up and hold my tea mug some mornings.

U—Uno, urine sample, and ultrasound. What fun it was to play Uno with our crew. We just had to watch out for Deependra, who habitually looked at other people’s cards—but in the most obvious of ways. You just couldn’t get mad at his childlike enjoyment of the game, and you couldn’t stop laughing, either. Laughter was also our response to the TINY-mouthed jar Abby received in which to give a urine sample (see G, I, and K). Even a man wouldn’t have been entirely successful. That Abby managed a sample at all was cause for rejoicing, as was the ultrasound that showed a healthy baby, despite all.

V—Vibrating and vistas. While our hands felt like they were vibrating, especially in the mornings (see T), we felt vibrations everywhere whenever we dismounted the bikes, thanks to the roads (see E, G, and I). The government could make a fortune if it opened an amusement park in northwest India and turned those roads into a thrilling ride. They could be in business immediately upon constructing a ticket booth. Still, the vistas were breathtaking, but we women were always concerned whenever our driver/husbands took their eyes away from the cliff-hanging trails for more than a moment.

W—Waterfall, water, and wind. The vistas we enjoyed included amazing waterfalls, sometimes cascading three or four different levels from the melting glaciers above them. However, instead of crystal-clear mountain streams (picture the Rockies of Colorado), these waterways were full of silt and the color of delicious chai—appropriate for India. They were not appropriate for drinking, however, which is why we so appreciated the cases of bottled water in the supply jeep. But I didn’t appreciate the wind-burned, chapped cheeks and runny noses of children everywhere along our route, signs of the constantly blowing wind. I wish I could have handed out bottles of lotion and packets of tissues.

X—(E)xhaust fumes and (e)xtraordinary. As a word, “extraordinary” generally is positive. However, when applied to the exhaust fumes that overwhelmed us whenever we passed the road-hogging, amazingly gaudy, cargo trucks with more hand-painted designs than an art museum, “extraordinary” is not a compliment. Gratefully, traffic of any kind is light in the Himalayas, so there were only three days when we suffered. The extraordinary scenery every day more than made up for the fumes, but it did help to have bandanas to cover nose and mouth.

Y—Yellow, yak, and YWAM. Among the staples of Indian cuisine are rice and dhal, a very healthy lentil dish known by its yellow color, some of it derived from tumeric, the best known Indian spice. While we encountered the pungent smells of Indian cooking daily, we were surprised that the only yak we encountered was the poor specimen saddled on Rohtang Pass (see R). But we were pleasantly surprised to find a YWAM discipleship training center in Manali, despite the difficulty of Christian work in that part of the world.

Z—Zoo. Officially, our nine days on motorcycles didn’t include visiting a zoo. But that didn’t mean that our trip lacked animals. We could have opened our own zoo with the animals we saw: elephants, dri (a cow and yak combination), monkeys, camels, yak, vultures, an eagle, goats, sheep, fox, cows, dogs, donkeys, mules, horses, and a mouse (in a restaurant where we tried to ignore it and enjoy our food even while it scampered around the room and UNDER OUR TABLE). While I am shy of words here at the end of the alphabet, I am not lacking in emotion, especially overwhelming gratitude to God for the beauty of the world he has made and filled with such lovely people everywhere.

A Himalayan Adventure: Part 2

The magnificent Himalayas

Picking green peas in Kibber

A shy but welcoming smile in Kibber

F—Ford and fall. Although we traversed roads—in the technical sense of the word—our route was by no means easy. The “best” roads were the places where there was more pavement than potholes, but this didn’t mean that the asphalt was always visible, like the many times we had to ford a stream or melting glacier. Fortunately, there was no rushing water where I fell from my throne behind Bernie. But my bruises painfully reminded me for days that there were plenty of rocks there. Thankfully, I was able to continue riding.

G—Guard rails, Gatuk, and green peas. Some of our roads were mere passageways, little more than paths carved into mountainsides and hanging 300 feet or more above the rocky gorge floor—and no, there weren’t guard rails. Warmer memories surround Gatuk, the 22-year-old young woman with the beautiful smile who shared Abby’s hospital room. (As with the word “road,” it's a big stretch to write “hospital room,” but it’s best to leave more descriptive terms out of this blog so you won’t get sick at your stomach.) We also enjoyed the laughter of women who were picking green peas in Kibber (see K).

H—Himalayas, helmet, and horn. No matter what we faced, the scenery of the Himalayas was beyond description and worth every challenge. While we might have been tempted to ride with the wind blowing through our hair, Cheryl’s first thought when her head hit the ground was, “Thank God for this helmet” (see F). We wore them religiously. We also used our horns religiously, just like all good Indian drivers. They believe the vehicle’s horn is as important as its engine! However, our horns more often coaxed long-haired goats, sheep, and donkeys off the road rather than other vehicles.

I—“Inconvenience Regretted,” IV, and Independence Day. The mountain roads may have been terrible, but at least the Indian government felt terrible too. They politely and profusely apologized through signs declaring, “Inconvenience Regretted.” That was the most common sign we saw and we came to expect them at least several times daily. What we didn’t expect was that Abby would be hospitalized and receive several bottles of fluids and medicines through IV drips. As a result, we unexpectedly got to celebrate India’s Independence Day—August 15—in the village of Kaza (see K).

J—Jeep, Jispa, and jalebi. We six on motorcycles had a support crew of six men who traveled in a supply truck (ahead) and a jeep (behind). What a great crew! Imagine eating homemade pizza (from scratch) while camping! Our last night found us in the tiny village of Jispa where we enjoyed a fantastic dinner of roasted lamb and vegetables. I was happy it did not include jalebi, a fried, overly sweet honey treat. (My liking of Indian cuisine doesn’t include Indian sweets.)

K—Kibber and Kaza. Some of my favorite experiences were in two villages: Kibber, reputed to be the highest village in the world at 4,200 meters (13,780 feet); and Kaza, where we got to enjoy indoor plumbing, hot showers, and a bed after nights of camping. While thoughts of the hospital in Kaza cause me to shudder, the friendliness and surprisingly good English of people in Kibber and Kaza leave me feeling warm all over.

L—Lassi, Limca, and litter. Two wonderful drinks we enjoyed: lassi (a sweetened yogurt drink, even more delicious when thickened with fresh banana or other fruit) and Limca (a lemon-lime soft drink that’s easy on the stomach). Something we did not enjoy was the litter everywhere humans were. Sadly, caring for the environment doesn’t seem to be included anywhere in India’s race towards development and advancement.

M—Manali, marijuana, and mechanic. Our starting/finishing point was Manali, a small town of fewer than 7,000 people in Himachal Pradesh state. It is known for apple orchards, great views of Himalaya peaks, and for marijuana. The air was so thick with the smell of burning marijuana that you could almost get high by just taking a morning walk. I didn’t need that headache. But we did need our mechanic. All of us agreed that he had magical hands (see E).

N—Nasty and nice. Along with the litter and some odors (see L and M), the nasty: exhaust fumes from trucks (fortunately of nine days, we contended with this for only three); pit toilets (but worse yet were the places where people didn’t even bother to use the toilets); the hospital in Kaza (see K); and some of the effects of high altitudes (you’ll appreciate no details). Happily nice prevailed: “Betty” served in our tents by Deependra (see B and C) who also gave much attention each morning to our breakfast table—a tarp on the ground, to be sure, but set out with great style; breathtaking mountain views; camping where we were the only people for miles around; and wonderful friends with whom to share wonderful adventures.

Coming soon: the third and final part.