Adam's Peak

2 am in the back of a minivan on a dark road in Sri Lanka. The light in the van is dim and the air conditioning was dim, too, feeble and insipid like an old woman’s breath. Outside the darkness was absolute. We drove past dense jungle, perhaps. Or mountains. I couldn’t tell you. Or rather, I cannot remember; I remember just the reflection of my face in the dark window, a pale hologram. Even then, I am picturing my face as it looks now, though seven years have since passed. What I do recall with clarity was the music the driver played – hysterical Bollywood covers of ‘traditional’ English classics, baa baa black sheep, happy birthday. It was like a fever dream. I remember my extreme fatigue, the nausea caused either by waking so early, or malaria tablets, or both. I could only stomach dry crackers and bottled water. I do not remember how long the journey was, but we arrived, and stepped out of the van and into the night. My father, my brother and I. We were going to climb Adam’s Peak.

A holy mountain, a pilgrimage site to which humans (strange animals!) flocked in their thousands. My father had read that there was a shrine at the top at the centre of which was a footprint in the rock. Buddha’s footprint. Shiva’s, according to Hinduism. And for Muslims and Christians it was Adam’s, the first man; the first step he took onto our world. Does another such mountain exist? Any place so sacred to so many? How symbolic of Sri Lanka, a country both united and divided by its many faiths and creeds. We were just foreigners, there for the experience. To see the sunrise from the summit.

The mountain, though high, was made accessible by thousands of steps cut into the rock. We began our ascent. The route was lit by strings of electric bulbs and little stalls and shops and rest points selling fruit and water, incense and trinkets. The smells were numerous and varied; incense smoke and human faeces mingled with insect repellent, sweat and thick wafts of jungle air. Stray dogs ran amok. One, of indeterminable breed and no particularly memorable features, trotted alongside us as we climbed. Adam tried to touch it by my father scolded him. Fleas, I said. Rabies, Dad said. We passed people of all kinds - flocks of local women in saris, wailing and genuflecting, families of German tourists with short shorts, sandals and white-blond children. Friendly stall holders waggling their heads warmly, that Indian ‘yes’ motion that I could not quite replicate. I wandered off. ‘Bella! Bella!’ Dad shouted. ‘Your name Yella?’ asked an old shopkeeper with yellowed eyes. We laughed and climbed on.

It was very cold on the summit. We had climbed for hours to reach it. People perched everywhere, wrapped in coats and blankets, waiting for dawn to break. In the meantime we queued to see the shrine, to pay homage to an ancient mark left by two men and one deity, all at once. Our dismay was impossible to disguise when we saw that the footprint was shrouded in coloured cloths; we paid, nevertheless, for the sacred privilege of bowing down to strike our foreheads against it. The dull thud ramified my disappointment. But the beauty of the sunrise, muted by morning mists, was all redeeming; the shadow of the peak, a dark triangle against the landscape, shrinking as the sky blushed rose and gold. An experience more sacred than smelling the thousand year old traces of Buddha’s holy toes, I thought.

On the way down, a Buddhist monk ran past us up the steep steps, banging a small drum with a stick in rhythm with his steps. A few minutes later he flew past again, chased by several dozen mangy dogs, grinning, salivating, barking as they scrambled down the mountain. Later we asked a shopkeeper what was happening. He told us that every morning the monks run up and down the mountain rounding up the dogs to give them breakfast at the temple. A strangely beautiful image, that bald pied piper chased by maniacal waifs and strays. In the minivan once more, barely able to hold my head up or my eyes open, the dogs ran through my mind to their temple, where I imagined fifty wagging tails, mouths hungrily lapping up Buddhist dog food in the shadow of Adam’s peak. I woke up to the racket of bhangra three blind mice blaring over the radio and felt like I’d dreamt it all.