Call it good karma, for Murari is not a riveting raconteur. What he is, fortunately enough, is a journalist with an eye for detail who manages to sketch a setting that would do a screenplay writer (which he also is) proud. Murari is 64 years old, he is on the yatra in the company of people younger than him, or at least those driven by reasons that are altruistically spiritual. And though there is no shortage of accounts (books, magazine articles) of those who have preceded him on this arduous trek, Murari holds his own with a gossipy account which should have his co-trekkers calling for censure, if not a law suit or two.
Murari feels compelled to sign up for the yatra because an orphan he had temporarily adopted will undergo a life-threatening, 13-hour surgery. He's about as fit for the yatra as I would be (I've forgotten when I last went for a walk; Murari at least played tennis), and has had arthoroscopic knee surgery weeks before the medical tests and the start of the pilgrimage. He has never before trekked in his life, or carried a backpack.
Summoned (or at least "nudged") by Kailas, knee in a brace, wrapped up against the cold, he sets off with his journalistic keenness and a sluggish walk to knit a yarn about the changing domains of the Middle Kingdom, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, an observer to the squabblings over beds, baths, mattresses, ponies, bargains, medical emergencies, weather, food
