The Seeker by Karan Bajaj

around, waving them in the air.
    “I’m going swimming in the Himalayas, bitch,” he sang. “I’m divin’, I’m pimpin’ in the snow, bitch.”
    Max shifted in his chair and tried to smile.
    Omkara put the trunks down. “Did you think you’d swim with the yogis in the frozen Ganges?” he said.
    “Are the yogis still up there?” asked Max, half interested, half wanting to change the subject.
    Shiva set his tea cup down. “They are much higher up than Gangotri but don’t disturb them if you go near their caves,” said Shiva.
    “Why?”
    “Yogis are very powerful,” said Shiva. “If you disturb their meditation just for taking a picture or out of curiosity, they may curse you. And a yogi’s curse lasts for seven generations in a family.”
    “Don’t listen to his superstitious bullshit. I told you, he is a tribal,” said Omkara. “Go give the rest of your stuff to someone to keep safe before we head out.”
    “I don’t need it anymore.” Max looked at the books and clothes. He felt lighter and freer. He asked the cook to take anything he wanted and give the rest away.
    Omkara came over to Max and high-fived him. “You are crazy, dude, mad. That’s why we like you,” he said. “We are crazy too.
Paagals.
All of us.”
    Max followed them to a shed behind the hotel. His pulse quickened on seeing the weathered black motorcycles with their low seats and wide engines. Royal Enfield Bullet. He’d never heard of the brand. Not that he knew anything about motorcycles except that they were the least safe way to get anywhere even on shiny American highways leave alone the nearly nonexistent road ahead.
    “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine,” said Shiva, perhaps sensing his nervousness. He gave Max a knee and hip protector, an open-faced helmet, black glasses, and a balaclava to keep his head warm.
    “See this stuff?” said Omkara, pressing his boots against the large spikes in Shiva’s motorcycle tire. “Anti-slip studs made in Norway. We bought them in a black market in Delhi. Fancy, eh? India shining.”
    They mounted the motorcycles and roared away past the hotel, up the narrow, icy asphalt road, toward one of the highest villages in the Himalayas. Max held Shiva tight, squeezing his eyes shut, then daring himself to open them as Shiva skidded and turned, pulled the choke and pushed the throttle, dodging boulders and pinecones strewn over the potholed concrete road. All around them was a deep, silent ocean of white—pine trees blanketed with snow on one side, the frozen Ganges on the other, wispy fog in the valleys beyond, and a thick cover of clouds covering the early morning sun above. Sweat poured down the back of Shiva’s neck under the helmet despite the cold breeze. Steering the motorcycle over the slipping, gravelly ice was hard work, especially with Max’s two hundred and ten pound–frame behind him.
    They stopped an hour into the ride in the middle of a silent valley. Bright purple flowers grew unexpectedly amidst the snow-covered trees. They parked their motorcycles on a dry patch next to the cliffs. Shiva and Max sat down on a boulder on the roadside while Omkara screwed a spike into his motorcycle tire with a small drill.
    “So why are you really going up to Gangotri?” asked Shiva, pouring Max a cup of hot tea from the thermos he had kept inside his jacket.
    His voice was a shout in the miles of silence around them.
    Max took a sip of the spicy milk tea. A pleasant burning sensation seeped down his throat. “I’m going to hike up to Bhojbasa to meet a yogi,” he said.
    “Why?” asked Shiva.
    Max told him about his unexpected meeting with Viveka and his subsequent quest to find the Brazilian doctor. As Max spoke, the uneasiness he had felt since coming to India slipped away. Somewhere deep down, he knew he’d been right in coming here. He’d been living a shadow of a life. The dots were connecting themselves. If he kept pushing forward, he would penetrate the mystery of pain,