Years Ago, On The Foothills Of The Himalaya, Kashmir I

Prolegomena, and the 1st day stay

A tribute to Lothar

Dear Danarel,

Thank you from the bottom of my heart (kind of weird location I reckon) for pulling, hauling and bringing the very undisciplined me to the 87th anniversary of sorts. Evidently, I didn’t reach this high mark without being plagued by some physical misgivings, by some engine misfiring (while, curiously, my intellect is sharper than ever) and by the appalling, classic loneliness of aging, especially burdensome for those who made a few wrong decisions, at particularly wrong moments. Nobody is perfect.

The situation is far from dramatic, as long as I keep making fun and having fun — which I do. Strangely enough, I recently found a companion after being solo for so long. Recently, it means a couple of years. He doesn’t trot by side me, God forbid, but he is plodding one step behind, since I lost my martial (Aries born!) step and gait. He is blowing in my neck. I hate that. Even without ever turning the head to see his mug, I recognized him at once. An ectoplasmic executioner, a ghostly roman retiarius, using a fiber net loaded with small lead balls and a trident to beat the entangled victim to death. Sadistic animal. Of course, I plan to make him fall and fail, reveal the ludicrous ass hidden behind the ghoulish snout, but a threat is a threat, and believe me, never a treat. Unable to travel freely with this stupid grave-digger at my heels, I decided to dig into the gold mine of careless happy amblings souvenirs I had from my eternal yesterday.

Therefore, my revered guardian angel, I’m going to recount the occurrences of a humorous trip I had in the company of a particularly very funny dude on the foothills of the Himalayas some 16 years ago. Do I dare to affirm that Humor and Fun are the two blessed teats (or “tits”—English is such a tricky thing!) of Dame Fate, from which the Chosen suck the ultimate elixir of Joy and Gaiety to overcome the absurdity of short, even ridiculous, human existence? I do!

Taking into account my venerable age and the beastly stalker that shadows me, I feel it necessary to pay right now tribute to Lothar (https://on-death-row.com/le-pelerinage-du-mecreant-magh-kumbh-mela-2013/), the most hilarious traveling companion (or was I his?) I ever had.The main problem is that Lothar is a bigger-than-life character, a damned megalomaniac, rich of so many different and mostly enthralling facets that introducing him will double the standard size of my report. But let’s try. Lothar is a gentleman of leisure, the only true one I ever met, who, without never practicing any life-supporting or mercantile activity, is madly busy all day long.
Succinctly, I’d say he’s an accomplished sportsman, an iron man, a 5km per day sea crocodile, a distinguished martial arts buff (Dan-something in more than one of the ‘breaking the adversary to pieces’ skills), a devoted family man, a well-trained pilot who rode a large set of planes including a MIG 29 for 30 seconds, an obsessive traveler specializing in tracking ethnic societies that have ceased to be since long ago, a kind and calm buddy, a vorace reader with a Napoleonic memory, a sound music lover, an all-consumer of water and other tasteless, high-energy materials along with plenty of vitamines that provided him with a certain massive ventral protuberance, a boring repetitive vocational speaker, a very generous friend (he sponsored all our traveling escapades) and a FULL-TIME ARTIST.

The last two issues are important and delicate enough to merit some attention. Lothar’s generosity didn’t require me to behave obsequiously. We made continuous, irreverent, sarcastic observations to one another that, if sharp and corrosive enough, brought us to uncontrolled fits of mad laughter. I am not grateful to Lothar for bringing me to such wonderful spots, it was his choice after all, but I feel deeply obliged to him for sharing the most humorous and funny moments all day long, a priceless incontinent gaiety. And gaiety, a divine blessing frequent among children, tends to fade away the more people step into adulthood. For various reasons, this wasn’t and still isn’t our case.

The second and last issue is even more subtle. Lothar is an embodiment of Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (playing man). He who has not read Huizinga would do well to hasten his education — or hold his tongue when ART is at stake*.If you want to know what kind of art Lothar is doing I will say that he does LOTHAR ART.
I pretend that I am the only person in the world who understands properly what that means, what he is doing and why. At a certain moment, I even did an extensive, in-depth study analyzing Lothar’s plethoric artistic output. Of course, the fat bastard felt thrilled and honored, but he didn’t make any attempt to publish it. In his world of beliefs and doings, the only one entitled to speak about his art is LOTHAR. Maybe he’s right. If you’ve read this far, don’t conclude that Lothar is an angel or a more or less perfect anthropoid. Beyond the fact that he snors like a charcoal locomotive, Lothar has extra bad habits that I’ll avoid mentioning here, especially since the chap is still alive. Some of his best friends argue that his faults are, at least, as numerous as his qualities, which is a fiendish fairly exaggerated opinion. Even if I endowed Lothar with more flattering qualities than a porcupine has quills, I’d still stand by my adjectives. Enough with that, if my text will fall into his chubby hands, Lothar will turn into a more self-conceited Bibendum than ever, (a true Megalodon)**, with the risk to burst of pleasure, and heavily endanger the public order.

The 18 of April 2009, the Laurel and Hardy duo after a mighty flight from Frankfurt on a flying carpet (business class) landed in the lobby of the posh and nec plus ultra Delhi’s Taj Mahal palace (as famous image of India as the Agra’s Taj Mahal mausoleum is) to request room and board. The modestly dressed, modestly behaving Lothar believes that comfort is mandatory during travel and follows rigorously his father’s dictum say: the best is good enough for us. Since wandering in the fiery cauldron of Delhi was widely not recommended, we decided to stick to well-being. After a rest day spent mostly in hard thinking highlighted by a metaphysical massage performed by a 100% authentic Mughal princess, and an extraordinary set of vegetarian dishes at the famous VARQ gastronomic pearl of the Taj, we fly early morning to Srinagar. The scenic beauty of Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir and Jammu led to the inhabitants’ claim it being a ‘paradise on earth‘ (except the fleeting moments when it became a ‘piece of hell’).

The Indian army was waiting for us in droves: first at the airport, then all along the way to the city, and in the city, every ten meters, a pouchy private with a gun, a carefully trimmed mustache, and a blue uniform I didn’t like. I cannot avoid to remark the striking contrast between the then (2009) hastily recruited “rural” levies and the today (2025), smartly dressed, athletic commandos, Bollywood style, India poured into area after an attack perpetrated Muslim militants (BBC) or Muslim terrorists (Google News). Same people. Bottom line: turbulence is endemic in the area; keep that in mind. The stated reason for it is the fervent desire of the Muslim population, 60% of Kashmir’s total, to unify with Pakistan a kind of magnificent error that people and nations are always eager to commit.

The taxi stopped, we stepped out, and landed in the center of a stupendous postcard. It was a scene of mellow beauty, seemingly arranged either by design or happy accident, creating a half-intentional, half-serendipitous aesthetic. Either you like it or don’t, or both. For me, it’s a question of mood. A giant lake, Lake Dal lay like an undulating pancake ( or a huge lobed protozoa) on a spongy, larger, and greener vast expanse of wetlands. The locals, them again, called it the ‘Jewel in the Lotus‘ an appreciative sensuous name with deep Buddhist roots wisely preserved by the actual Muslim majority. Straight-cut channels were dividing the wetlands into geometrical shapes reminiscent of clusters of buildings separated by streets. There were many picturesque islands, some of recent formation, tiny and larger, here and there, covered by profuse vegetation. Some of them, I learned later, were occasionally floating like a loose buoy; I had seen the same a couple of times before in the Danube Delta. Vividly painted little boats, perceived from a distance as a crazy school of gliding and flying fishes, were crossing in irregular patterns the lake’s blue-gray, shivering mantle. The soaked valley, despite seeming to endlessly roll, became contained somewhere to the north by a first arch of tree-covered high Himalayan foothills. It was then brought to a full stop by a second, higher and more severe ring of naked, stony peaks capped in white. Behind me, on solid ground, I distinguished some ungainly big hotels and the typical chaotic fringe of an Indian urban agglomeration, consisting of quite picturesque old homes with a first floor made of bricks and a second of nicely brown-stained wood boards. A sloped roof was and remains mandatory. In front of me, there was a wooden quay from where we boarded a stridently painted courier boat called a shikara that was to carry the ‘suckers’ to their destination: the fancy, circus-style, ethnic baroque BOATHOUSE, mosquito-free!

I recognized it at once notwithstanding seeing it for the first time in my life. Umberto Ecco made a brilliant analysis in his Travels in Hyperreality (1995) of this kind of object, a gaudy reproduction of something that never was, a simulacrum. I love it, plain people adore it, my democratic heart beats for kitsch and thuds with mass, the white caped peaks of background are inspiring, the liquid mirror is convincing and tranquilizing. The houseboat is built like a sleeping car. From a whole-length lateral corridor, one reaches the rooms and from the room the bathroom, that is in a rare (India?) pristine condition. Concurrently the accommodation contraption is a floating (wisely moored) overwhelmingly ornate temple at the glory of folk arts, applied arts, tourist arts. Call them how you like, Lothar adores, I am not against. The rooms are a chiseled wood festival. The walls are compulsively embellished with carved wood panels, of impressive size. I had the feeling that a whole forest was dispatched for the construction of one single houseboat. Not that I am oversensitive, apocalypse now, it is my line, but i am damn curious which one of glorious local trees –the perfumed Deodar Cedar, the royal national Chinar, the Pinus roxburghii called by the natives Kashmirian pine, or the severly military protected Black Walnut, fine grained tree, the dominant supplier for ornamental, carved objects– was sacrificed on the serendipity altar to produce the gaudy Star of Kashmir, our temporal abode. A sneaky inquiry followed by some insidious letters to the authorities would suit our elevated status as nature lovers—if we weren’t so lenient and infamously lazy.

*Huizinga’s ‘playing man’ concept suggests that an artist’s compelling desire for artistic expression stems from a childhood inclination to play that extends into adulthood

**The Megalodon, a giant fossil mackerel shark, reached an estimated size of 14 to 24 meters.