I hope that the hardest of my travel in India is behind me.  The road from Jammu to Srinigar was crazy.  The road from Srinigar to Leh was worse and the road from Leh to Manali was washed out due to rain and early snow.  It was the most insane.

The scenery was fantastic.  We travelled through 5000m high passes, around snow covered mountains (which is really becoming a little cliche on this blog huh?  A change of scenery is coming soon I promise.)  We passed frozen rivers and clung to the edge of ridiculous curved highways.

These roads are called highways, but for huge portions, they’re just dirt.  Our driver took a 10 km detour across a big field at one point because the upcoming road was so bad.  He was better off driving in the plains.  It was not uncommon to whip around a curve, blaring the horn and see a huge truck bearing down on us.  At times, we had to reverse back to find a spot that was wide enough to pull to the side and let oncoming traffic pass.

We passed bulldozers clearing snow and landslides off the road.  We passed the ruined husks of cars that fell off the road.  We passed waterfalls flooding the road with water which we had to pass through.  Some parts of the road were so washed out that there was no asphalt left.  It was just bumps, puddles and dirt.  We were traveling in a van with thirteen people and the van bottomed out on bumps uncountable times. Think about what it takes to bottom out a van and you’ll realize the quality of the roads.

In the middle of the night, with sub-freezing temperatures outside, driving in the dark, the windows started to fog up and I had to wipe them off for the driver and roll down the window to let in cold air.  We got a flat tire somehow and spent half an hour standing outside in the icy wind as it was changed.  When I got back in the van, the opposite problem had occurred and the window was covered in ice on the inside.  I had to roll up the windows and melt the ice with the warmth of my hands.  The van had no heater.

When I described the trip I was planning, traveling alone in Asia, some people used the words brave or courage in response.  Now, I know I’m not a particularly brave or courageous person, so I don’t think those descriptions are terribly apt.  I do think though that somehow I’ve learned to be very rational about danger and that rationality may appear to be courage sometimes, for instance when I choose to travel to Kashmir as an American or when I choose to board a van like the one described above.

I try to take an economic approach to assessing whether something is worth doing.  Some dangers (terrorism, tropical illness) are more “frightening” than others but in the end, they’re all just ways to cease to be and I think it makes sense to compare their likelihoods without any embellishments.  I don’t particularly want to have a Final Destination demise, but if you give me a .0001% chance to be killed by a flying NASCAR tire or a 5% chance to die from heart disease, I’ll take my chances with NASCAR.  And I hate NASCAR.

With terrorism for instance, I believe that in the past thirty years, foreign tourists have been targeted once in Kashmir.  That makes the probability extremely low.  There’s a much higher chance I will be injured on the road getting to Kashmir than from terrorism there.  I think we tend to fear situations where something is “out to get us” much more than situations where “bad luck strikes” eg terrorism vs. car accident.  Even more than that, we really don’t fear situations where “injury accumulates” like heart disease, smoking, etc.  I think I was much more likely to die early from heart disease or something benign sitting at home watching tv, eating processed food and not exercising than I am to be harmed by  a random event during my travels.

Which brings me to the other kind of economic calculation I make with respect to danger.  Sometimes, I know I’m putting myself in a more dangerous situation.  This was the case when I chose to board the van from Leh to Manali.  There are accidents along these roads all the time and a lot of the time the bus drivers are pushing harder than they should because they have to make a certain time for a profit.  The truck drivers coming at us tend to be drunk. That’s a true danger.

If I have a valid assessment of the risk, I have to ask “How important is it to me to do this thing, given that the risk is high?”  I was frightened to get on that bus, and I was frightened while I was on it.  But it was the way to continue my trip to the next destination.  So, if I know something is an unnecessary dangerous risk, there is one other mitigating factor for me, and it’s something I refer to as “pace of life.”  We can measure our lives in the number of years we’ve lived, or we could think in terms of meaningful events.  If I can pack more adventure and excitement into my life and the tradeoff is danger and discomfort, then that’s an investment I’m sometimes willing to make.

To put it simply, days are more memorable and life is more visceral when I travel.  The tradeoff is danger and discomfort to some degree.  And I try to be intelligent about this tradeoff.  I mitigate it whenever possible, but when I can’t, I go into it with awareness.  The key is knowing that I made the decision.  A lot of fear comes from the unknown.  If death comes whipping around a corner suddenly and I’m not prepared for it, it could be quite scary.  But when I’ve come onto the bus knowing that a certain danger is possible, and I feel prepared for that danger, then I don’t have to sit there gripping the handhold because it’s all part of a decision I made earlier.  To me, true courage is doing something in the moment that you’re not prepared for the consequences of.  I don’t think I have much of that.

That’s the best I can explain it, and I hope I’ve done a decent job.  In the end, I still hope I don’t have to ride any more buses like that.