Nanda Devi

We had waited a week in the mizzle,
and the battering Indian rain,
We had busied ourselves with our trekking,
over sparkling humid terrain,
We had come back to camp every night, full of hope
that the sky would that evening be clear,
and the peak of Nanda Devi would appear.

We had washed in crippling water,
We had slept in a scorpion tent,
We had felt our bare feet on the cold temple tiles,
We’d discovered what starlight meant,
We’d used plants for our needs, met an eighty year old
who worked twenty two hours a day,
But the peak of Nanda Devi hid away.

We had chanted songs as we trampled,
‘till we ran out of breath for our feet,
We’d felt chai on our lips in the fervent dawn,
We’d picked lenient mangos to eat,
We’d ploughed fields with our hands and a few simple tools,
We played games ‘till we twenty were one,
But the shroud of Nanda Devi lingered on.

We’d forgotten to look for the mountains,
as our eyes opened wide to the green,
We wrote spices and colours in diaries-
a memento of all that we’d been.
Then, a shout in the language we now understood,
and the clouds that surrounded us cleared,
and the peak of Nanda Devi;
it moved us all to tears.