“Hello—No Problem!!” bellowed the grimy dreadlocked Sadhu Baba for the umpteenth time that evening. His fixation was Derick, an egg-headed bull of a man in his sixties from Australia, who could easily have made a film career playing a Nazi or a skinhead. He was also the owner of the worst Royal Enfield imaginable—glitter and chrome but breaking down at every corner. We were sitting across in a former parachute-turned-tent at Sarchu, shared with a few dozen others—tourists, truckers, the owner’s family, and the Baba himself. Totally sozzled after helping the truckers with their booze and then stoned from countless chillums, he would first yell “Hello,” wave at Derick, and, once he had his attention, give a thumbs-up and roar again: “No Problem!!” The “Techno Baba,” by contrast, was a self-styled sadhu—a young Bihari from Pasighat—living off an attractive but perpetually stoned Israeli blonde in an old Manali guesthouse where I stayed. With long shampooed hair, clad in a saffron...
Field notes from an inconvenient life… No motivational crap, no hacks, no pink tint. My life as it actually unfolded. I would have happily dedicated it all to the exploration of love and sex...but the lack of copious experience inhibits me from providing any worthwhile insights...