(2)

There’s no one for miles. No people but us were stupid enough to hike for four hours to camp in knee deep snow in the middle of February. Those four hours. My God. Four hours of carrying a bag pack and staggering in an up sloping valley, slipping on ice patches and not pausing to take out waterproofs because if we stopped, we’d never make it to camp in time. Four hours of slow, beautiful snow flakes settling and absorbing into one of my cashmere sweaters, soaking through and numbing my arms as I continue walking. Panting trying to take in air that wouldn’t freeze my nose and lungs, but still bring in oxygen.
Finally making it, staggering into the only tent set up, collapsing into the sleeping bag and huddling up with two boys I had never said more than hi to in my life and my psychology 101 professor (erk) and not caring because I was so cold I thought I’d die.
***********
It’s still so cold, I haven’t felt my toes in the last twelve hours. I can only close my eyes and pray to God that I don’t lose them to frostbite. I can hear God laugh at my paranoia.
The silence, its deafening. All eight tents are asleep. I’m the only one awake.

I’ve been dying to pee for the last hour. I refuse to climb out of my sleeping bag. Soon, I know I won’t have a choice. If I pee in my sleeping bag, it’ll stay wet for the next four days that I’m there (its an option I seriously consider). I wait till the last possible second, then I curse biology and struggle out of my two sleeping bags. I take out my torch, feel through the two zipped up tent doors and grab my snow boots. My tent mates mumble, but stay asleep. I have this hysterical urge to shake them awake and take them with me, but I don’t know them too well. So I remove my gloves, brush the ice off the laces, stuff my feet into boots that I wouldn’t ever thought I’d be caught dead in two years ago. I climb out. Nothing is moving. Nothing. The tents lie like eight mysterious alien eggs in the snow white valley, the full moon so bright that all the snow and surrounding mountains look luminescent. The stars, they’re so many of them that I swear I can see the misty band of the milky way.
I don’t even miss a step. Beauty shmeuty. Its cold, I have to pee, and then get back in my damn sleeping bag before I lose a toe, or a finger, or a nose.
I get to the rock that is designated as the “girls bathroom”. Then I realize what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.
I curse, the biggest, baddest punjabi words I know, because I realize that I have to unpeel six (yes six) upper layers, one pair of waterproof overalls, and three layers of pants (yes three). By the time I do that, my gloves have fallen in what is definitely a suspicious color of snow, my torch is buried somewhere in the recesses of the sheltering rock, my toilet paper has fallen and gotten soaked. Not the mention my ungloved hand, my nose, and now my bare ass which is so frozen it’s lost all desire to pee.
It’s an ordeal, but I manage.
Halfway though the deed, when there is no way I could ever stop even if I wanted to, and as I’m precariously balanced because to date I have never even used one of those hole-in-the-ground indian toilets, I hear a noise somewhere to my far right.
My breath, my lungs, my brain, everything stops. The world stops spinning, and time slows.
I look over, see nothing.
I hope to God its not someone from camp. Smelly unshaven men I'll have to see for the next three years. How embarassing.
But oh my God, I hope its not anyone not from camp. Images of killer pathan tribesmen out in bloody rampage paralyze me as I squat bare assed in the bloody snow.
I still see nothing.
And then I remember the story about the snow leopards.

My God please let it be killer pathan tribesmen.

I manage to finish my damn business, manage to scramble together articles of clothing, one torch and one roll of toilet paper. I still haven’t drawn a breath in the last four minutes or so. I still haven’t heard anything, but I’m pretty sure it was an animal. A big animal. A big white furry animal looking for food.

I get up, and don’t want to ever move.Maybe I could out wait the leopard. I could. But then I hysterically imagine some Readers Digest article somewhere about the girl who got eaten by leopards while camping because she was too stupid to run when she had the chance. I will not let that article come true.
I try to walk slowly, silently, un-noticeably back to the camp. The path stretches impossibly long.

I’m exactly half way through, when I hear a silent muffled thump. Without remembering making the decision, I take off at the fastest sprint of my life, even managing to run at a zig zag to confuse any pouncing predator. I make sure i run through the tents, hoping it would miss me, pounce on some other tent instead (not my most samaritan of moments - heh). I manage to make it to what I hope is my tent (thank God it was). I dive face first into the thankfully unzipped doors, kick off my shoes in a single bound, and bury myself into my sleeping bag, wondering why I'm not being mauled, hoping that if I ever do become dinner, it’ll be with the rest of the ten camping buddies. At least probability of surviving will be on my side.

And with those thoughts, with my terror, while trying to stay awake staking out possible predator hunting grounds, I unwillingly fall asleep immediately.

It wasn’t a leopard, it turned out to be a teensy weensy white rat after our kitchen supplies. My little nocturnal adventure was not repeated to anyone. And I never went for a bathroom break unless I had someone with me to cover my ass after that. Literally.