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“Very.”
Upon their first seeing the cliffs, both distance and the fantastical geology had combined to make them seem less than real, as though it were a backdrop from a science-fiction movie. Now, with Sam and Remi standing in the anthills’ shadow, they were simply awe-inspiring.
At the head of the line, Pushpa had stopped, waiting patiently until Sam and Remi finished gawking and taking pictures before setting out again. Ten more minutes of hiking brought them to a fissure in the rock that was barely taller than Sam. One by one, they slipped through the opening and onto a tunnel-like path. Over their heads, the smooth rusty brown walls curved inward, almost touching, leaving only a sliver of distant blue sky above.
Ever eastward the path zigzagged and spiraled until Sam and Remi had lost track of how far they’d traveled. Pushpa called a halt with a barked word. Behind them at the rear of the line Ajay said, “Now we climb.”
“How?” Remi asked. “I don’t see any handholds. And we don’t have any gear.”
“Pushpa and his friends have made a way. The sandstone here is very fragile; standard pitons and rock screws cause too much damage.”
Ahead, they could see Pushpa and Karna talking. Pushpa disappeared into an alcove on the left side of the cliff, and Karna picked his way back down the path to where Sam and Remi were standing.
“Pushpa is going up first,” he said, “followed by Ajay. Then you, Remi, followed by you, Sam. I’ll bring up the rear. The steps look daunting, but they’re quite sturdy, I assure you. Just go slow.”
Sam and Remi nodded, and then Karna and Ajay changed positions.
Ajay stood at the head of the line, neck craned backward for several minutes before he too stepped into the alcove and disappeared from view. Sam and Remi stepped forward and looked up.
“Oh, boy,” Remi murmured.
“Yep,” Sam agreed.
The steps Karna had mentioned were in fact wooden stakes that had been pounded into the limestone to form a series of staggered hand- and footholds. The ladder rose a hundred feet up a chimney-like slot before curving out of sight behind a hanging wall of rock.
They watched Ajay scramble over the rungs until they could no longer see him. Remi hesitated for only a moment, then turned to Sam, smiled, kissed him on the cheek, and offered a cheerful, “See you at the top!”
With that, she mounted the first rung and started climbing.
When she was halfway up, Karna said over Sam’s shoulder, “She’s a dynamo, that one.”
Sam smiled. “You’re preaching to the choir, Jack.”
“Much like Selma, then, right?”
“Right. Selma is . . . unique.”
Once Remi had rounded the bend, Sam started upward. Immediately he could feel the solidity of the rungs, and after a few test movements to compensate for his pack’s weight, he settled into a steady rhythm. Soon the walls of the chimney closed in around him. What little sunlight had filtered its way to the path below dimmed to twilight. Sam reached the hanging wall and paused to peek around the bend. Twenty feet away, above and to his left, the rungs ended at a horizontal wooden plank nailed to a row of stakes. At the end of this plank was a second, this one angling behind another hanging wall. Remi was standing at the junction; she gave him a wave and thumbs-up.
When Sam reached the plank, he found it not nearly as narrow as it had looked from below. He boosted himself onto the platform, found his footing, and walked toe to heel down the plank, then around the corner. Four more planks brought him to a rocky shelf and an oval-shaped cave. Inside, he found Pushpa, Ajay, and Remi seated around a Jetboil stove supporting a miniature teakettle.
The water had just started boiling when Karna slipped into the cave entrance. He sat down. “Oh, good, tea!”
Wordlessly, Pushpa dug five red enamelware mugs out of his pack, passed them out, then poured the tea. The group sat huddled together, sipping the brew and enjoying the silence. Outside, a gust of wind occasionally whistled past the entrance.
Once everyone was finished, Pushpa deftly packed away the mugs, and then they set off again, this time with their headlamps on. Once again, Pushpa was in the lead while Ajay brought up the rear.
The tunnel curved to the left, then the right, then stopped suddenly at a vertical wall. Straight ahead, a chest-high archway was carved out of the limestone. Pushpa turned and spoke with Karna for a few seconds, then Karna told Sam and Remi:
“Pushpa understands that you are not Buddhists, and he understands that our work here may be a bit complicated, so he won’t ask us to observe all Buddhist customs. He only asks that when you first enter the main chamber, you circle the perimeter once, in a clockwise direction. Once you’ve done this, you can move about as you please. Understood?”
Sam and Remi nodded.
Pushpa ducked through the archway and stepped to the left, followed by Remi, Sam, and Ajay. They found themselves in a corridor. Painted on the wall before them were faded red-and-yellow symbols unfamiliar to Sam and Remi, along with hundreds of lines of text in what they assumed was a dialect of Lowa.
Whispering, Karna told them, “This is a greeting of sorts, essentially a historical introduction to
the cave system. Nothing specific to the Theurang or Shangri-La.”