At more than 4,000 metres above sea level, in this old kingdom known as Little Tibet: this is where the road begins.In India, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Shiva and millions of other deities watch over the road of the Gods. It sets out from Leh, the capital of Ladakh, crosses the Himalayas, then follows the Ganges valley as far as Benares. From the tops of the passes to the sacred banks of the river, from the kingdom of Buddha to the holy city of Hinduism, it is the story of a mystical journey, by lorry, by taxi, by cattle truck and by train, punctuated by encounters with the faithful of every denomination. Here, life takes over the road as nowhere else, to the point of overflowing: now a market, now a circus, now a fair. And despite this constant apparent chaos, the religions coexist.
“On the eighth day, so that men might approach him, God created his own road. That is the one I want to take.” Christophe Cousin sets out from Ladakh, one of the least populated regions in the world. At Thikse, bells and cymbals wake the monks, and the younger generations are taught that Buddhism is an object lesson. At the morning service, barley flour and tea salted with rancid yak butter: one helps wash down the taste of the other. A monk recounts entering the monastery at the age of eight, with his brother; at twelve, people still made the long journey to Lhasa on foot to receive the teachings of the Dalai Lama. Times are changing. To the West, he has only one thing to say: “You are too developed!” Technical progress adds stress, draws people away from human nature, and over there, people no longer even realise that one day they will die. To the traveller, however, he makes a promise: on the road of religions, the gods will take care of him.
“Djuley”: in Ladakhi, the same word serves for hello, thank you and goodbye, and literally means “I honour the god who dwells in you”.
After a few kilometres through a desert of stones, the monastery appears, five centuries old.
Opened to foreigners in the 1970s, the small capital and its 10,000 inhabitants never stop changing.Nearly five hundred kilometres to Manali, on the second-highest road in the world, one of the most dangerous, they say. The first time was by bicycle, in 2003. This time, it is aboard a Tata lorry, one of the emblems of India, amid the smell of incense, rancid butter and diesel, “the three vapours of the Himalayas”. At the wheel, Mohammed Ameen. He left home at thirteen to become a driver’s assistant; today he is the one driving, and he is proud of it. Every second on this road, you put your life in danger: it is thanks to Allah, he says, that you travel it safely. On the morning of the third day, behind the mist, the tents of the Changtang nomads appear. Here, people dread winter, when snow covers the valley and a barley-flour mash must be prepared for hundreds of animals, with frozen fingers. On parting, the old nomad does not wish “safe travels” but “fair winds”. Further on, the track has been under repair for ten years, perhaps twelve, and it will never end, because of the snow; a worker who has come from far away supports eight children and two wives on it, and goes back to each in turn. Then the Rohtang La, a natural rampart between Buddhism and Hinduism; on the other side, a deity hides behind every tree.
A whole day for the sixty kilometres of ascent leading to the first pass, the Taglang La, at 5,335 metres.
Herders of sheep and pashmina goats, they are the last celestial vagabonds of the high plateaus of Rupshu.
They have three months left before winter, three months before rejoining their families.
The name of the last pass means “pile of dead bodies”.On the other side of the pass, the other India: myriad smiles and swarms of horns. Amritsar was a crossroads on one of the silk roads that led to Calcutta. There, Sardar Amir Singh makes cardboard boxes for screws. A Sikh, he prays every morning even before breakfast, to thank God for such a lovely life: for Sikhs, there is neither small nor great, and no caste. God gave beards to men, so why cut them? “He didn’t give any to women!” At the lowest point of the city, where the disciples converge, stands the Golden Temple, their holiest place of pilgrimage. One enters with head covered and feet bare by a narrow marble bridge, the fragile passage to the hereafter that only the souls of the blessed may cross. The next day, on the roof of a small hotel, Chang Lee, a Korean psychologist passing through, is looking for the link between science and religion. Born into a Buddhist culture, he is a Christian: “My left leg probably fell into Buddhism, my right leg into Christianity.” A cattle truck of Sikh pilgrims then leads on to Shimla, the summer capital of British India, where the priest of Christ Church, born and ordained in this church, has served for more than fifty years.
For the believers who come here to perform their ablutions, bathing in these sacred waters is a rebirth.Fifteen hours by Ambassador taxi, the other symbol of India, to the river. The Ganga is more than a goddess: a mother come down from the sky to nourish the plains and calm the hearts of men. In Rishikesh, a bridge links two worlds, that of the Westerners who see it as the world capital of yoga, and that of the believers who call it the gateway to paradise. A sadhu never stays long in the same place: “I never stop travelling! It’s my life!” In the evening, for the puja, little boats of leaves, incense and petals are entrusted to the river. In Haridwar, one of the seven holy cities of Hinduism, it is 45 degrees in the sun. Fakir Charan Parida, one of the country’s most renowned artists, insists that no computer will ever be able to produce a statuette: every one of his is inspired by God. Then, the further one goes, Shiva gives way to Allah. One Friday, not far from Bareilly, the faithful pray in the middle of the road: “This is where, for me, the road of the Gods takes on its full meaning,” says Christophe Cousin. In Lucknow, Tanwir studies tourism by day, and even a little French; in the evening, he waits tables in the best and cheapest restaurant in town. All that remains is a night train, ten hours in second class, to Benares.
With the last stroke of the chisel, the eyes are drawn: this is the “pran pratishtha”, the gesture that awakens the statue and makes it God.
A good heart, good brakes and a lucky star: for Suchil, a taxi driver, these are the three things you need to drive in India.
Benares, the city where every Hindu hopes to die. For one boatman, Muslims have Mecca, Hindus have Benares: it is by coming here that one is freed from the cycle of reincarnation. Another has steered a boat since he was very small, and also sells necklaces and photos, because the boat no longer feeds him: a litre of oil has doubled in price in two years, and it took strikes for the government to give up taxing the boats. “Today, if you make money, they’ll do everything to drag you down.” At the foot of a temple, on the akhara, the fighting ground, some twenty wrestlers ignore caste and build up their bodies to become as strong as their god Hanuman; when he wrestles, says one of them, he forgets everything around him. On the rooftops, a pigeon fancier admits to two passions, cows and pigeons, which he holds dearer than his children. His birds fly for eight, ten hours, so high they can no longer be seen, without ever reaching the realm of the gods, who live “thousands upon thousands of kilometres above us”. On the last evening, children fly their kites on the rooftops; one of them dreams of becoming a doctor.
Benares, Kashi, Varanasi: “when you are an old city of the world, you sometimes come back to life under different names”.
It is said that the sacred fire that leads to death has been kept here for three thousand years.
Their role model: an Indian wrestler who started with nothing and won bronze at the last Olympic Games.
“We are born in the earth and we die in the earth.”“The road of the Gods is like life. It stops without warning, above the void.”Christophe Cousin