Part 1. Introduction to the travelogue (Superfluous and annoying)

Why does a travelogue need a superfluous introduction?

Well, reason number one is that I am a raving misetymist (hater of words) and I need some place to stuff all those random words that I keep incessantly hearing in my head. Especially the most pompous and high-sounding ones that no normal person can understand. Reason two is that I am angling for the IgNobel Prize in literature. Anyone can write a bad travelogue, but who can write an introduction worse than the travelogue itself, thereby becoming a shoo-in for an IgNobel? Reason three is that I am following the sage advice that exhorts us to celebrate the journey as much as the destination. So, pardon me for foisting my recursively mixed metaphors on you, the reader, but by this adage, it is as important to provide excruciating details of how I wrote the travelogue about the destination I traveled to, as it is to write the travelogue about the destination itself.

There is a fourth reason. When delivering a narrative that is potentially emotionally sensitive both to me the author and probably to you the reader it helps to soften the intensity of the climax with layers of meaningless and sometimes sensible prattle. The climax I will reveal at the end of the actual travelogue in Part 2. In the meantime, here is the emotional cushion to brace yourself with Part 1: The Introduction.

When I received an email from Sulekha editors about the travelogue contest, I thought I would have to pass on it. I was too busy being lazy to make time and write a travelogue. But about a week before the contest deadline, a random Napoleonic impulse prompted me to at least make an attempt. I bravely put pen to paper, or more specifically finger to keyboard, but nothing came of it. I have traveled to many interesting places and have had my share of crazy adventures, but somehow, I just could not get those memories to get off their behinds from the dark corners of my mind, and come to light on a document.

After trying my best, I was about to give up, when I remembered that for the last several days, I had excused myself from my share of household chores under the pretext of writing for the contest. After wangling such a generous vacation from husbandly duties, if all I had to show was a blank document, my wife was sure to take over authorship and fill it with the choicest epithets reserved for the most deadbeat of husbands. She would publish it as a weighty tome bound in Morocco leather, with the title 'My Husband: A Tour Guide To Perdition', duly gilt-stamped and inscribed in gold, on the front and spine. In all likelihood, she would have that title stamped on my front and spine as well.

The book would become an epic among family and friends, with its riveting saga of her interminable suffering and endurance in the face of my utter laziness. Every night for the rest of our lives, she would read from the book to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, about my escapism and escapades. And every day for the rest of our lives, she would also throw the book at me (literally, not metaphorically) if I committed even a minor infarction of rules (laid down by her) of husbandly conduct.

The contest deadline was just two days away and I had to come up with something to avoid this shameful, rather Napoleonic outcome of my original Napoleonic impulse, and achieve a more dignified, well, Wellingtonian ending. So I took my fool's cap off and put my thinking cap on and started thinking about writing something that had at least a passing resemblance to a travelogue.

As a first option, in the typically irresponsible manner that I approach any serious task, I thought I would have a travelogue if I could just log the travels I undertook when I was a bachelor, during which travels I would drive my motorbike every day from Jayanagar to Palace Orchards in Bangalore, putter up and down Palace Road in front of (the all female) Mount Carmel College trying to impress the girls, and if a girl actually flagged me down for a lift, I would rapidly downshift and zoom off in sheer terror, never stopping or looking back until I reached my mechanic Abbas's garage, to fix the clutch cable that had broken under the strain of that rapid gear-shifting.

But instinct suggested that this particular travelogue would not meet the minimum requirement of 800 words set by Sulekha for a travelogue contest entry, and more dangerously, it would end up as Exhibit A in the aforementioned book of my faults and foibles authored by my wife. I had to write about something more profound and interesting that was a little longer and that described an authentic travel experience. It had to, for example, involve at least watching wild birds through Bushnell binoculars as against merely staring at urban college chicks through fake RayBan goggles.

As a second option, I tried to recollect details of my travels in India and other countries. But none seemed unique, or even detailed enough to write about, let alone submit as an entry into a travelogue writing contest.

As a third, last and desperate option, I considered the treks I often go on with friends of mine, among the trails and hills near where I live, in the city of Fremont, located in the Silicon Valley region of the state of California, USA. On these treks, we experience breathtaking landscape, vivid hues of nature that change every hour and every day, challenging terrain and animated conversation about life and times that has no relevance to real life since it is carried on under the influence of alcohol. All great raw material for a travelogue that could be interesting, even if not as exotic as a kayak trip down the Amazon. But I was not sure writing about a trip up the local hillock would qualify as a travelogue.

Well, lacking any better ideas, I reminisced a little longer about one such trekking experience that was particularly eventful. That is when it struck me -- why don't I write about this particular trek, during which two of my friends, Acharya and Rao, and I tried to climb Mission Peak in Fremont? There we had experienced an utterly weird series of events that can happen only to the most bumbling of idiots, and eventually precipitated a life-altering turn in our otherwise pathetic lives.

In terms of geology and history, Mission Peak does have some claim to fame, so it may be of interest to real-life travel enthusiasts. Our trek may not have been a journey of the kind you read in Code Nast or Lonely Planet magazines, but if I did write about it, especially the life-changing part of it, I would chronicle a slice of the most exciting journey of all -- the journey of life itself.

That was it! The trek to Mission Peak would be the subject of my travelogue, which would win me a prize in the Sulekha contest and allow me to retain my current position of barely threadbare dignity in my house where my wife reigned supreme.

So here is the story of that trek: Vignettes From Roads Not Taken. The title may sound weird because travelogues are usually about Roads Actually Taken, not Roads Not taken. But the significance of this title will become clear as you read Part 2. I hope this qualifies as a bona fide travelogue eligible for the contest. At best, it may even have a decent shot at a prize. At worst, if it turns out to be a piece of vacuous verbal sophistry of the kind I am (in)famous for, I can still show it off to my friends who will praise it out of mere deference, and to my wife who will trash it with a disdainful glance of indifference, which of course would still be a vastly more tolerable fate than producing a blank document and being immortalized as the Guide to Perdition in my wife's book of woes.

Part 2: The Actual Travelogue (Inane but hopefully with some redeeming quality)

So what did happen during our trek to Mission Peak in Fremont? How? Why? Being habitually bass-ackwards, I will answer these profound questions in reverse order

Why did really weird events happen to us during the trek? Mission Peak and the surrounding Mission Peak/Ohlone Wilderness Area of Fremont City are quite well explored, tame and urbanized in spite of having an ominous sounding name. The only wild beings you will find there are rich kids who zip around in Peugeot roadsters, while their dot-com millionaire parents dwell in million dollar homes in which the wilderness just outside their home and elsewhere is projected via satellite by National Geographic onto wall-to-wall HDTVs. Even pregnant wives of said millionaires their soothing maternal glow barely masking their dark nature as raging fitness freaks go there for early morning walks and return home safe and sound. But on that particular day, the three of us all men, and none pregnant to the best of our knowledge had enough combined critical mass of stupidity that we practically attracted weird events that were otherwise minding their own business. Only dumb luck neutralized our dumb behavior, such that the net outcome was significantly, positively life-changing for all three of us.

How did dumb luck favor us despite dumb actions? Life is full of ever-changing goals and destinations, unexpected twists, false turns, surprise shortcuts. Life consists of paths hewn, but also roads not taken. When confronted with choices at a juncture in life, we choose one over several others. Sometimes the choices are made on impulse, other times after careful analysis. But in either case, we look back and wonder what would it have been like if we had actually taken the paths that we left behind. If we are pure of heart, have suffered enough at the hands of wives and recite Robert Frost's poem Road Not Taken enough number of times under the influence of alcohol (which is one of the things we did on the trek), luck makes it such that those roads not taken somehow turn up right alongside the road that we did take and open up new routes to our ultimate, desired destination in life.

What exactly happened? Well, for that, gentle and patient reader, you have to endure the rest of this inane travelogue. So, please grab your popcorn and headache pills and...here we go...

Just to keep you hooked, here is a spicy teaser: During the trek, we forgot a beer bottle opener, were hit by an UFO, did not take the originally planned trail and lost our way. From Fremont suddenly we suddenly veered off to Dharmashala in India, recited Robert Frost's poem Road Not Taken enough number of times that Frost woke up from the dead and asked to move his grave from Bennington, Vermont, USA, to Antarctica or the Moon. Last but not the least shameful, at the end of the trek, we real men cried and hugged and comforted each other in love and mutual understanding, and despite being chronically wife-phobic, we did not run off to the city of San Francisco (across the bay from Fremont) to get married to each other, instead returned back to our homes not only with our hearts and limbs intact, but also with new plans and new hopes for the future of our loved ones.

Oh, and like any good impresario, after the teaser, I have to introduce the main characters:

Rao -- The portly, technology-savvy, fiercely ambitious, financially successful yuppie. He doesn't care much for emotions or esthetics, constantly spews facts and statistics, and we are so in love with this trait of his that one day we plan to replace his brain with a tera-flop computer with an actual off-switch.

Myself (Mohan) -- The rash, nonchalant, live-in-the-moment type of guy, who never looks back at the past. Not particularly rich. Quick to anger, or to feel sad or explode in laughter. But anger or happiness or sadness, I believe pretty much all emotions and events are just patterns of passion and energy to be experienced in the moment. The only exception to this is I occasionally recount or analyze my actions involving love (of and with women) and death. Another lingering issue I have is my dislike of Rao, and I know the feeling is mutual.

Acharya -- The most calm, philosophical, spiritually evolved of the three of us. About as rich as Rao, though that is immaterial to him. He looks upon everything with equanimity and has a deep explanation that inter-relates every little aspect of life with the rest of the Universe as a whole. Also arbitrator of conflicts between me and Rao.

Mr. Chopra - A renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

Cameos And/Or Off screen:

Lamaze -- Ferdinand Lamaze, inventor of Lamaze method of child labor

Llama -- The animal

Lama -- Tibetan Buddhist monk

Bald Eagle -- The extinct species of eagle

Our wives and children -- Nothing to say about them. Afraid of violent retribution.

A friend of Mr. Chopra.

Mission Peak park ranger.

Now, finally, for the real story. Not soon enough, you may say in exasperation, to which I will say, sure, not for too long either since as I warned you earlier, the rambling pre-ambles to the travelogue are much longer than the actual meat of the travelogue itself.

Acharya, Rao and I are professional colleagues. We have known each other for three years and had become friends despite being entirely different personalities, since we shared a common hatred of our then manager at work, some common values such as our love of beer and certain other life issues. Also, we were severally and jointly the target of our wives' hatred so that helped us bond into a support group. Like most men, we celebrate our differences by putting each other down and hanging out together to drink beer and enhance our mutual disrespect by even more boorish drunken behavior. And lately, as we noticed that our protruding bellies were also hanging out with us, we had taken to walking and trekking so as to not be forced to take a pregnancy test by our ever suspicious wives, and if possible, to reshape six-pack induced bellies into, well six-pack abs.

While the three of us have trekked together before without any incident, even the very beginning of this trek proved to be a drag. You see, we loaded enough alcohol to last the day, plus reserve to cremate our bodies with if we died along the trail, but we forgot to bring a bottle opener. Rao and Acharya were OK with skipping beer, but I, the passionate guy, had to drink to celebrate every occasion. So we had to have a bottle opener. Now none of us have iron teeth yet that can open bottle caps, since the California governor The Terminator/Man of Steel has just taken office and he has not yet fully remade the state residents in his own image. So we had to get a real bottle opener.

Not wanting to risk losing the parking slot we had scored close to the trail entrance, we walked to a nearby convenience store and asked for a bottle opener. The store had a strange policy that a customer could buy a bottle opener only if he also bought a six-pack of beer. Even though the beer came in cans, not bottles. Rao was about to open his mouth to describe his analysis of the marketing genius of this cross-sell strategy, but Acharya and I quickly and loudly agreed to buy the six-pack. The six-pack grew into a 12-pack because that is how men shop for beer, and so we had our bottle-opener. On the walk back to the trail entrance, we felt that the extra beer was too heavy to carry, so we drank it up. The load didn't grow any lighter since net weight of the extra beer simply transferred from our arm to our belly, but by the time we finished 12 cans, we were light-headed enough to not notice this discrepancy anyway.

Originally we (actually Rao) had budgeted about 10 hours for the trek, but this loopback in search of the key to the elixir of life had cost us about two hours, which of course upset Rao and right away set up the running one-upmanship match between Rao and me. And we were already drunk enough that our internal clock was distorting the correct perception of even the remaining eight hours. Anyway, back at the trail entrance, we picked up our original stash of beer and set off towards Mission Peak summit.

After a short distance, the trail forks into two -- Hidden Valley Trail and Moore Grove Trail. We had to decide which one to follow. I, always on the lookout for mystery and adventure, suggested Hidden Valley Trail.

Rao, ever analytical, gave me a dirty look for proposing an ad hoc guess just based on a hunch, right after the first mistake of wasting two of the budgeted 10 hours. Or more specifically, in his jargon, for proposing a sub-optimal solution to an under-specified problem, based on non-normalized analysis of its principal component factors. If it were up to him, he would use a laser range-finder, an optometer and a spectrometer, to triangulate three or more equi-dimensional objects along the trail, correlate that data with intensity gradient of sunlight, further correlate that with spectral density signatures of clay, grass, trees and animal skin, and accurately estimate which of the two trails offered the most optimal combination of total distance, shade, gradient and traction. He opposed Hidden Valley Trail. We argued for a while, when Acharya broke the tie by pointing out that Moore Grove trail seemed to have more people on it so it won't be totally lonely, and the name indicated there may be shaded areas along the trail so we could rest if we get tired. That sounded more acceptable to me, even though I put on a long face because Rao's choice had won out.

As the trail unfolded, the beauty of the surrounding landscape was incredible indeed, and Acharya suddenly got all poetic, partly in exalted spiritual appreciation for the landscape and partly to get me to accept our choice and loosen up. He began to recite Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth"

Under the hypnotic rhythm of the poem, and reinforced by beer, our brains switched to a canine mode as well, and soon we were all howling in chorus with Acharya.

Rao didn't particularly care for poetry and he knew Acharya was trying to humor me. So attempting to refocus attention on himself, he stopped reciting the poem and instead opened a booklet on Mission Peak and cleared his throat. We instantly knew what this meant -- an excruciatingly detailed exposition on the geological, geophysical, cultural, historical and anthropological aspects of Mission Peak. I was about to lunge forward and 'accidentally' tear a gaping hole in Rao's booklet, but Acharya managed to silently restrain me, whispering in my ears that I can always drown out the drone of Rao's narrative by ogling at the women jogging up and down the trail in heaving sport-bras. Then he turned to Rao and politely 'borrowed' the booklet from him after suitably stroking his ego by flattering the booklet's unique fold-out design.

Only Acharya could stay detached from objects of hate and lust and yet know exactly how to deal with them.

Rao droned on anyway, spewing enormous amounts of facts and data from sheer memory: "Mission Peak trail entrance 130 meters above sea level... Summit elevation 767 meters above sea level... net elevation gained during trek 637 meters... total round trip distance from trail entrance to summit and back 8.96 kilometers... major highways connecting to Mission Peak 880, 680, 84.. Within easy driving distance from San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Oakland, Berkeley... Mission Peak/Ohlone Wilderness Area net coverage 3000... No... exactly 2999 acres... site of one of the best known missions when the west was being colonized... almost ended up being the site of the world renowned Stanford University which eventually was founded in the city of Palo Alto... often known as 'Everest by the Bay' but unlike the real Everest, year-around excellent weather... views of Mount Hamilton to the south, the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west, Mt. Tamalpais to the north and Mt. Diablo and the Sierra Nevada to the northeast... native fauna include wild feral goats, some privately owned but free range llamas and cows, eagles, raccoons, the rare mountain lion and the occasional rattle snake..."

I was in a trance since the beer had managed to visually enhance the sport-bras by making them appear to heave in very slow motion and drown out Rao's monolog to a slow rumble that was actually hypnotic. Until I heard 'rattle snake'. Rattle snake? How come we don't hear any rattling? Oh, even the most cold-blooded rattlesnake can't out-rattle Rao's prattle of cold statistics. Back to heaving sport-bras.

After a while, fearing that all the beer in all the breweries on the entire planet could not muffle the din of Rao's narrative, I tried to change the subject to -- you guessed it -- women. Guys, why do you think women, even pregnant ones, come up here to, er, bust their chops, or chop their busts - depending on who is looking.

Rao, as usual, fiercely competitive, was first off with explanations. "You know, when you are at a high elevation, the amount of oxygen in the air is less. This causes their body to homoeostatically make more red blood cells. This is great for the pregnant mothers since they need to oxygenate themselves as well as a whole another body inside them..."

I decided to pull his leg, imitating his fact-laden style. "Well, that may be so in theory Rao, but the real fact here is that someone conducts open air Lamaze classes on the other side of the summit. In these Lama's classes, the pregnant women take lessons on certain meditative breathing techniques that are known to help ease the pain of labor. Also from the llamas there, they take lessons on how to give birth away from a hospital in an emergency or if their HMO doesn't cover childbirth, and how to suckle their newborns in public."

Of course when I spoke, I distorted the pronunciation such that Rao couldn't tell 'Lamaze' from 'Lamas' from 'llamas'. Only when Acharya burst out laughing, Rao caught on to it and gave me a very dirty look and sulked for a while. Acharya, always concerned about too much animosity among us, pointed out to something in the bushes at a distance and shouted, "Hey, Rao, look, those look like Bald Eagle eggs in a nest!"

Rao has a special affinity to Bald Eagles because, as a licensed small-plane pilot, he too flies and his hairline is receding to extinction just like the Bald Eagle. Without realizing that Acharya was just trying to cheer him up, he seriously examined the supposed nest through his Bushnell binoculars, turned and headed in that direction. Now the nest was quite a distance away, and rather thick and tangled shrubbery separated it from the trail. I reckoned that spotting a real Bald Eagle nest was rather slim, didn't feel like straying from the trail, especially because we were quite drunk, and also didn't want to do anything illegal with the eggs of an extinct, state-protected bird. But Rao ran towards that bush anyway, and we followed him.

That's when the UFO hit us.

Well, what actually happened was that as we ran towards the eggs, since I was against that, I instinctively looked up to scan for trouble, and indeed saw a flying object with a large wingspan descending upon us. I yelled, "Hey guys, stop! Looks like the eggs' mother is going to attack us!" Rao spun around, and instead of backing off, stupidly decided to quickly take this rare picture of what could be a Bald Eagle in flight. He didn't realize that his fill-flash setting was on, and when he clicked at the approaching alleged Bald Eagle, he blinded its pilot.

A Bald Eagle's pilot? Yes indeed! It turned out the UFO was not a Bald Eagle, but actually a hang-glider being piloted by a human being.

This human being turned out to be none other than Mr. Chopra, the legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist, blinded by Rao's camera's fill-flash. Mr. Chopra had lost his bearing and crashed right across our trail. Fortunately, he had just started his ascent, so he was not too badly hurt. But even so, he developed a slight limp. He couldn't walk and his glider was broken. We had to get him over to the launch point, located at a higher elevation than the trail head, closer to the summit.

Mr. Chopra seemed a little disoriented, so we looked to Rao for directions from our trail to the launch point. In the melee following the crash, Rao's booklet, which Acharya had 'borrowed', had been lost. We were stuck in a wild place away from the main trail, we had an injured celebrity whose plane we had helped crash and we didn't know how to get him to a safe location. And it was getting to be late afternoon.

I gave Acharya a very mean look for inciting Rao and at Rao for impulsively rushing towards the dangerous bushes, despite my well considered warning. Ironically, in leading Rao into a wild goose (actually Bald Eagle) chase, Acharya had acted like I usually did. I, more like Acharya, had sounded a pragmatic warning. In rushing headlong without thinking, Rao had behaved like me. Perhaps because we had crossed personality boundaries, the resulting broth of confused behavioral traits had landed all of us in a soup.

Mr. Chopra being a seasoned entrepreneur knew how to deal with extreme adversity. So he suggested we just scan around and try to look for hints of a paved road, as distinct from unpaved trails and ridges, since the launch area was paved to allow vehicles to drive up to it. We looked and spotted what seemed like a paved area, and figured there were two ways to get to it. Walk across somewhat rough terrain and get to it directly, with the destination always in sight, or go back up via our original trail, which would be smoother, but would be winding and a bit longer. We had to decide which choice to make.

Well, this time I wasn't letting Rao decide which trail to pick. I was still smarting under the fact that, right at the beginning, if we had taken Hidden Valley trail that I had suggested instead of Rao's choice of Moore Grove Trail, none of this would have happened. So I insisted we take the direct route. Acharya had splinted up Mr. Chopra's leg with a piece of plastic from his glider's debris, and we started walking, supporting him on our shoulders. After a while, the terrain got so rough that Mr. Chopra could walk no further, and we were too exhausted to carry him. This time, my choice was jinxed, like Rao's was at the first fork in the road.

We decided to just move to a clearing a few feet away and wait for a friend and the park ranger who Acharya had called on his cell phone to come find us. We were not afraid of getting stranded but more concerned about becoming less visible to our would-be rescuers in the failing light as the sun started going down and more visible to scary nocturnal predators such as mosquitoes. Well, as we waited for help, we proceeded to finish up the remaining beer, along with some very interesting conversation.

With Mr. Chopra being the ultimate insider in industry as well as government, we discussed economy and politics, including the ultimate end of California's dwindling economy and the ultimate origin of its current governor. We were surprised that despite, being such a successful person with so much reach among top echelons of power, he didn't have any clue of how the globalized economy would turn out. According to him, this was such a new phenomenon that there was no historical parallel to it and none had any clue about future prospects.

As for the governor, Mr. Chopra offered a conspiracy theory, with an absolute straight face, that instead of improving the California job scene with checks and balances against wholesale off shoring, he would in fact accelerate the trend, since the governor's own birth was off shored a long time ago to Austria.

Well, this was a scary and depressing conclusion to what initially seemed to be a spirited, cerebral and rare conversation with a legendary industry insider, that we had hoped would expand our socio-economic awareness and help our career, despite us being responsible for clipping his (glider's) wings and crippling his leg.

So we just guzzled more beer, as we always do when bitter truth and harsh reality stare us in the face. What to do next?

Part 3: The Ending (which I abruptly snuck into the travelogue, due to lack of any better ideas on my part and due to the submission deadline looming right up on me)

As more beer went in, we opened up more and went on to more personal topics. This topic switch, when stranded in mid-path due to our own ill-considered actions, is what eventually changed our life path itself.

Mr. Chopra started it off by asking, "Guys, from my experience, regardless of how the economy or government performs, a man makes his own life by the kind of choices he makes. So each of you tell me about one incident in your life, where you made a choice that had a drastic, permanent impact on your entire life."

In a bid to avoid being the first to be embarrassed, I prompted the easily ego-stroked Rao to go first. He started talking about his trip to Dharmashala in India...

"You know, earlier in my life, I was more inclined towards philosophy and spirituality, like Acharya is today, perhaps at an even more intense level. Even for our honeymoon, I selected Dharmashala so I could be among the calm and serene atmosphere of the monastery there, and develop a deeply committed, spiritual kind of relationship with my wife. She was already about three weeks pregnant and wanted to be closer to a larger city, so just in case something happened we could be near a good hospital. But I prevailed on her to go with my plan. Just about a week into our honeymoon, her worst fears came through. She miscarried, and we had to deal with it at an ill-equipped facility, and her internal organs did not heal properly. As a result, when she conceived again, she had a high-risk pregnancy, and our child was born with Cerebral Palsy.

"From then on, I've developed a passionate hatred towards woozy spirituality, romanticism, passion, esthetics and such other inanities, and always made sure that I took careful, analytical, fact-based actions in my life and made enough money so that my wife or son will never have to suffer for lack of facilities or comforts. However, the effect of that one decision based on a self-centered approach has cast a permanent mark on my whole family in the form of our daughter's cerebral palsy."

"Wow, Rao, I exclaimed, patting his back, I never thought you had even a heart, and now it turns out you even have a soul that once searched for eternal salvation! He just wanly smiled. Perhaps just as an emotional crutch, he said, "Dharmashala is in Himachal Pradesh state of India," but did not hold forth on any more facts on Dharmashala.

Acharya went next. "I was more like what Mohan is today. A cad with a roving eye, euphemistically considered spontaneous and in-the-moment. A few years after our marriage, when my wife was pregnant with our second daughter, I became interested in my boss's wife. My boss was an American who was posted to the Indian subsidiary of the company where I worked. His wife was far more open, flirtatious and spontaneous than what an Indian woman of that time would be. She wanted to visit Dharmashala, like a lot of foreigners in India do. My boss was coincidentally busy, and I readily volunteered to go with her. I convinced my wife that I had to do it for my career and it was perfectly normal by their social mores. My wife agreed, but knowing my real character and my penchant for women, she suspected the worst. Even though nothing happened between my boss's wife and me at Dharmashala, by the time I returned, my wife was in full blown depression.

"As I've come to realize the root cause of our family's suffering, I've developed a very detached, yet mindful and calm attitude, and have never behaved like an immature kid that runs after every little butterfly that flits across. But the damage caused by one indiscrete action can never be reset even if I attain real salvation at the end of my spiritual pursuits."

The circle of disclosure continued, and even though it was getting emotionally heavier inside the circle, I spoke next.

"Ironically, earlier in my life I was more like Rao, even though in the present I really dislike him. Extremely ambitious and career minded. I absolutely loved my job as a hotel management executive. So much that, even for our honeymoon, I took my wife to Dharmashala, not for spiritual reasons, but to scout a location for a holiday resort at the nearby town of McLeodgunj. I knew this was a tourist spot with explosive growth potential. There was the nearby Regional Mountaineering Institute and plenty of potential for skiing, trekking and other activities in the Chamba and Kangra valleys. Even the spiritual aspect of Dharmashala was a potential money spinner for me, since I could milk the visiting foreign disciples of the Dalai Lama for all their money's worth. My wife being the silent, introspective type, just came along.

"The vacant site that I was checking out was at the end of a dusty unpaved road, and I forced my wife to go with me, even tough she wanted to go to the monastery. While walking down the unpaved road, she tripped on a pebble, fell and bruised her elbow and knee. The wound was very mild and healed on its own after applying just a simple bandage. A few months later, she went for a pregnancy test. Looking at the fresh scar left over from the wound, her doctor vaccinated her for Tetanus and, on the same day, her pregnancy test came back positive. About a couple years after our daughter was born, she was diagnosed with Autism. We suspect her Autism was caused by the Tetanus vaccine that my wife received during pregnancy.

"I know I can't blame the doctor because, back then, no one knew much about the rare side effects of vaccines. I can only blame myself for taking my wife to a hazardous place. But instead of relentlessly analyzing the root cause, I just put on a happy face, faking spontaneity, faking very high interest in the world around me, including in women other than my wife. This is just so I can expose my wife and daughter to a full range of human emotions, from laughter to hatred. Even if it annoys my wife or overstimulates my daughter, it is better than letting them spiral down into a dark silent dungeon where there is no discourse other than that of hopelessness and depression."

There was total silence, heavier than even the natural silence of the night around us. No one spoke because everyone was all but in tears. It was up to Mr. Chopra, who started it, to complete the circle of disclosure.

"Well guys. If I overlay my story on your three obviously profound and immensely moving life stories, I would be an utter fool. Also, I simply haven't had to deal with such deep and intense grief and adversity, by completely re-inventing my own personality inside-out for the welfare of my loved ones. But having learnt about the conditions of your wives and children, what I can share with you is that, in just the last few months, I've made considerable financial investments in the field of neurotheology. In this emerging field, modern methods of real-time brain scanning is used to study the altered brain states that meditation can induce. This, I hope, will lead to whole new types of treatments for various brain pathologies like depression, cerebral palsy, autism, learning disorders, ADHD and others. Hopefully we can cure them with purely natural and self-directed methods, and completely obsolete drugs and electro-shock and other crude methods of treatment.

"And guys, to put a smile on your face at the comical irony of it all, this venture is being set up -- you guessed it -- in Dharmashala. After all, that is where some of the most accomplished practitioners of meditation live their entire lives."

The three of us were in such a condition of raw emotional exposure after recounting the sad and traumatic aspects of our lives, that just the mere mention of a cure however speculative that could potentially rid our beautiful children and wives of their suffering brought on torrents of tears from our eyes, both of uncontrollable sadness and immense joy.

Mr. Chopra leaned forward again and hugged us, and we all cried and hugged each other tightly, and savored in total silence this precious moment of transcendent unity.

Soon thereafter, practical reality returned. We ran out of tears. And beer. Just as I thought I heard some hissing sound from possibly a rattlesnake, we heard humans calling out our names. It was Mr. Chopra's friend and the park ranger. They carried Mr. Chopra up to his vehicle, and then dropped the three of us off at the parking lot at the trail entrance. It was almost 10 pm when we parted ways.

I drove home, ate dinner and, as I do every day, went to put my daughter to bed. As part of our bed-time reading activity, I showed her a new trick, to rattle like a rattlesnake, invoking peels of laughter from her as she role-played what she thought was a fierce reptile that scared even her strong daddy. After repeatedly hissing and rattling, she tired herself into a deep sleep. My wife remarked that she has never seen her sleep so comfortably, except when heavily sedated by drugs. Perhaps the deep rhythmic breathing required to sustain a rattlesnake imitation had induced a sense of calm and reduced her hyperactivity. Hopefully, I speculated, Mr. Chopra's company would turn this and other such techniques of nature, into cures for our kids' conditions.

As I recounted the events of the day, I felt really happy that we could now remember Dharmashala as a place where our actions gave us and our families a lot of grief, but ultimately would have a very positive effect on our lives. Of course, Mission Peak we would always remember as the place where we three friends took all the wrong turns, outdid our previous levels of stupidity, but ultimately ended up achieving a new level of love, understanding and hope for ourselves and our families.

At those critical turning points, if by some divine revelation, we had taken all the 'right' turns and made the 'correct' decisions, we would probably have saved our families and even random acquaintances like Mr. Chopra a lot of trouble. What would those roads not taken have been like? Would they have been free of the suffering that our wives and kids had to endure on the roads that we did take? In those roads not taken, we may have escaped the sorrows of life, but would we have experienced such a rich, visceral, magical set of events that, by subjecting us to both terror and elation and every emotion in between, made us so adaptive and resilient for several lives to come?

These questions started becoming very weighty to ponder with my increasingly frequent yawns. Moreover, with our bumbling efforts and occasional help that fell from the sky like Mr. Chopra did in Mission Peak, those roads not taken, with their promise of life sans any more suffering, were turning up right alongside the roads we did take.

As I slid into a slumber, I recited to myself, almost as if in a dream, some more of Frost's Road Not Taken:

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

"But, Mr. Chopra, we don't know your first name. The newspapers just call you W. Chopra."

"Oh, W is for Wellington. Call me Wellington, or Well, if you will."

That's when I realized that my original fears of a Napoleonic end to my Napoleonic impulse to write a travelogue were unfounded and this whole saga was to have, well, a definitely Wellingtonian finale.