"Hey man, 'dis is Kashmir". Our taxi-mate we met at the airport yells down from the roof rack of a land cruiser, perched upon the ski bags, as we negotiate the rate with a new taxi driver in broken English with a thick Russian accent. Monkeys jump from branch to branch in the pine tree behind us, with snow-clad hills in the background. The snow on the street has melted into a muddy soup. After about 15 minutes more of bargaining, after a spending the entire day in transit, my patients runs thin, especially considering that we are bargaining over 100 rupees, or about $2. I've long learned my lesson bargaining in India between the fine balance of saving a few dollars versus saving a few minutes.
Soon another land cruiser comes careening down the street, pulling right up to the first one. We finalize a price, pass the ski bags from one roof rack to another, pile in, and off we go. The car has a chain on one tire (which is about as bald as all the rest), and a driver who immediately puts on a pair of pink aviator sunglasses - which go oddly well with his neatly parted hair in a Bollywood sort of way. Ricocheting up a partially plowed road to Gulmarg, the main ski resort in India, my mind gets blown.
My flatmate from Delhi and I are sharing the 4x4 taxi with two Russians we met at the airport. We start chatting, and it turns out one is from the Kamchatka peninsula (if you don't know where that is, google it right now...). I nonchalantly mention that I happen to have spent some time skiing there as well. He seems surprised, and asks where. Most people couldn't place his home on a map, let alone have set foot there. I mention a few stories from our trip there, including squeezing into a bus with skis and getting dropped off at a random kilometer post in the wild. It turns out he is a heli-ski guide in Kamchatka, on a bit of a vacation before the season back home picks up spending the next month skiing in Kashmir. When I mention a backcountry ski race in Avacha pass... and he asks the year I was there... and we realize that we were in the same competition.... and that he remembers me as the only telemarker in the race.... an odd, serendipitous moment passes, where we both feel awkwardly close and amazed at as stars, planets and moons align.
The world gets a little smaller.
Is this just odd chance, coincidence or serendipity? Or has the world become a narrowing of self-selecting groups of people who share similar interests, a passion for travel, and the means to do so - who will naturally run into each other or unwittingly pass a friend of a friend of a distant acquaintance? Or have our social circles grown to intersect similar circles from distant lands, merging into one and the same?
Does six degrees of Kevin Bacon now apply to... anyone?
