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The following day brought another unexpected series of incidents.

"Please, sir, do not forget, if you wish to visit the Rann, you will be required to carry a permit," the hotel manager advised me.

Getting a permit. Okay — no problem. I was more familiar with Indian behavior now and foresaw no difficulties . . . .

"It is best, sir, if you will get to the office early," he advised.

It was not even two o'clock I the afternoon. Plenty of time.

But I should have known better.

The process required visits to three separate government offices; endless filling out of forms (and filling them out twice due to a clerk's inability to spell my name correctly); languorous pauses for betel nut chewing and tea; returning to previous offices to "clarify" form entries; minute inspection of every detail of my passport (including the binding!); an impressive display of seal-making using a stick of red wax and a candle (only to have the seal snapped into half a dozen pieces a few minutes later by the next official on my list — in the next room); constant confusion over the forms themselves, which were all in English, only one point carried fourteen different sheets of paper from one department to another held together by sewing pins; a warning from the next to the last official that if the forms were not all completed by closing time at 6:00 p.m. I would have to start the whole process over again the following morning; and finally, at five minutes to six, waiting for the last signature from a man who looked very imperious and sat on a tall chair raised on a carpet-covered dais and seemed to be far more interested in the condition of his fingernails than in my pile of wilting, ink-stained forms.

But I was proud. Throughout the whole four-hour ordeal I had never once raised my voice or played the arrogant colonial (whom I'd discovered deep in my psyche while traveling in India.) I smiled. They smiled. They shared tea with me. They offered me betel "pan" and I accepted it (it took hours to get all the little pieces of nuts and spices and whatever else goes into its elaborate preparation out of my teeth). I offered them bidi cigarettes, which they accepted (but on one occasion politely mentioned they would have preferred Marlboros). And then — clutching my precious papers like winning lottery tickets — I returned to the hotel for a traditional vegetarian thali dinner (usually the only food available in Bhuj hotels).

Tomorrow I'll finally be off to the Rann, I told myself. I celebrated by ordering a second enormous metal tray of thali and was just finishing off my rice, dhal, vegetables, and paratha when someone started beating on my door with the urgency of a fireman in the midst of a blazing inferno.

"Police. Open."

Now what? I opened the door.

Two neatly dressed policemen stepped promptly into my room with the worried manager trailing behind, shrugging hopelessly.

"Passport."

Keep calm, I told myself, don't blow a fuse. Be like you were earlier on at the government offices. So I was.

I answered all their questions, let one of them search my luggage, smiled as they meticulously inspected all my permits, and smiled again as they saluted smartly and left. The manager was very apologetic.

"They very nervous, sir, of people going to Rann. Much trouble with drugs and weapons."

He couldn't seem to stop shrugging his shoulders.

"That's okay. I'm just a tourist."

"Yes — I am knowing that, sir. But they . . . ." His twitching shrugs completed the sentence.

"Honestly. It's okay. And thank you for looking after me."

He left, bowing and shrugging simultaneously.

Five minutes later, another knock on the door. This was becoming an Inspector Clouseau nightmare. I opened it. And behold — another enormous tray of thali with two bottles of Thums Up Cola.

"Complimentary manager," the young boy said.

What a nice way to end the day. Three dinners!

This had been a long journey, one of the longest of my world-wanderings. All the way from Kathmandu to the fair western limit of India to the vast nothingness of the Rann of Kutch.

And was it worth it?

Definitely.

The drive north from Bhuj began as sensations of diminishing stimuli, leaving the city and then the Black Hills behind, easing further and further out into a flattening desert plain. I paused in one of the few villages on the edge of the Rann and was entertained by the headman while his wives and daughters paraded past me in brightly embroidered jackets decorated with hundreds of tiny mirrors. I watched them sewing and sifting rice in the shade of their mud huts and among the circular granaries topped with conical roofs of reed thatch. Out under the thorn-bushes beyond the village, herds of white cud-chewing cattle sat in statuesque groups, guarded by naked, gold-skinned boys.

Nearby were two camels commencing the rituals of courtship. At first it seemed gentle enough — a bit of nudging and polite nipping of the flanks — but then the screaming and spitting began. Either the females was in desperate heat or she was merely trying to discourage the gallant male who was not attempting to mount her. The more he tried to climb on her back, the more she spat and screeched. The boys lay on their stomachs, laughing. Finally the male forced his seemingly reluctant mate to the ground where she quieted down and just sat on her haunches with a kind of " Well — c'mon then, get on with it" look. But the poor male was obviously past his prime and for all his mounting and bellowing, just couldn't seem to make it. So they ended up together, side by side, eyes closed, like a couple of old pensioners ruminating about prior conquests in the virile days of youth.

Further on, way out across the salty flats, a herd of over three hundred camels were being led by a group of raiskas to a market near the coast. Raiskas have a notorious reputation as fly-by-night seducers of village women as well as their more traditional roles as balladeer-historians, news carriers, and nomadic traders. I wondered what the decibel reading would be for a herd this size enmeshed in mating rituals.

Later on, at another village close to the edge of the Rann where this story began, I joined in a wedding until I felt that my presence was taking the limelight away from a visiting dignitary. He was being lauded to the skies by a "walking historian" (a charan or bhaat) whose job it was to act as the official greeter and sing long — very long — ballads in praise of the achievements and successes of each important visitor to this desolate region. A role similar to that of a wandering bard in medieval England.

The elders of the village sat around the dignitary, nodding agreement, as the historian sang his homage-filled rhymes. I always love to watch these old men of rural India. They seem to live such gentle, quiet lives, respected by their families, cared for by their children, sleeping the hot days away in the shade of their homes, or huddled in whispery bunches seemingly involved in the slow resolution of weighty matters.

I sat a distance from the wedding party so as not to interrupt their celebrations and chatted with a young man who had just returned from Bombay to his village to attend the festivities. We sipped tiny glasses of "dust" tea made from finely ground tea leaves mixed with cardamom, sugar, and milk. Very sweet but refreshing, particularly on hot days like this. He seemed a little bored by the endless (and to him) sycophantic, antics of the singing historian.

He spoke an English I could understand so I asked him about the daily routine of the old men in the village.

"Oh this is very much our tradition, this taking care of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. A young man of the family will always be looking after him. The old man knows how things should be, and he sees that everything in his house and in his farm is in good order. When he is at home — the women have cleaned up and all those things — and he sits down. People come to call on him and take advice. If there is any calling to be done then he goes out and calls on them. Ladies of the houses, they are doing household work, grinding millet and corn, giving children their bath, making the bread, and seeing for all things for a rainy day. They clean up. If there are any rats here then they will see that a cat is there who finalizes everything. Then, if it is very hot, the old man may sleep — whenever the body requires it — and before sunset he eats his food and usually goes to sleep after sunset because there is no electricity here, you see . . . ."

I asked about the younger men too.

"Oh, a young man is very strong. He will go to the fields every day. He will take the animals out for grazing — or he may not. He may have a little porridge in the day to keep his reserves, then he will pay social calls, and the rest of the time they are sitting, discussing, talking. It is not a very hard life. But when it is time for cultivation, then you will find everyone out in the fields. Then it is very hard. But it does not last for long."

In an adjoining courtyard I could see four men in the shade of a line of round-walled granaries, furiously weaving blankets, which were stretched out on wooden trestles and using bright red purple, and yellow threads of wool. They had obviously not been invited to the wedding and seem to be ignored by everyone.

"Oh, they are not of this village. They walk around, all over, and make blankets when they are asked."

"They seem to be working very hard."

"Well, yes. They work whatever time they wish but they must complete each blanket in three days or they will starve. Gold will not give them food. But the talent is there, isn't it, and as long as the talent is there, they do not have to bother about anything. No red flags of communism here y'see!" He laughed at his own wit. "And that is why we in India are safe from all that because it is embedded into us that we are satisfied with what God has given us. The cycle of karma plays a very important role in our day-to-day life and we say, if I don't have it, it is because God did not will it. I must do something good in this life for my rewards in the next one, d'y'see."

The singing historian was coming to the end of his ballad. His voice rose, the nodding of the old men increased, and the dignitary sat very straight and stern as the last refrains rang out. My companion translated (with a sly grin):

"And you have been just, with authority, with kindness and with love for our village. Here you sit in these four walls and we feel proud when we see you here, a descendent of the old house of our rulers that began here in the year 1212 A.D., in this place. But do not forget your duty. You are a political power and you are also a social power of great importance and we are all standing here and respecting you and remembering all the great deeds of your revered family."

The nodding reached a crescendo; the dignitary nodded gravely too, waved his hand limply at the wedding party, indicating that the celebration could now continue, with his blessing.

I wandered on around the village of tight-packed mud houses surrounded by high mud walls, trailed by a snake of children who giggled as I walked and then scampered and ran when I turned to talk to them.

A group of old men, in huge grubby turbans, sheltered in the shade of a goat-nibbled tree, the only tree I'd seen for miles, drinking something black in finger-long glasses. My English- speaking companion was still with me.

"That tea looks odd," I said.

He laughed, "It's not tea. It's a kind of opium. Only the old men drink it. It strengthens the weaknesses of the body."

"Really?"

His city cynicism flashed again. "Well — that's what they say. I think it just makes them sleepy."

The men invited us to join them in the shade of the tree. One of them pulled a heavy mortar of black rock from under his gray robes and placed a thimble-sized piece of something that looked like broken obsidian in the bowl.

"That's opium?" It wasn't at all like the little greasy balls I was to see later among the hill tribes in Thailand's Golden Triangle.

"Yes. Watch him now."

The old man, whose sulphur-colored turban seemed to be unraveling as he moved, pounded the hard black substance with a brass pestle into a fine powder. Then he added water, mixed it thoroughly, and strained it through a piece of white cloth into a clay bowl, which he offered to me."

"I'm not sure I really want any," I whispered to my companion.

"Oh, that's not a problem. Just pretend to drink," he whispered back. So I accepted the bowl, lifted it to my lips but kept them closed. I handed the bowl back. The men nodded, smiled, and extended cupped hands toward the man with the unraveling turban. He proceeded to pour a little of the muddy fluid into each set of hands. There was a murmur of ritual acknowledgments before they leaned forward and drank with eager sucking noises and licked the gravely remains from their fingers.

"Now they all go asleep," said my urbane companion.

And that's just what they did.

A little later I met the old man whose brother had been lost in the Rann many years ago. After his sad tale of the terrors of the place and the spirits of "the whites" that haunted its barren wastes, I was anxious to drive on deeper into the blazing nothingness, past the sun-cracked skins of stone mountains, peeled off like onion layers. I wanted to see the herds of wild asses said to roam the eastern portion, the Little Rann, and the vast gatherings of flamingoes living and laying their eggs in "cities" of conical mud nests way out in the whiteness. So I drove on, leaving the village far behind.

Now there was not a tree or a shrub or even a single blade of grass anywhere. Nothing but an endless eye-searing blankness in every direction. The track as a vague incision in the salt, but beyond that was what I'd come all this way to see — nothing at all. Twenty thousand square miles of perfect flatness. No clouds, no movement, no life. Nothing.

It was like vanishing into some vast realm beyond the mind, way beyond thoughts, beyond feelings and sensations and all the convoluted tangles of consciousness. Even beyond awareness itself. A space so colorless, so silent, and so infinite that it seemed to be its own universe. And I just simply vanished into it . . . .

The sun was so hot in the dry air that I almost felt cold. I noticed this odd sensation at one point, about twenty-five miles into the whiteness, when I got out of the car and walked out across the cracked surface of the salt. After a couple of hundred yards or so the heat shimmers were so violent that I could no longer see the vehicle. I couldn't even see my own footprints due to the hardness of the salt and intense shine radiating from it. Then I noticed the shivering, similar to the sensation of a burning fever when the hotter your body becomes the colder you feel. It may also have been a flicker or two of fear. I realized that I had done something rather stupid. Two hundred yards away from my landmark was the same as a hundred miles. I didn't know where the hell I was. I was lost!

I remembered the tales of arctic explorers caught in sudden blizzards and dying in frozen confusion a few blinding yards from their tents. A few yards in a blizzard is infinity. This was infinity.

In retrospect the whole incident seems ridiculous, but at the time I sensed panic and the horrible reality that if I didn't retrace my steps within the next half hour or so I'd become a raving sun-sacrificed lunatic lost in this utter nothingness. Given shade I could have waited for the sun to drop and the shimmers to dwindle. But shade was as possible as alchemist's gold here. There was no shade for two hundred miles.

And then, as suddenly as they had come, the shivers ceased and I felt an unearthly calm. I was neither hot nor cold now. The purity of the silence rang like a Buddhist bell, clear and endless. Here I was in the loneliest, emptiest place on earth, smiling inwardly and outwardly, utterly at peace, as if in some sensationless limbo state between life and death.

I burst out laughing at the zaniness of the whole predicament and my feet, without any prompting and guidance from the conscious part of me, walked me surely and certainly right back through the shimmers and the vast white silence to the car.

The Rann is still with me now. In times of silence I return to its silence; in a strange way I find it comforting and reassuring. We should all carry a Rann somewhere in our minds. A place of refuge and utter peace. A place of the mind but far beyond the mind.

I never did see the asses or the flamingoes or anything else out there. If I'd taken a camel rather than a car I could have continued further and deeper but, as it was, I was hampered by thick mud below the salty crust about thirty miles in. The monsoon had been late that year and the Rann had not yet been thoroughly baked by the sun to make it safe for my way of traveling. But that was fine. I'd found what I'd come looking for.

Absolute nothingness.