Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway: Walking in Clouds by Kavitha Yaga Buggana

Welcome to my stop on the virtual book tour for Walking in Clouds by Kavitha Yaga Buggana. This tour was organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. On my stop, I have an excerpt for you as well as a great guest post about travelling. There's also a tour wide giveaway. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for more excerpts, guest posts, interviews, and more. Enjoy!

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Title: Walking in Clouds: A Journey to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar
Author: Kavitha Yaga Buggana
Publication Date: December 20th 2018
Genre: Travel Memoir

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Will we make it?

That's the question Kavitha and her cousin, Pallu, ask themselves as they trek through Himalayan pine forests and unforgiving mountains in Nepal and Tibet. Their goal: to reach Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar.

The two women walk to ancient monasteries, meditate on freezing slopes, dance on the foothills of Kailash, and confront death in the thin mountain air. In Kailash and Manasarovar, the holiest of Hindu and Buddhist sites, they struggle to reconcile their rationalist views with faith and the beloved myths of their upbringing. Remarkably, it is this journey that helps them discover the meaning of friendship.

Walking in Clouds is a beautifully crafted memoir of a journey to far-away places and a journey to the places within.

Goodreads * Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Kobo

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EXCERPT:

Culture of the Himalayan Region – Marriage Practices

OUR COOK’S WIFE DELIVERED a baby. When Jeff and Sperello congratulate him, he says it is not his baby but his brother’s. We all wonder at the cook’s wide smile as he conveys this news. Chhiring tells us the cook is a polyandry husband.

My mother’s uncle is an anthropologist who, decades ago, worked with Himalayan tribes, among whom polyandry is not uncommon. His research assistant once saw a tribal girl walking with a young child.

‘Lovely boy! Is he your son?’ asked the researcher.

‘No,’ replied the woman, ‘he is my husband.’

By marrying the eldest of several brothers, she had become the wife of all the brothers, including the youngest. This is a form of fraternal polyandry, where all brothers share one wife. Since these barren, rocky lands can support only the sparsest of populations, polyandry is an effective form of population control in a patriarchal system. It is also an economic necessity, as more hands are needed to feed one family.

On another occasion, the intrepid Himalayan researcher was with a group of tribal women when a woman from another village passed them by. After the initial chit-chat, the group of women asked the stranger how many husbands she had.

‘One,’ she replied, eyes downcast.

The villagers could not believe it. Just one husband?

‘Why?’ they asked the stranger. ‘You’re healthy. You are good-looking. How is it you have only one husband?’

The women in the group fell silent as they contemplated the sad fate of a perfectly healthy woman with just one husband.

The cook’s marriage scenario has given rise to some jokes. But to the Indians in the group, fraternal polyandry seems less strange.

‘It’s like Draupadi,’ Prarthana points out.

In the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, Princess Draupadi marries all the brothers of the Pandava clan. But Draupadi’s marriage is not the only unusual marital arrangement in Hindu tradition. We have other marriage customs that would seem strange to foreigners. Arranged marriages are still the norm in most of India. In Telugu culture, avunculate marriages and cousin marriages were once common. Some, in the Nair community in Kerala, live in a matriarchal society, where after marriage the husband lives in his sister’s house and sees his wife only for occasional conjugal visits. In the old days, if a Nair woman wanted to spend the night with another man, she could engage in a temporary marriage, called a Sambandam marriage, during which her temporary husband would leave his shoes outside the front door. If the permanent husband happened to visit on that night, he would see the shoes and return to his home.

As my anthropologist great-uncle pointed out, people have invented an astounding range of marital structures.

Given the unique marital practices in India, I thought it best not to chuckle too hard at our cook’s unusual marriage situation. In any case, our reactions have not fazed the cook, who is still delighted about the birth of his son.

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Yalbang Monastery: Humla, Nepal (Photo credit: Jeff)

The River Karnali: Humla, Nepal (Photo Credit: Ying)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kavitha Yaga Buggana lives in Hyderabad, India with her husband. They have two children and a very excitable golden retriever.

Her essays and short fiction have been published in The Hindu, River Teeth Journal, Tehelka, Out of Print Magazine, JaggeryLit, and Muse India Magazine. Her travel memoir, Walking in Clouds was released in December 2018 by HarperCollins, India.

In previous avatars, she was a software engineer in Chicago and a developmental economist doing field work in Angallu village, South India.

Website * Facebook * Instagram * Twitter

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GUEST POST:

Travel Advice from Kavitha Yaga Buggana

Be prepared physically and mentally: You don’t want to your trip to be marred by health or fitness issues. Make sure you understand and prepare for the demands of the trip – whether it’s walking for hours in a city, swimming in the ocean or trekking in the mountains.

In my book, “Walking in Clouds”, my cousin Pallu and I realize we’re totally unprepared for our trek in the first campsite. We pay a heavy price for this. Here’s an edited excerpt:

At the campsite, I slump in my seat and take a deep breath. No one had told us that when you walk for hours and hours, your body becomes a thing you carry. Your bones drag you down, your muscles are a series of stretching and contracting aches. Your body becomes present, overwhelming, leaving space for nothing else – not the beauty of the place, not the comfort of companionship, nor the thrill of journey. 

‘I don’t think we can do this, Pallu,’ I say. 

‘No way we can make it!’ she adds, shaking her head. 

There is only one thing to do: we demand that Chhiring, our guide, gets us airlifted back to safety. 

‘Call Emergency Services,’ we tell him. 

Since cell phones don’t get a signal in these remote reaches of Humla Valley, we ask him to use the satellite phone. 

With a little shrug Chhiring says the satellite phone is not working. 

‘How can the emergency satellite phone not be working? It’s for emergencies,’ I say. 

‘What if something happens?’ Pallu asks. 

‘Nothing will happen,’ Chhiring replies, a quick smile stretching the skin across his large cheekbones. His unruffled cheerfulness, once reassuring, now seems sinister. 

‘What if something does happen? What if there is an emergency?’ Pallu persists. 

‘Phone does not work here. Later, it will work. Let us see tomorrow,’ he says, before hurrying off to speak to the cook. 

We go to our tent. 

‘Tomorrow we will call the helicopter,’ I tell Pallu, as I crawl into my sleeping bag. 

‘How did we ever think we could do this?’ she says.

Accept the Journey you have: Sometimes, the journey you expect may not be the journey you end up with. Enjoy the journey you have rather than the journey you want. In “Walking in Clouds”, fellow traveller, Ying observes that “Journey is not about ego … I don’t think it is about competing. If you are not strong enough, so what? It does not matter. If you need help, hire a porter. If you can’t walk, ride a pony. If you can’t go fast, go slow. It is not about being first or being strong or taking it as a challenge. Do the journey however you can do it. Don’t let other people stop you.”

Chronicle the Journey, but be Present to Enjoy it: You want to remember every detail of your journey. But this comes at a cost. In this excerpt of “Walking in Clouds”, Pallu, and I are with fellow traveler Sperello and others at Lake Manasarovar.. It is very beautiful and the camera I have can hardly capture the moment:

The night air is frigid. I burrow into my coat. As our car circles the lake, small rabbits scurry away and then turn to watch us, their eyes glittering in the car lights. Sperello takes a photograph as we slow down. When we speed up again, I ask him to e-mail them to me. 

‘I wish I had gotten a better camera. I wish I had taken more photos,’ I tell Sperello. Pallu and I have hardly taken any photos. My camera is better suited to snapping birthday parties than sweeping vistas and giant mountains. 

‘You can have moments or mementos. You can’t have both,’ he points out.

Be safe, live, laugh, and learn. Isn’t that the point of all journeys?

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GIVEAWAY:

Kavitha Yaga Buggana will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter after the tour. Be sure to follow the tour and leave a comment on a different stop each day to increase your chance of winning. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway