The thick red dirt clings to every available inch of my surface. Freckles, cuticles, the new friendship bracelet adorning my wrist, an extra-special gift from my 6-year old South African bestie. This is a self-sustaining little nook of a place, 2300 meters above the nearest village. Using only horses and people-drawn rickshaws for transportation, surrounded by mountain peaks and overlooking a river cutting through the valley, it’s a respite for Mumbai locals looking to escape the crush of the city. It seemed the perfect solution to my emerging I've-gotta-get-the-hell-out-of-this-city disease.
10 days into Mumbai, I used the vestiges of my energy to disallow my bitchy alter ego from snarling at the hundreds and thousands of stares, the strangers lining up and surrounding me with their cell phone cameras. Indians have perfected the art of the stare. It’s an absolutely immodest, head craning, eye bulging gape. Every. Single. Time. It’s tuk-tuk drivers twisting their head exorcist-style to see us riding the tuk-tuk half a dozen lanes across from them. It’s entire families kneeling backwards in their booth to improve their view of me sipping water 2 feet away. It’s a dozen giggling men peeking through my window as I read a book. I rummaged for the vestiges of patience buried beneath my vexation; there’s neither a pretense of subtlety nor a pretense of malice, so why should I be so disgruntled by their curiosity? That said, I was precariously close to snapping out, and jumped at the invitation to join Justyna.
I met Justyna at our dirty little hostel in a dirty little neighborhood in the thick of the city. A Polish yogi of my own generation, she was warm and chatty and as it turns out, a beast navigating this city, and an expert at refuting the constant efforts of seemingly everyone to scam us at every turn. Her strength was contagious and helped me believe I too would eventually relax and learn how to do this country without killing someone. In the meantime, we sought our next adventure together, and headed out of the city to this reputed little haven.
After a brutally hot day riding trains jammed with hundreds of people and goats and cucumber vendors, we finally arrived in the village atop the mountain. We were, putting it mildly, underwhelmed. This reputedly beautiful village was deep in the heat and drought of summertime; green and lush it’ll become yes, but not until it receives the much needed rain that will arrive with monsoons in June. Our timing was impeccably off, but such is traveling, and we made the best of it. We rode horses to lookout points and feigned being impressed as we tried to discern the cracked, bone-colored riverbed through the brown clouds of dust kicked up by our tread, and the pink cloud of smog that followed us from Mumbai. We trekked through the dehydrated jungle, and shot sweet chai from our favorite vendor, a handsome man with a magnificent mustache and a soft pink shirt. We sucked down coconut after coconut hoping to restore the vitamins and minerals we were surely sweating out, even as we laid under our fan in our underwear. And ardently, fervently, vigilantly, we eyeballed the perpetually encroaching monkeys. 
In a single day, we managed to avoid a certain rabid fate several times over by no more than a hair, thanks to the respective protection of a man, a slingshot, and a mama dog. Because here, there aren’t a few monkeys, or even a hundred: there are thousands, crawling the metal grates on our windows, and climbing ladders, and tumbling around on the playground. They are spritely little goblins and I'm determined to find their kryptonite. Or at the very least to learn to use a slingshot without hopping and squealing like my toes are on fire. So off we'll go, armed with the unsolicited advice to temper the heat by eating lots of onions, and a new determination to perfect my impersonation of a monkey barbarian. If they’re going to stare, I may as well give ‘em a show.
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