Protected: At Home on Field: Unpacking a 13-Year Process

Arne Hofmann: Let me start by asking – was there a specific moment that ignited your interest in this project?

Simar Preet Kaur: It was very specific. Back in 2008, I hitchhiked along the same route aboard oil tankers and trucks. That was my first time in the landscape and my first close exposure to drivers – these men who wear flip-flops and crack jokes at an altitude for which tourists prepare for months in fear of Acute Mountain Sickness and dangerous road conditions. It intrigued me long enough to move to the mountains in 2013 and follow up on the story full-time. What does travel mean to the people who travel the most? That was my initial idea. But then it grew to become something else entirely. Their courage had me hooked.

AHo: So something about the project changed along the way. Could you tell us about this?

SPK: Well, a better way to put it would be that when I started, I didn’t know how I »wanted« the story to be. There were no parameters, no expectations. I just went up there thinking that if I make it out alive, I’ll have something to write about. Over the years, as I interacted with the truck drivers, it grew into a collaborative project with them. They had plenty to say about what a book is, which made it a very different story from anything I could have conjured on my own.

AHo: Speaking of the truck drivers’ experiences, did you ever feel conflicted about using their material and stories?

SPK: Yes, this conflict drives the narrative. There is major tension around the ethics of it. In fact, it was amongst the first things they questioned me about up front. »Why should we tell you our stories? What right do you have to use them?« These questions formed a foundation and went on to shape the book.

AHo: What did you say to them when they asked?

SPK: I tried to charm them! I started with the responses that most researchers or journalists might give, except that I was in an unusual position, in the company of tough men and in an extremely isolated terrain. So, the conversations panned out differently and required improvisation on my part. They became a constant negotiation between me and one truck driver called 0425.

AHo: How did you manage all the material, and document it?

SPK: The material couldn’t be recorded, to begin with. We were at high altitudes where the temperature hovers below zero, so batteries died fast. And there’s no recording device that would last a complete trip, which could be anywhere between five to fifteen days. So I would take notes by hand on the move, expand on them in my notebook whenever we’d stop to rest, then scan them at home in the little time I had between trips. By the end of it I had written so much and been on the field so long, living what I documented, that it’s drilled into my head. I wrote four drafts of the book, and by the fourth I relied almost exclusively on memory.

I like the word »palimpsest« to describe it. It’s like layer upon layer of many seasons’ worth of memories. Since the road is open for only five months a year, each summer would add its own intense experiences atop the previous ones. I let them settle as such instead of imposing any structural logic of my own.

AHo: Could you rely on the characters as a way of deciding what to keep and what to leave out?

SPK: More like I could count on them to question my choices at every step. Again, it was a negotiation because our opinions differed. At times it was the larger question of representation that required addressing; other times we argued over nitty-gritty details. Like the act of changing a tire at 16,000 feet above sea level. I thought their suffering deserved to be told, but they thought it was too routine to mention. And they were right; I saw them in lot more precarious situations as the trips went on, so their objections and suggestions made sense.

I share all this with the reader. You are aware throughout of how things were chosen, how the characters and I decided what material was worth including. There’s the frame story, which is this negotiation between me and the driver, and embedded within that are the many stories we are telling together.

AHo: You worked on the book for a long time. Did you ever consider abandoning the project altogether?

SPK: Oh yes, I wanted to tear up my notes and throw them to the wind many times. But never strongly enough to abandon it altogether. It became something of an addiction to just keep going back up until it is done. It was heady, to be living that life away from civilization for thirteen years, and mostly the mountains made sure I came back. But also, when I did feel resistant, I’d usually get a call from some driver, by coincidence! He’d do it just to check where I’d disappeared to, and that would get the project rolling again.

AHo: Besides the field work and interviews, did you do additional research?

SPK: I did a lot of research across disciplines. Geology, meteorology, and astronomy, since these were subjects that got the drivers interested in our surroundings. But also archival history, which is woven into the story. There’s minimal existing research on this road because of the harsh nature of the study area. I didn’t have much, but records at the British Library were helpful in providing a context within which the present could be viewed.

»I tried being a lemon on the dashboard. Tried being as tiny an object as possible, but it’s impossible to be invisible in a truck.« 

AHo: You describe Sky Road as a work of nonfiction. But there are fictional elements within this framework of nonfiction. Is it fair to say that the book contains fictional elements?

SPK: It’s fair to say that this is nonfiction that sounds like fiction. In terms of content, I believe it’s the liberal use of imagination that creates such an effect. Manali-Leh Highway is so isolated, for the most part, that travelers have little to rely on except their imagination to make sense of the place. It’s what I, too, relied on to break the ice with the drivers. Our collective inventiveness creates an otherworldly effect, I think. Secondly, the amount of time spent makes a difference. Life draws a nice narrative arc of its own that I thought was worth waiting years for. Instead of asking the drivers to summarize their lives in interviews, I saw them evolve while I lived alongside them.

And then the form, which also feels fiction-like – what you called the »meta aspect« of the book, the story-within-story format. It’s the form I finally settled on because it accommodates both mine and the subjects’ perspectives. It also makes the reader more of a participant than an audience, entering the book like they would a novel and not a traditional nonfictional text. This way the reader has more agency and can arrive at their own version of the tricky concept we call »truth.«

AHo: I was also wondering how you managed to find an end to a nonfiction story. I suppose it’s easier to find an entry point. But how can you find the end, if there’s no underlying narrative?

SPK: How did I know when to stop, you mean? I thought I was done when I almost lost my life. I had gone up there to see how the truckers managed to survive when they got stuck towards seasons’ end, when the risk is at its highest, and I did finally experience it. But then I wrote the first draft, and I wasn’t satisfied with how it read; I felt like my relationship with the drivers did not have enough depth.

So I went back again, and again, and again. I didn’t miss a single season. There were seven characters I had followed the process with, with whom I’d stayed close and shared the text with over the years. And there came a point when it felt like I’d got them right on page. We were in synch enough to decide the ending together.

AHo: You were a fellow at the Akademie Solitude. Could you tell me more about how the academy informed your writing process? What role did it play in the development of the book?

SPK: A very significant role, because I wrote the first draft of the book there. I arrived at Solitude days after a season that ended in a near-fatal storm and then wrote in a frenzy. To have infrastructure, silence, and inspiration at once is impossible in the Himalaya, so the year at the Akademie was transformative. I discovered myself as a writer there and found the discipline I’ve followed since. The staff made complete immersion possible, and there were artists around who cheered me on in my obsessive chase, despite how reclusive I was. From being questioned about why the book should matter, to Solitude, where only the book mattered, was one big leap. It made the transition from field to desk a lot smoother.

AHo: I was wondering whether you could compare your book to a documentary – whether the approach of the book has something in common with the idea of being »a fly on the wall« simply observing.

SPK: That’s an interesting image – the fly on the wall. I tried being a lemon on the dashboard. Tried being as tiny an object as possible, but it’s impossible to be invisible in a truck. The cabin is compact and usually there’d be just two people in there, me and a driver, which made it very intimate. This is precisely why traditional research methods failed. I had to be present and engaged at all times in whatever was happening around me, whether it’s a natural disaster or a driver looking bored. And of course, all eyes were on me, because it’s a very masculine space where I was the only woman seen roaming alone. That attention had to be dealt with. No way could I stick to the wall.

AHo: And I also imagine you had to share a lot of yourself, and contribute a lot personally, to keep the conversation going.

SPK: Yes, and I wanted to. I was there to write about their work, so sharing mine was an obvious first step for me, as was helping out in the cabin when possible. And then, to take the conversation forward, I’d pay attention to what caught their fancy, the wind let’s say, and read up on it between trips before diving deeper into the topic with them. After a while a narrative began to emerge on its own.

AHo: How much time did you spend in the field compared to being at home in your office researching, organizing material, and writing?

SPK: I live in the field. I can see the highway from the window by my desk and bump into drivers when I step out for grocery shopping. There were some seasons when I set up a desk by the road and wrote out of ramshackle rooms, so the field has long been office as well as home.

AHo: Let me wrap up the conversation by asking: are you working on something new right now?

SPK: Fiction! For a change. A novel that’s been brewing in the background for some years.

 

Sky Road is available for pre-order here.