Every time I return to a guesthouse after a trek, having left my laptop and other weighty and expensive items that I’d rather not drag over 5000 m passes, there is always a knot in my stomach wondering if it will still be there when I return.  Until September 3, 2009, that knot in my stomach had always turned to relief when I saw my bag just as I had left it.  No matter how many times I had left my things without incident, I religiously followed my rule to leave nothing behind that I could not afford to lose, and so anytime I left my laptop behind I always made sure I had backed up my pictures before leaving.  An anal-retentive-ness that I was very happy I indulged on this particular occasion.

As I walked into the room at my guesthouse in Leh where I had left my bag twenty days ago, that familiar knot in my stomach did not burst into relief but rather was pulled tighter when I saw that my bag was clearly not how I had left it.  When I leave my bag, I do make it very difficult for someone to casually peak at what’s inside and quickly remove a valuable item.  After locking my laptop to a loop inside my bag, I then wrap the outside of my bag with a cable and padlock it shut.  I place my padlocked backpack into a nondescript beat up nylon duffel bag so it doesn’t appear to be anything particularly valuable.  The nylon bag was gone; my backpack was instead stuffed into the large plastic bag that I had put my laptop in to protect it from moisture, which of course had been inside my backpack when I left.  The cable was loosely wrapped around it but the lock was gone.  I knelt down beside it and opened my bag searching in what I already knew was a vain attempt to find my laptop.  That knot in my stomach burst, or perhaps more accurately imploded, sucking out the hope from my finger tips to my toes and leaving me with only despair.  I felt no anger at that moment just resignation and defeat.  When I began this trip I figured I’d be fortunate to make it through without losing either my camera or computer, I found no satisfaction in being right.  The anger would come later when I realized some of the petty stuff the thief took; stuff that could make him very little money, if any, but were a pain and the ass for me to lose.  If I was going to get stolen from, why couldn’t it be someone who at least knew what they were doing and knew the value of things?  I could accept things like my spare hard drives, camera flash, and laptop which obviously had some monetary value but things like my razors, a good but obviously used map of India from the states, my duct tape, half a bottle of waterproofing for shoes I had picked up in Kathmandu, and burned copies of my software disks (this turned out to be a real pain in the ass), that was just stupid.  Fortunately, despite how thoroughly the thief had gone through my bag he had not managed to find my emergency stash of traveler’s checks, cash, and a credit card I kept hidden in the bag.   I told the manger I would have to go to the police the next day and get a report so I could file an insurance claim for my laptop.  He looked worse off than me, I didn’t think he had anything to do with it, but he knew how the police operate here and I was about to find out.

The hotel manager and I walked into the Police station in Leh.  It was full of bearded Kashmiris.  It was like some Indian mad scientist had secretly discovered the secrets to human cloning and his first project was to create a Jammu-Kashmir police force.  They all looked alike, same crooked noses, same olive complexions, same black beards, and same deep set eyes that flickered with dishonesty.  I sat across a desk from one such clone relating the circumstances surrounding the theft, still under the mistaken assumption that the police actually wanted to hear the truth.  I was then told to write it down, which I did.  It soon became clear to me that the guesthouse cook was the one with the sticky fingers, he had left while the manager was away for a few days and not told anyone where he was going.  On top of that, he was still owed 2 months pay which he had not bothered to collect before he went.  The manager also admitted that some of his things had gone missing as well but he had not realized that the thief had gotten into my bag as well.  The police did not take to this obvious truth, they had no intention of trying to track down this man (not that I had expected them to) and it became clear soon enough that there sole interest was how they could make some money off of my misfortune.  A man probably back in his home village in Goa somewhere getting drunk off of fermented coconut milk on the $100 he probably got for my $2,000 worth of stuff, was not going to supplement their pay in anyway.  Questions from the chief of the clone officers and his underling clone alternated from accusing me of attempting insurance fraud to accusing the guesthouse manager of the theft and telling me that he should pay.

“How do I know you had a lap top?”  The head officer asked with a sneer, “You are just trying to cheat your insurance company.”

I kept my cool, answering calmly, “You can go to any of the three different internet cafes where I’ve used my laptop and ask them if they’ve seen me with a laptop, then you can search all my possessions and see if you find one, what more can I do, if you do find my laptop I’ll be very happy?”

“I will send [underling clone] to your guesthouse and he will investigate,” the head clone stated.  I would later learn this was just a stalling technique while the police negotiated a bribe from the guesthouse manager.  It was hard keeping my cool but I just called the officer’s every bluff.  I showed the officer my bag and explained to him how I had found it different than how I had left, as if he cared.  He feigned mild interest in the exhibit, then said that he would have to take my bag as “evidence,” and I would not be given a copy of the police report know as an F.I.R. or my bag until there was a complete investigation, the culprit was determine and caught.  This may take months or years.  I could hardly hold in my desire to sarcastically respond by asking when the crack C.S.I. team was scheduled to arrive and dust my bag for fingerprints and take swaps for DNA samples.  Instead I said, “If that’s what it takes, obviously I’d like hold on to my bag since it was one of the few things the thief left and I do not particularly want to have to hang around Leh for months but if it’s necessary then I will.”  He went back to the insurance fraud line of questioning, intermittingly threatening the guesthouse manager with jail.  I called his bluff again telling him I’d take him to the internet cafes where I could produce witnesses who have seen my laptop.  We started walking towards the internet café but we were never going to reach it.  The guesthouse manager was relating to me that the Kashmiri end of the conversation, which I obviously could understand, was a negotiation over a bribe that he would have to pay, and in order for me to get my copy of the FIR, I would have to file a report saying that my things were missing not stolen, and be very vague at the circumstances.  The Kashmiri police do not want to admit that there is any crime against tourists, so by not filing reports on any crime they can keep a stellar crime fighting record in the eyes of their superiors and of course the best part is they do not have to actually do any police work either.  I said I would write the “missing” report, which turned out to be dictated to me by the Kashmiri police who through their “extensive” investigation now seemed to know what had happened better than me.  My previous one page account describing the circumstances surrounding the theft of my laptop was ripped up by the police and replaced with the following.

“I was traveling from Hotel T. Suru to Leh market on 3/9/08 when I lost the above mentioned items.  Please lodge FIR and provide a copy to me.  Yours respectfully of applicant.”

Yes, they added the “yours respectfully” too.  This might have been the most fraudulent line in a completely fraudulent report, “respect” was something I had very little of, with regards to the Kashmiri police in Leh.  As I was about to leave with my copy of the F.I.R. one of the Kashmiri clones asked me if I liked Ladakh.  I said yes, very much.  To which he responded, “We don’t like it,” as if speaking for all the collective clones, “Have you been to Kashmir?”  I said I hadn’t yet but would like too.  “Well then, you haven’t been anywhere, Kashmir is heaven,” the officer retorted.  I wanted to go to Kashmir a little less after that.