A few years ago the government had at last succeeded in punching a very long and deep tunnel all the way through the spur of the Himalayas separating the Beas from the Chenab, bypassing the dreaded Rohtang Pass. Several kilometers north of Manali, the road forked. A newer road ran to the left toward the entrance of the tunnel. The right fork, which led to the pass, was less traveled. It wandered through a little settlement and then struck out decisively uphill. Before too long there was snow on the ground, then banks of it plowed off to the sides, and then they were driving between vertical walls of it, as high as the taxis’ windowsills. As high as the roof racks. At one point about halfway up they stopped for a bit at a little dhaba and were able to clamber up a snowbank and look down on the road they had not taken: a snake of red brake lights winding its way up a valley toward the entrance of the tunnel. They couldn’t see the entrance from this angle, but could guess where it was from a nimbus of arctic cold white LED lights above a spur of rock. That—according to Ilham—was where the adventure would have ended for him and Laks had they made the mistake of going that way. For there was a reason the government had spent billions on that tunnel. And it was not to make things perfect for backpackers or to ease the lives of truck drivers conveying cigarettes and candy bars to the roadside dhabas of far Ladakh, though it did incidentally serve those purposes. It was first and foremost a defense installation, there to improve strategic communication with the China front. As had been quite obvious during today’s drive, much of the traffic was military, and a lot of the cargo in ostensibly civilian vehicles—trucks laden with rebar, say—had a military application. Anyway, it was now the case that civilian vehicles were inspected and IDs checked at the tunnel entrance. Both Laks and Ilham would have had their journeys cut short there. The rest of the Fellowship probably could have made it through and waited for them on the other side, but they’d made a decision to stay together. Jay and Sam, on the "in for a penny, in for a pound" principle, had decided to stick with them. It was a good decision; they had no real fluency in anything but English, and in many other ways had no idea what they were doing.