He got into a spot of trouble when, on his way back south, he encountered a roadblock where Indian authorities were checking IDs. It all had to do with the border dispute between Pakistan and India. So he had to bail out of the truck he was riding in—no feat at all, since it was stopped dead in a five-mile-long traffic jam, and the driver had switched off the engine—and backtrack on foot. Eventually he hitchhiked his way into the neighboring province of Himachal Pradesh and then found his way back down into East Punjab just by hiking across the border in a mountainous area where there could be no roadblocks, since there were no roads. That was his first encounter with Indian wilderness, which—obvious as it might sound—was just that. No one lived there. The landscape was natural. When he did happen upon a road, he hitchhiked back down into the lowlands, feeling he’d made a connection with the ancient gurus. For many had been the occasions when early Sikh leaders had been forced by martial setbacks to withdraw into these hills and lie low for months or years.