“People are very surprised to see me hanging head down from a tree, but this is my method to serve God and do penance. When I am hanging upside down, I remind myself and others that all of us are bound by sin and lead lives that are, in God’s eyes, upside down. I seek to turn myself upside down again and again until in the end I stand upright in the sight of God,” the sadhu explained.
Once again Sundar struggled with the Hindu idea of penance. “It is true,” he said, “that the world is upside down and its ways are sinful. But I ask you this: Can we ever hope to right ourselves through our own strength? Must we not turn instead to God, who alone can set right what is wrong and free us from evil thoughts and desires?”
The Hindu sadhu sat silently for a long time. “You have spoken wisely,” he finally said. “I will have to ponder your words.”
As Sundar continued his journey west, he prayed for the two sadhus he had encountered. It saddened him to think how earnestly they searched for peace of heart and failed to recognize that finding it was a matter of faith and not painful exercises.
Sundar continued to head west, and finally he climbed over the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. He traveled on in Afghanistan until he came to the city of Jalalabad, where he stayed for several weeks and preached in the streets. But Sundar was now in an area where the people spoke the Pashtu language, and since he could neither speak nor understand the language, he decided to travel no farther. Instead he turned around and headed east, back toward India.
It was August 1906, and Sundar was in the town of Jammu in Kashmir, one hundred miles north of Lahore, when he noticed another sadhu in an orange robe. This man, though, was a European, and Sundar soon learned that his name was Samuel Stokes. Samuel explained that he had come from America to preach the gospel to the Indian people in the countryside and remote villages of the north.
Sundar was immediately intrigued to find a foreigner with the same calling as his own, and the two men soon decided to travel together throughout the fall and winter months. Their first night together turned out to be quite a test. No one in Jammu had offered them food or a room in which to stay. But as night fell, a farmer relented and allowed the two sadhus to stay in his cowshed. Sundar gagged as he entered the foul-smelling place. Still, it was all they had, and the two men thanked God for a roof over their heads. Later the farmer brought them a loaf of stale bread, and again they gave thanks to God. Because bugs and rats were crawling around, making it impossible to sleep, Sundar and Samuel spent much of the night talking and praying.
Sundar pointed out that the two of them were taking shelter in a stable, the same type of place where Jesus had been born. The thought cheered them, and Samuel began telling Sundar about another man, Saint Francis of Assisi, born in the twelfth century, who had wandered around Italy preaching and doing good to those he met.
“Saint Francis was born into a wealthy family. His father was a merchant,” Samuel said. “As a young man his sole aim in life was to enjoy himself. He gained a reputation for throwing parties and telling the wittiest stories. Then, when he was about twenty years old, he became ill. During his illness he thought long and hard about what would happen to him if he died. And he came to the conclusion that he would not be worthy to go to heaven.”
“So what did he do?” Sundar asked, brushing a spider off his arm.
“He renounced his father’s wealth and took a vow of poverty. Then he went from town to town preaching and helping the people. He often worked with lepers, and over time other wealthy men and women joined him, which led to the starting of what would become known as the order of Saint Francis.”
“How wonderful,” Sundar replied. “To think that I am following in well-trodden footsteps. In my heart I thought that God might well have called other men at other times to do as I am doing, but I did not know for sure. And you, Samuel, have confirmed that to me. You will have to tell me more of this Saint Francis. I am especially interested to know how he balanced service to the lepers and solitude with our Lord.”
Samuel nodded. “As we travel together, I will tell you all that I know of Saint Francis. Although I am a Quaker and he was a Catholic, he is my inspiration in coming to India. I, too, have turned my back on my inheritance and seek only to do the will of God.”
During the night Sundar thought a lot about what Samuel had told him. Thoughts of Saint Francis inspired him to continue his journey, even though winter was coming and there had been little response to the gospel from many of the people in the villages he had visited.
The next morning the two men left Jammu and headed toward Kangra Valley. The weather grew colder, but they continued on, often traveling through the night, resting at dawn, and then preaching in the afternoons and evenings. Samuel had a “magic lantern” with him, which allowed him to project slides onto a screen or the side of a building. When he took it out, crowds would gather to view images of ancient Christian sites in Palestine and marvel at what they saw.
It was a long, hard, cold winter, and by spring both Sundar and Samuel were exhausted. Indeed, one day in a remote area, as the two young men walked along, Sundar collapsed at the side of the road. His body was wracked with pain, and he was overcome by fever. Because they were miles from the nearest village, Samuel left Sundar propped up at the side of the road and went to seek help for his traveling companion. About two miles away he found the house of an English planter, who offered to take Sundar in and help him. Samuel carried Sundar to the planter’s house and placed him in bed.
Sundar’s body was weak, and his recovery was slow. The planter insisted that the two men stay with him until Sundar was completely well. During the afternoons Sundar and Samuel would sit outside in the sun and talk to their host. At first the planter was not particularly interested in religious matters. But as their afternoons together rolled by, his interest was piqued. Soon the planter was asking probing questions about Christianity, and before Sundar was well enough to leave, the man had become a believer.
When Sundar’s health finally returned, he and Samuel thanked the planter and went happily on their way. As far as Sundar was concerned, his bout of illness had been worthwhile, since it produced a Christian convert.
The two men headed for Sabathu, where they planned to spend a month helping in the leprosy hospital. Sundar was still a little weak, but nonetheless, when they arrived at the hospital, both men volunteered to do whatever they could. They were put to work changing bandages, bathing lepers, and cleaning the ward. It was dirty work, and they ran the risk of contracting the disease, but both of them worked wholeheartedly.
At the end of their month helping in the hospital, Samuel decided to return to the United States to recruit more Christian men to come to India and become sadhus. With Samuel’s departure, Sundar decided to make a short preaching tour of the villages in the mountains around Sabathu.
One day as Sundar was leaving the village of Narkanda, nine thousand feet up in the mountains, he noticed that in a field below the village some farmers were gathering in their barley crop. He walked down the steep track that led to the field and greeted the farmers. But none of them seemed eager to greet him, especially when they learned he was a Christian sadhu and not a Hindu one.
“We don’t have time for you,” one of the men said. “Can’t you see we are busy? Let us alone. We don’t need your God. We need to get our crops in.”
Sundar stood wondering how to reply to the man, when a rock hit Sundar on the forehead. The rock had been hurled at him by one of the other men working in the field. At first Sundar did not feel any pain, but he was aware that blood was pouring down his cheek. The rest of the farmers stopped what they were doing and watched, wide-eyed in horror. It was very bad luck to harm a holy man, Christian or not.
Sundar knew that the farmers were waiting for him to curse them, but instead he pressed the palm of his hand to his forehead to stem the bleeding. As he did so, he silently prayed, “Father, forgive them.”
Sundar made his way over to a nearby stream and washed his face. Several sets of anxious eyes watched his every move. When they were satisfied that there would be no repercussions for the rock throwing, the men went back to the work of harvesting their barley. Sundar sat in the distance and watched them, waiting for the blood oozing from his wound to stop flowing.
About an hour later one of the farmers staggered over and flopped down beside the stream near Sundar. “My head,” he gasped. “I have never had such a bad headache.”
“What is your name?” Sundar asked.
“Nandi,” the man replied.
Sundar knew that the other men would think he had put a secret curse on Nandi as a result of the stone-throwing incident, so he walked over to the field and picked up Nandi’s scythe. Much to the amazement of the other men, he began swinging the scythe back and forth, harvesting the barley, and soon he was in a rhythm with the rest of them. He worked silently beside them until the sun set.
That night Sundar was invited to Nandi’s house, where all of the farmers from the field gathered to hear him tell stories about Jesus Christ. Nandi insisted Sundar stay the night in his home, and the following morning he begged him to come back whenever he was in the area.
In the distance beyond Narkanda rose the Himalayan Mountains. In many of the villages he passed through in this area, Sundar had encountered Tibetan traders who had made their way over the mountains with trade goods strapped to their long-haired yaks. Their distinct flat Asian features and prayer wheels intrigued Sundar, who soon found himself once more thinking about Tibet. This strange land beyond the Himalayas seemed to be beckoning to him.
Chapter 7
Across the Mountains
In early summer 1908 eighteen-year-old Sundar Singh could no longer resist the feeling pulling at his heart, and he set out for Tibet. To get there he followed the Hindustani–Tibet road as it wound its way up along the Sutlej River gorge. It was a slow climb, but Sundar took his time, stopping along the way to talk to anyone he came across.
Along the road he met another sadhu, who was sitting surrounded by four fires as the sun blazed overhead. “Sadhu, you have a look of despair on your face. Why are you sitting amidst the fires on such a hot day?” Sundar asked.
“I am disciplining my body. I surround myself with fire all summer, and in the winter I stand for hours in the icy river below,” the sadhu replied.
“And what have you gained from this discipline?” Sundar gently asked.
“Nothing,” the sadhu replied. “I do not hope to gain or learn anything in this present life, and about the future I can say nothing.”
Sundar used the opportunity to tell the sadhu how the God of the Bible offered him a life of freedom from sin through faith, not by strange and torturous acts such as sitting by a fire in the heat of the day. The sadhu promised to think about what Sundar had said and to read the tract he left with him.
The road ended at the town of Rampur, not the same town where Sundar had grown up, but another town called by that name. This Rampur was the crossroads between India and Tibet, and even the architecture was a mixture of Indian columns and the tiled, curved roofs of Tibetan homes. Tibetan traders, with their yaks in tow, were a common sight in town as they stopped to sell salt, yak butter, and yak-wool blankets that they had carried over the mountains. With the money they made, they bought grain and fruits and vegetables, which they took back to Tibet.
From Rampur the road became a yak track that wound up and over the Himalayan Mountains. Sundar, barefooted as usual and clad only in his robe with his blanket draped around him, hiked over sharp rocks and through the snow. Sometimes the passes he made his way over were more than twenty thousand feet high. As he climbed higher and higher, the air got thin, and he often found himself gasping for breath, but he kept on moving. Somehow he sensed that his destiny lay beyond these formidable mountains, and he would not turn back. His determination was rewarded when he crossed the main ridge of the mountains and began descending the other side. Sundar found himself in a place unlike any other he had visited.
