OUT OF EDEN WALK

As I walk the planet, following the campfires of the early humans who explored the world during the Stone Age, I am acutely aware of the vast technological advantages that I enjoy compared to those first hardy pioneers: ibuprofen, GPS navigation, Vibram soles, and ice cream.

Ice cream is life.

I grew up on the pushcart helados of the Mexican hinterlands. Catering to every guilty endorphin, the wizened paleteros of my childhood hawked porn comics and cigarettes as well as their usual stock in strawberry cones and lemon ices. On this endless foot journey across the Earth, by contrast, the cold and highly caloric food has proven a fickle reward. It is merely a mirage in some places: nonexistent in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia (average summer temperature 125° F) and largely substituted by baklava in Turkey. But in the former Soviet sphere—the Soviets mastered the industrial production of assault rifles and ice cream—I walked in heaven.

“Ostorozhno! Morozhenoye!” I cried out to my Uzbek walking partner, Aziz Khalmuradov, whenever we approached a random village in the Kyzl Kum desert of Central Asia: “Watch out! Ice cream!” It rhymed, stupidly, in Russian.

Thus ice cream had become destination.

Primordial ice cream may date back—according to Western-centric history—to Alexander the Great, who in the fourth century B.C. was reported to conquer his appetite with snow drizzled in honey. But the truer origin story of this universal treat must begin, as many such stories do, in ancient China. As early as 2,200 years ago, Chinese cooks had innovated a creamy dessert by freezing a mixture of rice and milk. By the seventh century A.D., the ruler of Tang Shang was employing 94 ice harvesters to assist in the preparation of a concoction of frozen buffalo milk and camphor. This priority of state cannot help but bring to mind the poetry of Wallace Stevens:

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Today I trudge through the muzzy brown heat waves of summertime India. Yet I am surrounded by joy: Indians are deeply addicted to ice cream.

No matter how far I plod from the asphalt—somewhere out there, shimmering in the molten distance, wriggling across fields of baked dust, or bumping through the dead stubble of last season’s wheat stalks, rides a life-giving ice cream vendor on a bicycle. A sloppy scarf is tied about his head. His hands are gnarled as the roots of a peepli tree. When he lifts the lid of the heavy iron cooler strapped to his bike: a puff of sweet, icy air. True, vanilla, the most conformist of flavors, is usually his only ware. There is no chocolate. But it does the job. Cost: 10 rupees, about 15 cents.

“No, no, you have it,” insists my walking partner, Arati Kumar Rao, passing the melting cone to me.

Kumar Rao is an environmentalist, an expert in biology. She knows milk can spoil quickly in hot climates. She knows ice cream is relished by microorganisms, as well as walkers.

I peer at the dripping cone. I look at Kumar Rao. The fields of India burn around us under a white-hot sun. My heart is empty.