Himalaya Bound Read online

  Making ourselves as much at home as possible on the side of the road, where the uneven edge of the asphalt was overtaken by a rim of packed dirt, Goku and Salma swept away the top layer of loose dust with whisks made of twigs. Jamila and Sharafat stacked the saddlebags, and Appa sparked the cook fire. Meanwhile, Mustooq, Mir Hamza and Bashi—along with crews from Yusuf’s and Alfa’s families—led the buffaloes down the hillside behind us to the river, which was still shrouded in shadow, waiting to be touched by the sunlight that was slowly spreading down the cliff behind it. There, by the water’s edge, the animals would be comfortable, and would be safely tucked away from the vehicles that sped dangerously past our camp.

  After Appa served up the morning tea, Dhumman and Alfa flagged down a shared jeep that was heading north to the town of Purola, where there was a forest department ranger station that could give them a first-hand update on the permit situation, and where they could meet with their friend Firoz and get his input.

  Everyone else waited for them to come back with the information, or at least with better-informed guesses, that would surely sway their fate. While a few people—including Jamila, Roshni, and Alfa’s wife Sakina—stayed on the roadside, enduring the heat and dust to keep an eye on the camp, most of us went down to the river. A bridge overhead cast a substantial swath of shade on the bank of smooth, rounded rocks. The translucent green water flowed clear and cold and deep. The guys stripped down to their skivvies and plunged right in. We swam out to a rock in the middle of the river, which we climbed up on and leaped off of, splashing back into the current. When they were ready to dry off, they found big buffaloes that were lying in the sun and sprawled out on their backs, using them as horned, hairy lounge chairs. The young women also wanted to bathe and get cool, so they walked around a bend in the river, out of sight.

  By the time Dhumman and Alfa returned, the sunlight had begun to climb the valley walls, leaving the river and our camp in shadows once again. A thin haze hung in the air like gold dust. The heat of the day had inched its way into retreat. Jamila, Roshni, and a few of the older children sat in a circle on the side of the road with Dhumman and Alfa to hear what they had to report. The news was discouraging. The forest rangers, they said, had told them that nothing had changed, and they were under orders not to allow Van Gujjars into meadows of Govind. Their conversation with Firoz confirmed it: his family had been stopped at the forest gates near the village of Naitwar and was blocked from entering the national park. They were camped on the road, waiting, in a place where there was little fodder available to scrounge or to purchase. If they headed up to their meadow, they could reap unlimited fines or face arrest and have their herd confiscated. So they stayed where they were, stuck in limbo, hoping they could enter the forest before they ran out of food for their buffaloes.

  Dhumman spelled out the dilemma. On one hand, if he and Yusuf and Alfa stuck to their usual route and joined Firoz, their combined presence might be enough to pressure the forest department to let them all into the park. But if it wasn’t, if Raisaily or his superiors in the government still wouldn’t budge, the combined presence of all their families would deplete the scant resources in the area four times faster, hastening the arrival of disaster for them all.

  On the other hand, Kanasar would be a more difficult place to spend the summer than their meadows at Gangar, and going there would be perceived as a victory for the forest department, which could set a dire precedent for the future. But standing up for themselves and losing would be even worse. Neither choice was a good one.

  As they weighed the options and their consequences, visions of hundreds of buffaloes starving on the roadside with nowhere to go ultimately swayed their minds. They simply couldn’t risk going to Gangar; they could lose everything. So, they would turn right at Naugaon and aim for Kanasar, where, despite the hardships involved in reaching the meadows there, they felt more confident that they’d ultimately be able to get their buffaloes to grass. It seemed like probably the better of two bad possibilities, but their decision was riddled with doubts.

  With their plan set, Dhumman and Alfa went into Bornigad to inquire about hiring a cargo truck to carry all the buffalo calves and the young children to their next camp, which was up an unusually long, steep section of road. Knowing that soon they’d have some unavoidably strenuous days, the adults didn’t want their little ones—human or bovine—to overdo it now, especially with some of the children already sick.

  The truck came at about 2 am. The small children, twelve of them, were hoisted up into the cab. They waited there quietly with Roshni and Fatima while everyone else gathered at the back of the vehicle, forming a human corral around the calves. There was no ramp, so the young buffaloes had to be lifted up, pushed from behind and pulled from the front in order to get them into the cargo bed, and the animals were not thrilled at this idea. They struggled and flailed and had be to muscled in by as many people as could get a hand on them, who tried to be as forceful as they needed to be yet as gentle as possible. I felt like I was watching a weird rodeo event, lit entirely by a few weak flashlights.

  Once the calves were in, the saddlebags were slung over the beams that ran across the top of the cargo bed, which would make the trek much less strenuous on the horses and bulls. As long as we were making things easy, I loaded my big backpack into the truck, too, keeping only a small bag with some camera gear and a water bottle with me. As soon as Jamila and Sakina squeezed into the jam-packed cab and managed to close the cab door behind them, the truck groaned up the road toward Barkot.

  Those of us who stayed with the adult buffaloes and pack animals set off on foot, knowing, for the first time on the migration, where we were ultimately heading, and knowing that it wasn’t the familiar bugyal that my companions thought of as home. The mood on the road was different than on any previous morning, as though something profound was taking place. Even though I could hardly see anyone else in the darkness, I could feel it. And I could hear it. On most days, one or two people might sing quietly to themselves, for a few minutes here or a few minutes there, while they walked. But on this day, as they moved through the darkness, my friends all sang together, with more passion, more volume, and for a greater distance than ever before.

  6

  NOT THE LIFE OF A FOOL

  We found the women and children on the side of the road, a mile or so before the town of Barkot. The three families had set up camp beside one another in what felt like a particularly precarious spot, along a narrow strip of dirt where there was virtually no space between the tire tracks imprinted on the ground and the sheer slope that fell towards the Yamuna far below. My friends clearly placed great faith in the goodwill and technical skill of Garhwali drivers—or in their god.

  On our long uphill trek from Bornigad, we’d climbed through the darkness into a new climate zone. Here, the hills were covered by pines that cast long, slender shadows through the golden glow of daybreak, which gradually filled the spaces between the trees like a tide of light rising from the east. The morning air smelled fresh and clean and felt invigorating.

  After some chapatis and chai, I walked into Barkot with Sharafat, Hamju, and Alfa’s son Kalu, who carried the families’ fresh milk to sell at a dairy shop. An important transportation hub, the town’s main market was bustling with people getting on and off buses and claiming seats in shared jeeps, which might carry them towards Yamunotri, or the Tons Valley, or Mussoorie, or Uttarkashi. I split from my companions, searching the busy bazaar for someplace with a computer and an internet connection, then picking up a few items that Jamila had requested: sugar, rice, atta, and vegetables. Before heading back to camp, I stopped into a pharmacy to purchase some antibiotics for Goku, whose foot infection was getting worse every day. If it didn’t get treated before we went up into the mountains, I feared it could become a serious problem for her.

  Back at camp, I took out the tourist map of Uttarakhand that was buried in my backpack. Now that our course was set, I wanted to see where
we were going and how we would get there. Kanasar, however, wasn’t labelled on the map and, since my friends couldn’t read, no one could even point out its general location; to them, the map might as well have been a piece of abstract art. By asking about places that were near Kanasar, however, and finding them on the map, I was able to get a rudimentary idea of where it was—east of the village of Hanuman Chatti, which was on the way to Yamunotri, and west of a small but well-known lake called Dodi Tal.

  It was clear that the most direct way to get to Kanasar would be to continue following the Yamuna to Hanuman Chatti, then swing east and climb into the mountains. But, I learned, we weren’t going to go that way. Instead, we would take a roundabout route, making a deliberate long-cut that would add a substantial number of miles to our journey but which, all things considered, was the best approach to the alpine meadow.

  Since Kanasar was about 3300 feet higher than their traditional bugyal near Gangar, we had to pace our ascent to make sure we didn’t get there before the snow had had a chance to melt and the grass had come up. The problem with simply lingering down along the Yamuna was the yatra—or pilgrimage—season, which was just getting underway. Over the next few weeks, thousands of Hindu pilgrims would travel to and from the temple at Yamunotri, near the source of the river. They would come and go in buses, cars and vans, hurtling recklessly along the narrow, rough road that snakes up the canyon. My companions feared that the surge of yatra traffic that would soon be flooding the road would pose a real danger to life, limb, and livestock. Additionally, the whole area would be overpopulated, and Dhumman knew that they’d have to pay exorbitant prices to locals for places to camp and keep their herds, and he doubted whether there would be enough fodder to support them for long.

  Hence, we would leave the Yamuna Valley, cutting up and over a bastion of steep, forested hills, then dropping down into the Bhagirathi River valley. There, we might have to contend with some early yatra traffic to Gangotri—near the source of the sacred Ganges River—but only for a day or two, since we’d quickly turn onto a quiet side road, along a small tributary, which would lead to open forest where fodder was plentiful and free. Once we got there, we could meander comfortably, at our own pace, before making the final push to Kanasar.

  We passed though Barkot before dawn, while the town was still asleep. Hiking well into the morning, we eventually left the road and camped along a creek in a small clearing at the cusp of the woods, just off a footpath that led into the Dunda Mandal Hills.

  Though no one was happy about abandoning Gangar for the summer, the simple fact that we now knew where we were going had lifted some of the tension from the caravan. And everyone was relieved to get off the road for a few days. Dhumman, in particular, seemed much more relaxed and less distracted, with time for casual conversation and laughter. That afternoon, I told him what Jamila told me about how the two of them had met and married, and he waved a hand in protest. “No, no, no, it didn’t happen like that,” he said. “I didn’t talk her into anything! She seduced me and convinced me to run away with her, even though she was engaged.” Jamila jumped in to disagree, and the two of them bickered good-naturedly, like any married couple with different versions of the same story, neither able to believe that the other couldn’t remember how one of the most important events in their lives had actually transpired. It would have been impossible to talk to Dhumman like this a day or two earlier, when his head was so wrapped up in the dilemma he faced, and I was glad that he had at last returned to himself.

  Like most people in confusing circumstances, my friends were awash in emotional contradictions. Dhumman was more at ease, but now had a set of new concerns about taking his family somewhere that was totally unfamiliar to him. Likewise, Sharafat was excited about having a chance to see new places, but was nervous about heading into the unknown. Appa was truly sad that they weren’t going to Gangar—she longed to return to the home she’d missed over the two summers that she’d spent in her husband’s village—but she was curious about what they’d find at Kanasar. Jamila was resigned to their fate, and worried about it, and angry about it, too.

  From our camp at the foot of the Dunda Mandal Hills, Dhumman spoke to Manto on the phone. It looked as though the chief wildlife warden of Uttarakhand—Raisaily’s boss—was going to sign an order allowing the Van Gujjars into Govind National Park very soon. But in the meantime, Firoz, who was still waiting on the roadside outside the park, had exhausted all the local sources of fodder; SOPHIA was going to send them a truckload of grass, which Manto hoped would last until the buffaloes were allowed into the park. If the situation became truly dire, Firoz was prepared to sneak into forest with his herd. And if he was sent to jail for it, he said defiantly, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about where his next meal was coming from.

  For a moment, the families reconsidered their plan. If they would be permitted to enter the park after all, perhaps they should turn around and head in that direction. But after a quick conference among Dhumman, Yusuf, and Alfa, they decided not to. I didn’t quite understand their reasoning. Even if Firoz was suffering from a fodder shortage now, it would take my companions at least a week to reach the forest gate at Govind, and it sounded like by that time they’d probably be allowed straight up to their meadows. The problem, Dhumman explained, was that “probably” was only a half-promise at best. They couldn’t afford to reverse course based on “probably”—they required more certainty than that. Until the chief wildlife warden actually put pen to paper, they couldn’t trust that he would. They had too much to lose. That made a certain amount of sense to me, but there was something about how quickly they rejected the idea of turning around that made me wonder if they simply had an aversion to retracing their steps, if maybe there was an entrenched taboo among Van Gujjars that forbade backtracking on migration.

  Our course confirmed, we moved deeper into the Dunda Mandal Hills, and for the first few days, everyone was grateful to be back in the forest. We camped on earth rather than asphalt, in peaceful groves of pine. The animals could wander and graze freely, with no worries about them devouring a farmer’s crops or being struck by a speeding car. We were again out of sight, behind the veil, where my friends felt most comfortable. This was their element.

  But not exactly. Unlike their territory in the Shivaliks and at Gangar, where they are as familiar with the topography and the ecology as most people are with their bedrooms, here they were strangers. More than once, forks in the trail created moments of bewilderment and debate over which way to go. The buffaloes were even more perplexed. They knew the way to Gangar by heart and never had to be directed or steered; they led the way there, and the people followed. In this new place, and for the rest of the migration, the buffaloes strayed from the path, paused randomly, and had to be led and prodded forward, dawdling with no sense of purpose.

  The trek to the high ridge that divided the Yamuna and Bhagirathi Valleys was unexpectedly strenuous—much longer and steeper than hiking out of the Shivaliks had been, and far more difficult than their usual route to Gangar. Some of the kids who’d had no problems hiking along the road were pressed to their limits, but there weren’t enough free arms or backs on which to carry them all. Djennam Khatoon, the three-and-a-half-year-old daughter of Chamar and Fatima, walked barefoot up the trail, weeping with every step. Her older brother, Rustem, aged six, wore mismatched plastic shoes and an expression of misery on his dirt-smeared little face. Jamila asked me to help with them, so I did what I could. Since I was already hauling a huge backpack, the best I could do was to offer them each a hand. Djennam Khatoon gripped my left pinky and immediately stopped crying. Rustem curled his little fingers around my right ring and middle fingers, and seemed to take some strength from them. As I did when my own son was upset, I sang quietly to them, which was just enough of a distraction to ease their pain. We walked onward and upward together.

  I couldn’t imagine an American family doing this with their children. We hesitate to take our little kids o
n long road trips out of concern that it would be too difficult for them to spend hour after hour in the car; forget about marching them into the Himalayas without shoes. It’s not that my companions were cruel or unconcerned about their children; they kept a keen eye on how the kids were doing, and didn’t want to push them too far past their limits—but they were okay with nudging them right up to that line. They knew that their children had to grow up to be tough, prepared to handle a life of unending physical demands, and there was no point in creating any kind of illusions that their world was a soft or easy place.

  As we gained elevation, the trail snaked steeply over ribs of rock, upwards through the woods. The light became gauzy, hanging between the trees like a translucent amber curtain, given density by smoke wafting from forest fires burning on nearby slopes. We made camp just below the pass, near where Dhumman and Yusuf believed we’d find a spring. After a futile search, they realized they had been mistaken or misinformed, the victims of their own ignorance of the terrain.

  We had no choice but to send a team to fetch water from the last source we’d passed—a small stream about a mile back down the steepest part of the trail. I went with them, and it was all good fun, letting gravity whisk us downhill, then playing and joking around by the creek—until it came time to haul the full jugs back up. We were more exhausted from the morning’s climb than we’d realized, and the weight of the water made for a grueling ascent. When we finally reached the high camp, Goku put down her load and burst into tears.

  Though she was only fourteen, she was as strong as any young Olympic athlete—but she also had a seriously infected foot, and walking on it was torturing her. This day, the pain had broken her. I looked at her wound and expressed puzzlement at the fact that it had continued to get worse, when she confessed that she hadn’t been taking the antibiotics I’d bought for her. She was intimidated by the size of the pills. This was the first time I got angry on the migration. She had to take the medicine, I insisted, or it was possible the infection could cost her her foot—the abscess looked that bad. If the pills were too big we could cut them into smaller pieces, or crush them and put them into her food, I said, but she had to take them. Jamila was visibly surprised by the intensity of my reaction, and agreed to make sure Goku took the pills.