Himalaya Bound Read online

  As twilight began to settle over the hills, we spotted a forest fire burning further down the ridge. We could see the flames devouring entire trees, and the loud cracking and popping of igniting timbers sounded like the noise in a large city during Diwali. An acrid haze shrouded our camp. Though the blaze covered a fairly small area, it seemed to be hungry and was spreading aggressively. Since I’m from the American West, where each year we have massive wildfires that can consume tens of thousands of acres in a day, I wondered if we were too close. I asked Jamila what she thought, and she said she was keeping an eye on it, paying attention to wind speed and direction, but she didn’t think we were in any imminent danger. She was more concerned that the forest department would blame us for sparking the fire.

  As we continued talking, Jamila confessed to some serious reservations about their entire plan. While she agreed that they could not have gone to Gangar this summer, she wished they’d found a different alternative. Kanasar, she thought, was simply too far, too high, too cold, and too remote, especially with so many small children in their caravan. Since the family that traditionally used it hadn’t been there in a number of years, she knew they’d have to rebuild their old hut, or perhaps construct a new one from scratch. And they weren’t even sure if the forest rangers would let them in. She thought that Yusuf may have persuaded Dhumman that Kanasar was a good option because he believed that milk prices would be higher near there than in some of the other places they might have tried to go. But she didn’t think a few extra rupees would be worth the risks and difficulties they’d surely encounter.

  Weighing on her mind as much or more than these logistical concerns was the outlook for the future. Having abandoned Gangar this year, what would happen next year? Would they be allowed back in then? If not, would they try Kanasar again, or somewhere else? And would the forest department attempt to keep them out of Uttarakhand altogether? The prospects were unnerving. The age-old rhythms and patterns of her tribe’s way of life had been disrupted, and Jamila didn’t know what, if anything, they’d be able to rely on in the years to come. The only thing that gave her some sense of comfort was the knowledge that it would all unfold according to Allah’s will.

  Perhaps that was why, with so much on her mind, she was able to keep her cool and her sense of humor intact. Or perhaps that was just her innate personality. Despite the very real concerns she had about the immediate and distant future, she remained patient and fully present, easy to talk to and laugh with.

  As Jamila held Yasin on her lap, she went on to say that she knew that many mainstream Indians looked down on Van Gujjars for their nomadic lifestyle, but she was proud of it and didn’t want to give it up. “Many people think that we are fools for not settling in villages,” she said. “But look at what we have! We go with the weather, so now we’re heading where the air is cool, where you can get a good night’s sleep, when down below it is too hot. We go where there is plenty of water, while down below people will be fighting for it. In the summer, we don’t have to deal with mosquitoes or malaria or scorpions or snakes or many other problems. We think that what’s good for our buffaloes is also good for us. Does this sound like the life of a fool?”

  It did not.

  With no cars to worry about, we slept later than usual, leaving camp all together as the darkness washed from the sky, the pale violet dawn mixing with the smoke still rising from the ridge to the south. Within minutes we were over the pass atop the Dunda Mandal Hills and descending from the divide, switchback after dusty switchback. With each step, my quadriceps felt like they were being pounded into pulp, as they fought the force of gravity that wanted to pull me and my pack straight down the mountainside. Still, it was much easier than walking up the other side had been.

  After two more days, we emerged along the two-lane highway that ran alongside the Bhagirathi River. Downstream, to the south, the river would merge with the Alaknanda to become the Ganga. All the way upstream, the waters flowed out of the glacier at Gaumukh, above the temple at Gangotri where Lord Shiva is said to have caught the sacred river in his nest of matted hair, cushioning its impact as it fell from the heavens so it didn’t destroy the earth—though sometimes, during monsoon season, it seems like it might yet.

  We turned north, upriver, towards the town of Uttarkashi. The quiet of the hills was quickly dashed by cargo trucks, whose drivers didn’t hesitate to express their frustrations when herds of buffaloes slowed them down. Honking horns and belching exhaust, they passed with engines roaring. We travelled on for a mile or two before stopping on a thin lip of the road shaded by a few pine trees. The animals could graze in a patchwork of fields stitched together on the narrow floodplain some fifty yards below our camp.

  Along the way, we’d passed another Van Gujjar family, and Dhumman had taken a few minutes to stop and chat with his friend, Noor Ahmed, who possessed more current information about the situation with the forest department. He reported that migrating families were being screened at every forest entry checkpoint in Uttarakhand. Nomads who had been given land in the Rajaji Park compensation deals were being blocked from their ancestral meadows, since they had signed away their rights to access the forests with their herds. Of course, neither Dhumman, Yusuf, nor Alfa had received any land—but Kasim, whose grazing documents they planned to use to gain entry to Kanasar, did.

  If Noor Ahmed was right, the rangers would have a list of the Van Gujjars who had settled in Gandikhatta, Kasim’s name would surely appear on it, and my friends and their buffaloes would be turned away when they tried to enter the forest. The very papers that had seemed like their salvation could prove to be their downfall.

  The anxieties that had temporarily dissipated in the hills seethed once more. The forest gate we had to pass through was not far beyond Uttarkashi, at a village called Gangori (not to be confused with Gangar, or Gangotri). If we were stopped there, it would pose an insurmountable problem, since we were already on Plan B and Dhumman had no Plan C. At this point, there was nowhere else to go. “I think we’re doomed,” Dhumman said, despondently, as concern clouded his face. But we couldn’t stop where we were, and it was too late for the families to turn around and try for their own meadows in Govind National Park. There was nothing to do but press ahead and hope that the forest rangers manning the gates could be reasoned with.

  7

  THE FOREST GATE

  We reached the outskirts of Uttarkashi the next morning, stopping at a terraced plot of land just off the highway where a dozen other Van Gujjar families were already camped. Most of the caravans whose summer meadows lay beyond Uttarkashi halted here first, waiting until after midnight to walk their herds through the major market town. Along the length of the terraces, tents were pitched side-by-side, creating the feeling of an improvised bazaar, but with nothing for sale. The buffaloes were led across the road and down a hill to the farmland that blanketed the banks of the Bhagirathi.

  This would be our last stop before the forest barrier at Gangori. If we were going to be shut out of the mountains for using the paperwork of a Van Gujjar who’d received land in Gandikhatta, it would probably happen there. The sense of suspense was even more acute than it had been during the days before reaching the fork at Naugaon, only this time there was no decision to make. Everything depended upon the whim of the rangers at the gate.

  I hauled water with Appa and Mariam, then was sent on a mission to poke around, find the local grain mill and bring back a few kilos of atta; since they’d never been here before, Jamila couldn’t tell me where it was. Once my chores were finished, I headed into Uttarkashi’s main bazaar to give myself a much-needed personal tune-up, getting a shave, devouring half of a tandoori chicken—the first meat I’d eaten in weeks—and stocking up on chocolate. I knew that after Uttarkashi, we weren’t going to be near many more shops, if we made it past the forest gate. And if we were turned away, well, at least we’d have chocolate.

  Talking to the other families that were camped on the terrace, we learned t
hat, if all went well, we’d have an exceptionally long hike to reach our next camp. Dhumman looked into hiring a cargo truck to move the calves and the children again, but he couldn’t find a driver who would do the job for less than 1,000 rupees, and decided it was too expensive. Everyone would have to walk—including the white bull whose feet had taken such a beating on the trail over the hills that it was now wearing booties made of burlap scraps tied up with pink ribbons.

  That evening, we lay down earlier than usual to try to squeeze in a few hours of rest, but sleep did not come easily to any but the smallest of children. Everyone else was well aware that before dawn broke, they might find themselves thrust into a dire situation. On this night, their world felt particularly fragile, and they feared that within a matter of hours it might shatter.

  We were up before midnight and on the road by 1 am. The black buffaloes, camouflaged by night, advanced like a ghostly army, eerily fading in and out of sight as they moved through orange pools of light cast by street lamps, then back into darkness. We marched through a tunnel in the mountainside, then entered Uttarkashi, passing the shuttered shops and the dormant bus and taxi stands of the main market. We kept going for several more miles, then crossed the bridge into Gangori. When we reached the small ranger post where the forest gatekeepers were stationed, it was almost 4 am and still pitch dark.

  Dhumman and Yusuf went inside to show their borrowed papers to the rangers on duty. The rest of the clan, including Alfa, continued driving the herd forward, passing beneath the metal bar that spanned the road, which was raised at just enough of an angle to walk beneath, but was clearly not wide open. Knowing that the anxieties that possessed them would be invisible to a casual observer, they forged ahead with a show of false confidence. If they looked like they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing, they thought, perhaps the rangers would believe them and let them pass.

  It seemed to work.

  After a few minutes, Dhumman and Yusuf emerged from the small office and ran to catch up with the family. They said that everything was okay, for the moment anyway. They’d been told that a ranger would go over their paperwork more thoroughly later, at a more decent hour, at their next camp, which they understood to mean that the officials here were open to negotiating. A wave of quiet relief swept through the group. They quickened their pace and didn’t look back, as though doing so might inspire the rangers to change their minds.

  We trekked for six or seven hours more, following the twists and turns of the tarmac alongside the Assi Ganga River, a small tributary of the Bhagirathi that sluiced between rocky, pine-forested slopes. We stopped at last on a flat, grassy spit of land at a bend in the river and set up tarpaulins among a few cedar trees.

  The weather was fickle throughout the day. Blue skies were suddenly obscured by clouds, rain was chased off by the sun, the temperatures seemed to rise and fall with the flick of a switch. Once, a cloudburst hurled hail with such force that Dhumman, Bashi and Goku gathered the buffalo calves and brought them under the tarp to take shelter with the family; people and animals pressed together beneath the sheet of black plastic until the fury of the storm passed.

  When the ranger arrived, he inspected the documents that had been borrowed from Kasim, and pronounced that Dhumman, Yusuf, Alfa and their families had no right to be where they were. Kanasar, he said, was part of a different ranger district, and the permit that they had did not allow them to graze their animals in this one. Dhumman explained that they were just passing through and that they’d enter the adjacent district designated in the paperwork as soon as they could. This wasn’t good enough for the ranger, who said that the entire caravan had to get out of his jurisdiction immediately or face arrest.

  Dhumman, Yusuf, and Alfa understood this threat for what it was and took a stroll with the ranger so they could talk in private, out of earshot of the rest of the family. Thus the bargaining began.

  When it was over, Dhumman, Yusuf, and Alfa had secured a handshake deal allowing them to move through this district to Kanasar. The ranger walked away with 2,000 rupees, seven liters of milk and three kilograms of butter, plus a promise of five more kilos of butter over the next few days.

  The following morning, we woke and started off later than usual. Now that we were truly in the Himalayan foothills, we didn’t have to contend with brutal daytime temperatures, and now that we were no longer travelling along a major road, there was hardly any traffic to worry about. It was lovely, walking alongside the rushing creek at the bottom of a V-shaped gorge, immersed in the aroma of pine, and every so often, when the canyon turned just the right way, catching a glimpse of snow-covered peaks that rose ahead. And those, I would learn soon enough, weren’t even the big mountains.

  At one point, we passed a small school. The students were outside in a field playing cricket. I turned to Mariam, and said, “I bet you’d be awesome at that game.”

  “I was,” she answered, matter-of-factly.

  “What do you mean? When did you play cricket?” I wanted to know. “When RLEK ran the forest school, we used to play all the time. I was a great batswoman, and I loved it,” she said. Appa, overhearing, agreed; she loved the game, too. I could only imagine how good a Van Gujjar team might have been, armed with their strength and coordination.

  I’m not sure what connections were bridged inside my brain, or why, but hearing that they enjoyed playing cricket—which doesn’t fit any stereotypes of the forest-dwelling nomad—triggered in me an appreciation for just how much like contemporaries my companions seemed. It was one of those moments when you suddenly notice that something you live with every day, to which you hardly pay attention, is in fact truly extraordinary. The way we interacted, the way we related on a personal level, felt entirely familiar, entirely modern. Despite their being illiterate and living in ways that could be described as primitive, I never felt like I was talking to people from another era. Sure, our points of reference were different and the content of our conversations might bear little resemblance to the things I might talk about with friends back home; but the style of our conversations was very similar. In fact, I found the flow between us, as expressed in tone and body language and laughter, much easier and less awkward than I did with some Americans from different cultural, religious, or political milieus.

  While I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that another, more concrete, thing that I had taken for granted but which also had a huge impact on my relationship with my Van Gujjar family was that they never drank alcohol. I’m not moralistic about drinking, but I’ve had enough unpleasant experiences in countries around the world, including my own, to know that drunks can be unpredictable, belligerent, and incredibly annoying. I was glad I didn’t have to deal with trying to manage boozed-up companions day in and day out on the migration. If chai with fresh buffalo milk and a heavy dose of sugar was the strongest thing we drank, that was fine with me.

  We hiked almost all the way into Sangam Chatti, the village at the end of the road, but before we got there, most of us veered off to the right, crossed the Assi Ganga, and struck out on a footpath into the forest. Dhumman, Alfa, Mir Hamza, and a couple of Yusuf’s sons went on into Sangam Chatti to pick up supplies from one of the handful of shops that served the isolated hamlets scattered beyond it in the mountains.

  While in the village, Dhumman placed a call to Dehradun. Whispers of rumours he’d heard for the past couple of days were now confirmed: the forest department had reversed its decision and opened Govind National Park to the nomads.

  Firoz, the Van Gujjar whose family had been stranded on the road for about two weeks, was finally on his way up to his meadow. Dhumman was glad to hear it, but by now it would be impossible for his own family to go there this year. At this point, they were one hundred percent committed to Kanasar.

  Sometime over the next few weeks, Dhumman, Yusuf, and Alfa would have to make their way over to the Gangar area to pay their annual grazing taxes, even though they wouldn’t be using their meadows
that summer. It was crucial, they felt, to make it look like they had been there, if only on paper, so park authorities couldn’t accuse them of voluntarily abandoning their traditional pastures, then use that as a reason for banning them in the future. They knew that as far as the government was concerned, whatever was written into the paperwork would be treated as more real than whatever had actually happened on the ground.

  8

  MANY DAYS TO DODI TAL

  Once we crossed the Assi Ganga, we set out on a trail that was as steep as a staircase. Huffing and puffing as we climbed up a lushly forested hillside, we put the river further below us with each step. We moved slowly, by necessity, following the sharply cut valley upstream, as it curved to the east.

  We were done with the road. From here on, we would travel by footpath, working our way deeper and higher into the mountains. After about fifteen miles, we would reach Dodi Tal, a small lake popular with trekkers, which is said to be the birthplace of Lord Ganesha. From there, we would make a final push for six more miles, up and over a high pass, to the meadow at Kanasar, where the families would spend the summer at about 12,500 feet above sea level. Though there was a well-travelled recreational hiking route to Dodi Tal carved into the northern slope of the Assi Ganga Valley, we avoided it, preferring the solitude of the southern side, where the unmaintained trails were rarely used.