Himalaya Bound Read online

  Working slowly and meticulously, Dhumman bandaged the wound with a roll of gauze that I’d given him, then he wrapped a cloth around it, neat and tight, for padding. Over that, the wooden splint was secured as snugly as possible, first with rope, then with a long strip of duct tape from my kit. The whole procedure, including making the splint, took about an hour. It looked perfect, and could hardly have been done better in an animal hospital.

  Of course, there was one problem. The buffalo still couldn’t walk, and the high, steep pass still stood between us and the meadow. Perhaps, I thought, they’d stabilized the leg just to ease the yearling’s pain. I couldn’t see how they expected her to make it to Kanasar.

  The following day, we rose before sunrise. My friends always worked efficiently when breaking camp, but on this morning the last morning of the migration—every hoisting of every bag, every cinching of every rope, was juiced with enthusiasm. The frigid, pre-dawn air seemed electrified with excitement. Everyone was eager to set eyes on the meadow, to see where the many twists and turns of this long journey had led them.

  As the sky grew light, we walked out of camp and up through the narrow canyon. With the horses and bulls carrying what they could, we moved slowly, crossing the creek a number of times and navigating the tricky trail around the massive boulders that choked the gorge. We passed the spot where the accident had happened—and where the wounded yearling remained—at last emerging in the treeless bowl that we would hike up towards the pass.

  The buffaloes had been moved here the previous afternoon and were waiting for us, munching on leafy bushes. They would take up the rear. Looking ahead, the trail zigzagged up a steep, grassy chute between two rocky ridges. The higher it rose, the more precarious it appeared, until it finally veered out of view far above us but still well below the pass, which we couldn’t yet see. Anticipating the trouble that the pack animals would have reaching the top, their loads were reduced; we humans would carry what we could on our own backs.

  And so we started up, twenty-five people, eighty-three buffaloes, and a few horses and bulls. I held Yasin’s hand for a while, helping him keep his footing and imagining what it would be like to attempt this ascent with my own son, who was about the same age and quite a capable hiker, at least as far as American two-year-olds go; I smiled at the thought, missing him. When Yasin finally became too tired to walk, Jamila placed him on her shoulders.

  As the trail grew yet steeper, I pushed my legs to go a little bit faster, so I could get ahead of the group and take pictures as my friends climbed toward me. From above, I could see the entire family and all the animals at once, moving up the mountainside in a serpentine formation. Men, women and teenagers carried children on their shoulders, or cooking pots and milk cans packed with household goods on their backs. Headscarves and lungis flapped colorfuly in the breeze. Guttural, inarticulate shouts, and the occasional smack of a lathi, kept the horses and bulls moving, their bells jingling in mesmerizing rhythms. With the jewel-like peaks of the 21,600' Gangotri Group gleaming on the horizon behind this caravan of nomads and their armada of big, black, horned beasts, it looked like a vision out of a dream.

  The trail was narrow but in surprisingly good condition. The weather was perfect. Despite the incline and the thinning air, we made steady progress. Individuals paused for breaks here and there, to catch their breath and give their thighs a few seconds to stop throbbing, but the group as a whole kept moving forward, snaking up the mountainside. With one final push over a nearly vertical slope we cleared the pass, then sat and rested, tired and happy. From there, the rest of the walk to Kanasar felt like a victory lap. It had taken forty days; we had covered roughly 125 miles; we had gained over 11,000 feet in elevation; but we had made it.

  The view from the meadow was staggering. With snow-crowned Bandarpunch towering over a dramatic canyon whose sheer walls were graced by cascading waterfalls, with alpine grasslands unfurling around us, laced with gurgling streams and fringed by evergreen forests, I found it every bit as awe-inspiring as the first time I had been there with Gamee.

  After unloading the animals, we went to inspect the two tattered wooden huts that stood there, which had been built and used by other Van Gujjars in the past. The larger one had a solid frame of logs and tree limbs, but required substantial repairs. Just like any family might when moving into a fixer-upper, my friends lingered inside, dreaming about what the kitchen would look like—in this case, how they’d rebuild the hearth with mud and rocks, sculpting in some shelving to hold their cookware. But the first priorities were rebuilding the walls—which had gaping holes—and the roof—which was nothing more than bare rafters. Once renovated, Dhumman’s family would move into it.

  The small hut needed its roof reinforced and quite a few loads of old buffalo dung removed from inside, but Gamee, Akloo, and their two kids would be able to occupy it by the end of that first day.

  The rest of Yusuf’s family would have to build a new hut from the ground up, which caused some grumbling among his sons, since they would be expected to do the bulk of the work on what would be a major construction job.

  For now, however, everyone would continue living under sheets of black plastic until they could move into their dwellings. We quickly got to work setting up our tents, collecting firewood, and hauling water, preparing for lunch and for any weather that might move in.

  Gradually, what we all knew—that this was the last stop, the end of the trail—began to seem real. As we settled into the meadow, a sense of relief settled into me, since I was now sure that I would in fact go home having seen the migration through from start to finish. Even while doing chores, I basked in that peaceful if fleeting feeling of quiet satisfaction earned by fulfilling a long-held dream. Or maybe I was simply susceptible to the transcendent beauty of Kanasar, which appeared to have the power to cast a spell of tranquility over anyone with the gift of sight.

  Except I was the only one who seemed to be feeling this way. Despite the meadow’s Shangri-La-like setting, something felt wrong, at least to some of my friends. After forty tough days on the trail, the brief moment of triumph they experienced upon reaching their goal faded into a palpable mood of disappointment.

  Sitting beneath the lip of the tent, brewing a pot of chai, Appa summed it up for me; as we spoke, giant plumes of cumulus swept over the meadow, a fluid shroud of clouds, white and gray and gold, sometimes fraying just enough for beams of sunlight or views of the mountains to flash through. “It is more beautiful here than at Gangar,” she said, “but it isn’t our home.” It was colder here, she continued, and higher, and there was so much work to be done before they could even move into the hut. It felt strange to be so far from a village in the summertime—and especially from the villagers whose families had been friends with her family for generations. “I love it there.” She paused. “We just don’t belong here.”

  Of course, everyone was also exhausted, both physically and emotionally, from the journey. Now that the migration was over, they could allow themselves the luxury of feeling it a little bit.

  And there was something else, too. Something big. One member of the family wasn’t with them. The fate of the injured calf, who’d been abandoned down below, was weighing on everyone’s mind.

  Fortunately, Dhumman and Yusuf had yet another plan. Early the next morning, Dhumman, his son Mir Hamza, and Yusuf’s four sons headed down the mountain. When they reached the wounded yearling, they lashed her to two poles cut from slim tree trunks. Supported underneath by ropes that ran from one pole to the other, she was stabilized with ropes tied over her back. As my friends took up their positions, with one on each end of the poles, they hoisted the litter onto their shoulders. Step by grueling step, they carried the animal up, switchback after switchback, and over the pass. It was a labor worthy of Hercules. The buffalo was so heavy and the trail so steep that the men had to work on a rotation system, allowing some to rest while others carried. I willingly lent my shoulders to the effort, but found I could only
lift the animal’s front end, since the rear weighed so much more. A few times, we simply had to stop, lay the yearling down, and regain our strength before continuing on.

  I had never in my life seen anything like this—a buffalo being carried through the Himalayas like a queen on a palanquin. Though I knew my companions well by this time, I was stunned that they would go to such lengths to save one relatively small member of their herd. They didn’t do it because the yearling was worth much financially; they did it because they love their buffaloes. They did it out of the intrinsic sense of responsibility they have for their animals. They did it because they are Van Gujjars.

  Upon reaching the meadow, hours after her unusual journey began, the yearling was clearly relieved to be back on the ground. With a little bit of help, she stood, and even gingerly hobbled a few steps. By the time they would descend in the fall, Dhumman said, her broken bone should be healed enough for her to walk down to the Shivalik Hills on her own four feet.

  Heartened by the success of the rescue mission, grateful to have their baby back with them, a wave of optimism rippled through the camp. Perhaps their luck had turned the corner at last.

  10

  THE END OF THE TRAIL

  That night, the sheet of ice that coated the roof of our tent was thicker than the sheet of plastic that the tent was made from. Bundled into my sleeping bag, with all of my clothes either on my body or packed around me for insulation, I spent hours pulled back and forth between the exhaustion that dragged me towards sleep and the cold that shook me awake. Meanwhile, from the smoldering campfire, plumes of smoke wafted under the tarp and lingered there, filling the space with smog as thick as downtown Delhi’s; whenever I opened my eyes, they stung as though they were being rubbed with nettles. When I rose in the morning, I must have looked as frayed as I felt: Goku cast an empathetic smile my way and said, “It was never this cold in Gangar.” The night hadn’t been easy on anyone.

  Life would be greatly improved as soon as they could move into the chhappar, when they’d be under a real roof, protected by real walls, and could cook over a real kitchen hearth. Fixing the hut, thus, was the family’s top priority. Dhumman issued orders and assigned jobs: Sharafat and Gamee—who, since the recent fallout between his wife and his mother, had been taken in under his uncle’s wing of the family—would work on the roof, shoring up the beams and rafters; Jamila and Akloo would sweep up inside and stabilize the existing walls, while keeping an eye on the little kids; Mir Hamza and Bashi would take the buffaloes out to graze. Appa, Goku, and I were sent out into the forest to haul back pieces of wood with which to repair the gaping holes in the walls. Meanwhile, Yusuf’s sons, except Gamee, searched out fallen trees that they could use to construct the frame of a new hut.

  Appa, Goku, and I hiked across the sloping meadow, under skies bleached by wisps of cirrus. After perhaps half a mile, we dropped down into a crease in the terrain where the treeline extended up the side of the mountain, an arm-like grove reaching out from the main body of the forest below. We were looking for dead pines, the bigger the better. Their thick bark would suit our purposes perfectly. We tried to strip off pieces of it in slabs as long and as wide as possible, which we would use like boards to rebuild the walls. We hacked and pulled and pried with a spirit of playful camaraderie, turning our task into something that felt more like a game than a job. If we were lucky, we managed to free planks of bark that were about twelve feet long by two feet wide. Even the largest pieces were light enough for us to each carry a couple at a time, if they were properly balanced over our shoulders. Once we’d delivered them to the chhappar, we would hike back across the meadow for more.

  It was work, but it was fun, and at that moment I could hardly imagine anything I’d rather be doing than foraging for wood in the Himalayan highlands with people I so thoroughly enjoyed. The pleasure, however, was bittersweet.

  After one wood run, Jamila called us over to the tent for chapatis and chai. Sharafat was already there, sitting by the still-smoldering fire, eating slowly and talking to his mom. Goku, Appa, and I sat down with him. From the mouth of the tent, we had a perfectly framed view of snowy Bandarpunch. While eating the first of my two chapatis, I told my friends that I was going to have to leave the following day.

  Over the course of the previous week, I’d pored over the calendar I’d drawn in the back of my notebook, trying to gauge how long I could stretch my stay in the mountains and still catch my flight back to the States. No matter how I figured it, I had finally run out of time. I didn’t bother to tell my friends earlier because I knew that they would assume that any date I set in advance would be entirely flexible. As our extended journey to Kanasar had shown, they didn’t operate on a fixed schedule. I knew they wouldn’t believe I was leaving until I actually left.

  Jamila and her kids urged me to stay with them a little longer—even just a couple more days. I laughed. “Like the two days it took to get from the Assi Ganga to Dodi Tal?” I said. And they laughed too.

  If I could have stayed, I would have. Aside from simply not wanting to say goodbye yet, it would have been nice to experience daily life in the meadow once the repairs on the hut had been completed and the family settled into a more normal rhythm. But, in addition to the hassle involved in changing a plane ticket—especially from a remote location with no mobile phone service—there was the promise I’d made to my own little family to return when I’d planned, and that was something I needed to honor. It was time to start heading home.

  Throughout the day, whether holding boards of bark in place while Dhumman secured them with vines, fetching water from a creek with Goku and Mariam, or simply soaking up the epic scenery, I savored every minute, knowing I had precious few remaining.

  Over the previous week, aware that my departure date was approaching, I’d made a point of asking Jamila and Dhumman (with the help of trekkers who could translate) about their thoughts on the migration. It had been, they agreed, a physically strenuous and emotionally nerve-wracking journey, unlike any they’d previously experienced. And it had rattled their world.

  Like most Van Gujjars, they had always wholeheartedly rejected the idea of leaving the forest and settling in a village. They would lose virtually everything in their lives, including their buffalo herds, their intimate connection to the natural world, their sense of freedom, even their sense of themselves—as individuals and as a culture. “The forest is the only thing we know,” Dhumman said. “We are part of it and it is part of us. It’s where we belong.” He said that whenever he had to spend more than a few hours in a town, he would inevitably begin to feel sick. If they could remain in the wilderness and herd buffaloes as they always had, moving freely between their traditional lands without the looming threat of eviction, they would be happy, Dhumman and Jamila concurred. But now, despite how much they loved their nomadic way of life, they had serious questions—and deep anxieties—about its viability in the future.

  Forget about five or ten years down the line, they didn’t even know what would happen the following spring: perhaps they’d be able to return to Gangar—or perhaps they’d be barred from Uttarakhand completely, leaving them with nowhere to take their animals in the summer. All sense of security had evaporated from their world. The fear that this provoked drove them to think that if they were offered a deal to leave the forest and settle in a village, they would probably accept it—though they each thought about it a little bit differently.

  For Dhumman, settling down meant that his family would receive a house and a small plot of land in a village where some of his children could go to school—while he would continue to keep a herd of buffaloes in the forests of the Shivaliks and migrate to the Himalayas each summer. How probable or improbable his vision might have been really didn’t matter, since it was more a fantasy to which he clung than a strategy he planned to execute. He just couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of truly abandoning his life in the forest.

  Jamila, on the other hand, seemed a bit more
clear-sighted about what accepting a hypothetical settlement deal would probably mean. For her, life in the forest would be over. “Settling in a village we would lose a lot,” she said. “A lot. But at least we would know where we are.” The stability, the security, would be worth the trade off, she thought, if just barely.

  But . . . nobody was offering them a settlement deal. The idea that they would even have this difficult choice to make was, for the moment, wishful thinking, inspired by the terrifying reality that the threat they were in fact faced with—eviction with no compensation—was much, much worse.

  Based on everything I’d seen, I was convinced that the immediate goal of the forest department wasn’t to kick the Van Gujjars out of Govind National Park, but to soften them up with scare tactics. By threatening to ban them completely, and acting as though they meant it, the forest department had forced the nomads to believe that they might truly lose access to their lands, perhaps forever. Yet by ultimately allowing entry to those families who hadn’t found emergency alternatives, the authorities had avoided any real legal confrontation over the Forest Rights Act. As this was the third year in a row that such threats had been issued—their severity increasing with each passing year—plenty of Van Gujjars had been traumatized into thinking what once would have been anathema to them: that it might be better to live in a village than in the wilderness. While these tactics were not as blatantly abusive as those used to persuade Van Gujjars to leave Rajaji National Park, they were calculated and underhanded forms of terror nonetheless. And they were starting to work.

  Along with the concrete fears that threats of eviction stirred up for Dhumman, Jamila, Yusuf, Roshni, and their fellow tribespeople—that they would be homeless and herdless—I think the threats also functioned on a more subtle level just by sowing and cultivating the idea that there might not be a future in the forest for nomads. Our hopes for the future are like balloons filled with the air of possibility. When a balloon is punctured, the air rushes out, leaving us with a shrivelled piece of rubber on a string that there’s no reason to hold on to anymore. When our hopes for the future are punctured, our sense of possibility rushes out, leaving us with a shrivelled vision of what we can have, of who we can be, and we feel much less inspired to hang on to it. We can still wish for the future we dreamed of and we can grieve over its loss—but as the reality of impossibility sets in, we gradually start to imagine new futures that we slowly inflate with new hopes. By peppering the lives of Van Gujjars with profound existential insecurities, it seemed to me like the forest department was trying to pop their balloons, so they would begin to loosen their devotion to their forest world and slowly start to generate a vision, and even some hope, for another kind of life.