Himalaya Bound Page 2

  I spent the rest of the day getting a taste of Van Gujjar life, taking my first steps into a world that thoroughly revolves around water buffaloes. In ways big and small, virtually everything about this nomadic culture is shaped by what’s best for the animals. It’s why the tribe lives in the wilderness, it’s why they migrate, it’s the single factor that rules the bulk of their time and energy on any given day. And for good reason: with buffalo milk as their staple food and main—often only—source of income, the well-being of every family is completely dependent on the well-being of its herd.

  Dhumman explained that his family owned forty buffaloes. Each morning, they milk the ones that are lactating—perhaps ten or so at any given time. They keep a few liters for drinking, brewing tea, and making butter or yogurt, then sell the rest to an outsider who pedals a bicycle along the dirt paths that run through the Shivaliks, going from one Van Gujjar camp to the next. The doodhwallah, as he is called, fills up large metal canisters that are rigged to a rack on his bike, then rides out of the forest to bring the fresh organic milk, prized for its high fat content, to his customers in nearby villages. He doesn’t pay Dhumman daily; at the beginning of each month, he hands Dhumman a cash advance. Over the next four weeks, he records how much milk he collects, then pays the balance owed.

  In keeping with the core customs of his tribe, Dhumman would never dream of eating his buffaloes or selling them for slaughter. They are used exclusively as milk animals. Even male calves, which are obviously useless for dairy production, are spared the knife, and sold to farmers in nearby villages as beasts of burden for pulling carts and ploughs.

  While, as Muslims, Van Gujjars have no religious taboos against consuming meat, they’re traditionally vegetarian. Some scholars suggest that this may be a cultural remnant from the days before the Mughal period, when the Van Gujjars probably converted from Hinduism to Islam. But Van Gujjars say that their aversion to meat is rooted in their sense of connection to animals as fellow living beings. Likewise, though they live in the forest, they don’t normally hunt. Though they share their range in the Shivaliks with tigers, leopards and elephants—often living around, or even within, wildlife sanctuaries such as Rajaji and Corbett National Parks—it’s exceptionally rare for the nomads to kill a wild animal out of fear for their own safety—or for any other reason.

  Their feelings for their buffaloes, however, go far beyond the cordial regard they have for other, anonymous creatures. Like the princess of legend, Van Gujjars have deep emotional attachments to their livestock. They relate to them as family members, naming each one and caring for them with genuine devotion. If a buffalo becomes ill or injured, its owners fret with concern; once, when one of the favorites in Dhumman’s herd was sick, the family was so upset they could hardly eat. When a buffalo dies, the loss felt is more personal than financial; the buffalo is buried and mourned almost as though it is human. Dhumman and Jamila’s son, Sharafat, told me he didn’t understand why anyone would have a dog for a pet, since “buffaloes are smarter, more loyal, and more affectionate!” In fact, his family’s dog was never even given a name, but just called kutta, since at any time it might get killed by a wild animal and the family didn’t want to get too emotionally attached to it. The more I saw over time, the more it seemed to me that Van Gujjars were like doting servants to their buffalo masters.

  This was especially true when it came to feeding the herd. To say that the buffaloes graze in the jungle conjures an image that’s not quite accurate, since they don’t browse around in the wilderness the way that cattle graze in fields. The Van Gujjars carefully control what their animals eat, knowing that the amount of milk they’ll produce—along with its flavor—is determined by the type of leaves they consume. The best varieties grow on trees, rather than low-lying bushes or shrubs, but without the anatomy of giraffes, the buffaloes can’t reach them. It’s up to the Van Gujjars to bring the leaves down to their level.

  On my first afternoon in the Shivaliks, I followed a crew of young people when they went to gather leaves, including Dhumman’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, Appa; his sixteen-year-old son, Sharafat; and his seventeen-year-old niece, Mariam. They set out up the creek, each carrying a wooden-handled tool with a curved steel blade—called a patal—that was like a cross between a hatchet and a sickle. Their mood was light and playful and they moved quickly along the trail, talking and laughing.

  When we reached the spot they had in mind, Appa, Sharafat, and Mariam scurried barefooted up the trunks of robust sal trees. They clambered far out onto the limbs, then lopped off leaf-laden boughs, which fell to the forest floor. At one point, Mariam was nearly fifty feet above the ground, poised on a narrow branch, swinging her sharp blade—and holding onto nothing other than her tool; her other hand was held out into thin air, for balance. She had the dexterity of a professional acrobat but, dressed in a gold-colored kameez with her black headscarf fluttering behind her in the wind and an expression of confidence on her face, she looked like a warrior princess; she might have been the inspiration for the flying kung-fu scenes in the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I stood below and off to the side, watching in amazement as clumps of leaves plunged to the earth.

  With strength and agility, they worked fast, deftly popping holes in the jungle canopy. But they never stripped any of the trees bare. They were careful to take what they could without doing any permanent damage. The last thing they wanted to do was kill the trees—they needed them to live, so they would provide ample buffalo fodder the following winter, and the winter after that, and the winter after that . . .

  Aside from my awe at the physical abilities of these young Van Gujjars, I was struck by how easy-going our rapport was. There seemed to be something we had in common that was more profound, more essential, than any of our many cultural differences. Put simply, we clicked, and became fast friends. Over the course of the next two months, Appa, Sharafat, and Mariam would be among those in the family to whom I grew closest. The young women felt no need to mute their vibrant personalities behind a reserved or repressed façade, and Sharafat, who shared his thoughts openly and questioned me incisively, would become like an older/younger brother—younger, since he was, by quite a lot, and older, since I was like a child in his world.

  Sharafat looked more like a boy than a man, with no signs of a moustache or beard; he had a softness to his face and a slimness to his fingers that, if his elders were any indication, would one day disappear with his youth. Mariam, depending on her mood, might look younger or older than her years, as though she could leap between childhood and adulthood, between silliness and maturity, with a turn of her head—either way, she beamed with natural beauty and cheery charisma. Appa was a self-possessed young woman with ebony irises set in almond-shaped eyes and a beauty animated by her personality—her kindness, her sense of humor, her irrepressibly independent mind.

  Appa and Sharafat’s fourteen-year-old sister, Goku, joined us during the tree pruning. She was a bit more cautious of the stranger in their midst, and it would take a couple of weeks before she’d fully reveal her hilariously irreverent self to me. She had come along on the leaf-lopping mission like an apprentice, trimming some of the smaller trees as she gradually built her confidence for this risky job.

  Despite their well-honed skills, Van Gujjars sometimes fall from substantial heights. Every year, bones break and people die. Even Sharafat, who had mastered the arts of climbing and cutting, said that tumbling from a tree was one of his two greatest fears—you could never be completely sure that a branch wouldn’t snap beneath you, or you might simply make a mistake, misjudging a foothold or the way a limb might react when a bough is lopped from it. With no safety gear of any kind, even a small slip could be fatal.

  Sharafat’s other main fear: elephants, which roamed the Shivaliks and were known for unpredictable outbursts of aggressiveness. They sometimes came crashing through Van Gujjar camps, smashing huts, even trampling people. The Van Gujjars’ dogs, which are kept to protect the h
erd and the camp from intruders, only make things worse: with an initial surge of bravery, they rush out to defend their dera, but once they see the size and the strength, and sometimes the tusks, of what they’re up against, they become terror-stricken, turn tail, and run, usually straight into their owner’s hut, with an angry elephant in hot pursuit. The fact that the elephant won’t fit through the door doesn’t deter it from chasing the dog inside—and reducing the hut to a pile of rubble.

  Concerned that he may have frightened me, Sharafat urged me not to worry; elephants had been in the area a couple of months earlier, he said, but hadn’t been around much lately. I was a bit relieved, but also disappointed—despite the dangers they posed, I wanted to see one.

  When a substantial heap of branches lay on the ground, the young Van Gujjars rapidly sliced the leaves from them and divided them into four piles, each nearly as tall as me. The piles were bound with vines, so they could be carried back to the dera. Had this been fodder for the adult buffalos, the animals would have been led to the leaves. But these were for the calves, which were kept in a pen near the dera most of the time, partly for their safety, and partly to separate them from their mothers, so they didn’t drink up all the milk.

  Wanting to be helpful, I offered to carry one of the bundles of leaves. My new friends laughed, but when I convinced them that I was serious, Sharafat helped me hoist a heap onto my back, making sure that one of the vines that kept it intact was balanced on top of my head. Once I lifted it off the ground, I moved gingerly along the trail to the dera. Our loads were so large that, from behind, we looked like huge bushes that had pulled up their roots and started walking around. My pile was so heavy that I wondered if losing my balance might cause me to snap my neck in half.

  When we reached the hut, Mariam waved goodbye, flashed a smile, and continued down the trail with her leaves, heading for her parents’ dera, which was about a mile away, along the large, dry rao that I’d first hiked up with Nazim before turning into the side canyon towards Dhumman’s dera. The rest of us dropped our burdens. We were met by Bashi, Appa and Sharafat’s eleven-year-old sister, who was shy and sweet and sometimes spoke with a slight stutter. Among her many jobs, she often tended to the calves, and now she helped her brother and sisters spread the leaves for them. She wasn’t yet ready to climb trees.

  A bronze haze settled over the hills in late afternoon. I watched the adorable buffalo calves munch on their dinner. I watched the adult buffaloes saunter towards a line of fodder that had been cut for them at the edge of the clearing that surrounded the hut. Their charcoal-colored skin was stretched tight over corrugated ribs, angular hips, and round bellies. Meanwhile, Jamila was washing and brushing out the unruly locks of hair atop the head of her five-year-old daughter, Salma. Mir Hamza, the eldest son, was sharpening the patals, scraping the blades across a wet stone. Dhumman was coming up the trail from his brother’s camp, using his bamboo herding lathi like a walking stick.

  With no machines and no engines within earshot, there was little noise around the dera—just the wind rustling leaves, the calls of forest creatures, the occasional groan of a buffalo, and the conversations, laughter, and rare squabbles of this Van Gujjar family. As a crow flies, we were perhaps twenty miles southwest of Dehradun, where the metro area has a population of 1.3 million. But the busy city seemed light years away.

  The Van Gujjars’ world was so complete unto itself, with so few intrusions from outside, that I found myself slipping into a dizzy reverie. The modern world of cars and computers and shopping malls felt like some imaginary place I’d once read about in a science fiction novel, or like the hazy memory of a dream I’d had a few nights earlier. What was real was the forest.

  In many ways, it was truly idyllic. But I didn’t mistake the Shivaliks for Eden. Life in paradise would never be so much work! And, despite the innate peacefulness of this family’s forest world, a current of anxiety was pulsing beneath its surface.

  As the day was ending but before night had begun, the hut was illuminated by a lingering twilight that drifted in through the doorway and the windows. While Jamila and Appa prepared a dinner of chapati and curry, Dhumman told me about the troubling situation that he feared might end in catastrophe for his family and others. Government authorities, he said, had pledged to block some Van Gujjars from migrating, including those heading for the area where his ancestral alpine pasture was located. He’d spent every single summer of his life there, and if he was banned from it, he didn’t know how he was going to feed his buffaloes.

  Though I had heard about the dilemma that Dhumman was facing, the more he spoke, the more I realized how little about it I truly understood. Of course, the implications of a herd without a meadow were obvious. But I’d been unaware of just how profoundly the Van Gujjars’ existence is influenced by forces other than the natural cycles of the seasons, until Dhumman began to explain.

  Van Gujjars don’t own any of the lands on which they live and graze; it’s all common property, managed by the forest department of whatever state they happen to fall within—generally Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh or Himachal Pradesh. Though the tribe had been using these areas for centuries, the British Raj introduced a permitting system to administer and control nomadic movements, which was just one part of a vast colonial plan to maximize profits from forest industries across the subcontinent. Each Van Gujjar family was issued a document certifying—and cementing—where their grazing range was located and how many buffaloes they owned, which became the number they were officially authorized to keep.

  To this day, the permit system remains in place. Every year, Van Gujjars have to show their papers, pay grazing taxes on their Himalayan meadows and pay lopping taxes for their Shivalik forest use, in exchange for permission to access their traditional lands. The fees they pay are based on the amount of livestock they supposedly own, as written on their permit.

  Problematically, the number of buffaloes assigned to each family’s permit has been fixed since they were first allocated by the British, generations ago. Even as herds grew over time and even after India became independent—no updates have been granted. Permits may be split: a man with a permit for, say, thirty buffaloes, who has three sons, could divide his permit among them, but they would only be allowed to own ten buffaloes each. And if each of those sons had two sons, they could split their permits in half again, and so on . . . but the total number of animals on their combined permits cannot exceed the amount originally recorded by the colonial administrators.

  As a result, as generations have passed and permits were split and split again, most families came to have—and need to have—more livestock than they’re allowed. Even so, they were typically never blocked from using their lands. The annual permission procedure of paying a tax and getting a receipt was only a formality; the gates to the forests just required a little grease.

  Black money has long been the lifeblood of the permit system. Van Gujjars expect to pay bribes when a forest ranger discovers that they have more buffaloes than they’re officially allowed . . . or if something about their paperwork is amiss . . . or for any random reason that the ranger happens to invent. Because the laws are set up in such a way that the nomads inevitably break them—and because they can easily be framed for violations they didn’t commit—they are vulnerable to the whims of those in power, including low-ranking, poorly-paid forest rangers, who can surely use a few extra rupees. Despite feeling regularly abused, there is a certain kind of logic to crooked systems, and for many decades the Van Gujjars took some small measure of confidence in its predictability. They had to pay a price, but they could keep living more or less as they always had.

  That changed suddenly in the fall of 1992. With no warning, thousands of buffalo herders who were moving down from the Himalayas were blocked from entering a broad swath of the Shivalik Hills that stretched some forty miles southeast from the edge of Dehradun, across the River Ganga, nearly to the town of Kotdwara. This was the northern boundary line of Rajaji
National Park, which had been created in 1983. Encompassing over three hundred square miles of rugged jungle terrain, Rajaji protects prime habitat for wild elephants, leopards, several species of deer, sloth bears, and a handful of tigers. But it’s also the traditional home of many Van Gujjars, whose winter grazing lands were included within the park.

  According to Indian law at that time, people were forbidden from living in national parks or using park resources for subsistence or profit. Though no one had challenged the Van Gujjars’ rights to their winter territory in the nine years since the establishment of Rajaji, the Uttar Pradesh forest department finally decided to move against them in 1992. Rangers and policemen stopped migrating families before they reached the forests and threatened them with arrest and the consfiscation of their herds if they crossed into the national park.

  In a desperate effort to save themselves, the Van Gujjars protested, drawing a swirl of media attention. Legal action followed, and the Van Gujjars were temporarily allowed back into the Shivaliks. But over the next fifteen years, most of the Rajaji Park families—1,390 of them—were evicted, forced to settle in government-built villages and abandon their age-old way of life.

  Dhumman’s winter grazing area is west of the Rajaji zone, so his home in the Shivaliks was spared. But his summer meadow had been absorbed into Govind National Park, which is generally spoken of in conjunction with the adjacent Govind Wildlife Sanctuary, as though they are a single protected area. Together, they cover about 370 square miles surrounding the Upper Tons Valley, in the northernmost nook of Uttarakhand. Elevations range from 4265 to 20,745 feet above sea level, spanning deeply carved river canyons, deciduous and coniferous forests, and sweeping meadows that unroll beneath craggy, glaciated peaks. Snow leopards, brown and Asiatic black bear, musk deer, blue sheep and other rare animal species live in this scenically stunning alpine paradise.