Himalaya Bound Read online

  Though Govind National Park was established in 1990, nothing changed for the Van Gujjars until 2006. That spring, the forest department in Uttarakhand announced that they might not let Van Gujjars enter the park. After delaying a decision for a couple of weeks, they finally relented and granted “the permission.” But in 2007 and 2008, the same situation played out all over again, with increasingly tough rhetoric by the government and rising anxieties for the Van Gujjars, as the authorities kept the nomads of Govind National Park waiting longer and longer each year before allowing them up to their pastures.

  In 2009, when I was there, the forest department swore that it was not going to let the buffalo herders into Govind—that year, or ever again. If true, it would be devastating. Dhumman’s family and the others weren’t simply setting off on a summer holiday to the mountains—they needed to get their herds to the highlands where there was abundant grass and water, or the animals would die and their world would be shattered.

  Despite the threats made by the park authorities, Dhumman said he had to try to reach his family’s meadow. If there was one force in his life more powerful than the forest department, it was Mother Nature, and she was urging him to get moving. Temperatures in the Shivaliks were already skyrocketing, there was hardly any water anywhere, and the forest foliage was rapidly beginning to fall.

  His family would start off, he said, because they had no choice. But he had little confidence that they’d be allowed to access their Himalayan home. And if they couldn’t, he didn’t know what they were going to do.

  By the time dinner was served, the hut was dark. I’d brought several pounds of potatoes and cauliflower to give to my hosts so as not to be a burden on their finances or food supplies, and they’d cooked some of them up in a spicy sauce, which was served in small porcelain bowls and eaten with chapatis fresh off the fire. When I finished, another bowl instantly arrived, and I was counselled by my translator to pour some of it into my original bowl, then leave the rest—showing that I enjoyed the food enough to have more, but not eating too much of the limited amount cooked for the family. Jamila watched closely to see how I would handle the piquancy, and was pleasantly surprised when I told her that where I lived, in New Mexico, many dishes come smothered in spicy chili sauce. She could cook freely without worrying about my taste buds.

  When it was time to sleep, I laid down on the camping pad I’d brought, covered myself with my thin blanket, and replayed the day in my mind. I hadn’t realized quite how dire the scenario that this family was facing would be. Since they’d always received permission to go to their meadow in the past, I’d assumed that the threats of the forest department would be disregarded as noisy political theatre. But Dhumman was truly anxious; he thought there was a very real possibility that his family would be barred from entering the national park. I wondered how things would unfold once the migration began, and what they would do if the park authorities refused to back down. Selfishly, I couldn’t help but wonder how it would affect the story I hoped to tell. If they weren’t allowed up to their summer range, would my whole project fall apart? Or might it become a valuable record of one nomadic family’s plight, as they and their way of life became victims of heartless government policies? Or would the storyline evolve in some completely unpredictible direction? I couldn’t even guess. So, eventually, I stopped thinking about it, and my mind filled instead with images of buffaloes, tree-climbing teenagers, and this little home deep in the forest. I drifted off, feeling incredibly fortunate to have found a door into the world of the Van Gujjars and into the life of this beautiful family—no matter what would happen in the weeks to come.

  I left late the next morning, after the milking was done, to head back to Dehradun. When I returned to the forest a week later to begin the migration, it was a sweet kind of reunion, with the warm greetings of seeing friends again. It seemed like we had somehow become closer during the time I was away, that during my absence we came to know each other better than when I had left.

  The family was busily preparing for their departure. Dhumman, Mir Hamza, and Sharafat shored up the roof of their hut, adding more grass and tying long vines over its peak and down its sides, securing it against the monsoon rains that were sure to pour down over the summer. Jamila sat outside in the shade, reinforcing the seams of the horsehair saddlebags that would hold the bulk of their belongings during their trek into the Himalayas. Finishing each pair, she gave them to Appa, inside the hut, who packed them with clothing and blankets while keeping an eye on Salma, her five-year-old sister, and Yasin, her round-cheeked two-year-old brother, who ran around barefooted in a perpetually dirty kurta.

  Even the buffaloes sensed it was time to go, and were getting impatient to hit the trail. Sharafat told me that the older ones, which had migrated each spring since they were calves, knew the route to the meadow by heart and could make it there on their own, with no human guidance. Sometimes, they even had to be held back from leaving before the family was ready.

  Amid the preparations, other Van Gujjars came to the camp to say goodbye. They, too, would be leaving the Shivaliks for the Himalayas, but there was a good chance they wouldn’t see Dhumman and his family until they all returned in October, as they spent the summer spread across the mountains of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. More than just a casual “see you in a few months,” there was a ritual element to these farewells.

  Sitting in a circle with men and women all together, Dhumman and Jamila and their visitors apologized for any way in which they might have wronged each other, even unknowingly, and asked for forgiveness. Outstanding debts were paid and collected. Words of blessing and goodwill were exchanged. And, in 2009, these gatherings inevitably evolved into conversations about the one thing that was on everyone’s mind: whether or not they would be allowed to go to their summer pastures. Nothing had changed since I’d first discussed the situation with Dhumman a week earlier. The forest department had continued to dig in its heels, its threats sounding like promises. The nomads knew they had little control over their fate. They would simply have to start off and see how events played out.

  That night, the family went to bed early, knowing they wouldn’t have long to sleep. All of their lathis were lined up against the wall, right beside the doorway, so they could be grabbed instantly on the way out. The pack animals, which usually roamed freely, were hitched to trees not far from the hut. Everything was as ready as it could be.

  We woke in the wee hours past midnight. After Dhumman had finished praying, Jamila had finished packing, Appa had finished brewing tea and churning butter, the boys had loaded the family’s belongings on their horses and bulls, and Goku had leashed the dog, it was time to go. Jamila double-checked to make sure they’d remembered everything. She couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they were leaving something behind. Later, she laughed at herself, saying, “We hardly own enough to forget anything, but I still worry about it!”

  Then, with a jingling of bells, the stamping of a-hundred-and-eighty hooves, and a whole lot of dust in the air, the family set off down the trail in the dark.

  2

  OVER AND OUT OF THE HILLS

  When they reached the confluence with the main rao, they were met by one of Dhumman’s older brothers, Yusuf, who was waiting there with his family and their buffaloes. Yusuf was lanky like Dhumman, and had similarly chiselled features, but his pointy beard was dyed bright orange, leaping from his chin like a flame. He was the father of Mariam (the tree-climbing warrior-princess), her sister, and her four brothers. His wife, Roshni, had clearly once been a great beauty; she was now beset by the aches and pains earned by a lifetime of hard labor, but still had a sparkle in her eyes and a touch of mischief in her smile. Rounding out the family were two daughters-in-law and six young grandchildren. From this point on, we would all travel together. They fell into a loosely organized formation, with the pack animals in front and the buffaloes in back, moving north, deeper into the Shivaliks.

  The streambed was like a
n avenue paved with white stones rounded by the water that rushes over them during the monsoon. Completely dry now but for a rare landlocked puddle or random trickle that quickly petered out, the rao was wide enough to clear a broad, serpentine swath through the jungle. The night sky glittered overhead, casting just enough starlight for this caravan—now eighty-six buffaloes, twenty-six people, two dogs and a handful of pack animals—to travel by.

  Before they could work their way into the Himalayas, the families first had to leave the jungle. This involved climbing up and over the Shivalik’s steep southern flank, then down its northern slopes and out into the flat, open farmlands near the confluence of the Yamuna and Asan Rivers. This first day’s goal was to get as close as possible to Shakumbhari Pass, a gap in the daunting cliffs of the Shivalik’s central ridgeline through which they could cross to the other side of the hills.

  I carried everything I thought I’d need in a large backpack, including clothes, a sleeping bag, photo gear, a notebook, pens, maps, and hiking shoes for the high mountains. Knowing we’d often be far from towns, I’d brought a first-aid kit, a variety of medications from antacids to antibiotics, and a bag of Nescafe to support my caffeine addiction. I didn’t have a laptop, since I saw no real use for one, and was happier without the extra weight, but I did have an old clamshell mobile phone. I wore sandals, lightweight pants, and a short-sleeved shirt.

  As dawn lit the hills, the terrain began to rise sharply around the streambed. Soon, we were winding through canyons, sometimes between sheer walls of exposed sedimentary strata, other times below fluted slopes speckled with brown grasses and bare trees. Most of the forest’s foliage was already gone. It was a skeletal landscape, stripped down to bony branches and naked earth.

  All of the pack horses and most of the bulls wore strings of round metal bells around their necks; with every step they took, each bell chimed in a slightly different way, at a slightly different time. Quickly-changing rhythms and perpetually shifting tones wove in and out of one another, creating a cheery cascade of sound that was mesmerizingly musical. And though the movement of the animals obviously caused the bells to ring, it seemed it was the ringing of the bells that kept the caravan in motion—as though we were propelled forward by a gentle current that couldn’t be seen or felt, only heard, and if the bells stopped, so would we.

  Every so often, we passed other Van Gujjar camps, some already empty, some still occupied. As we rounded a bend in the canyon bottom where a couple of huts were perched, the nomads living there told Dhumman and Yusuf that we had already passed the last of the water in the drainage. We wouldn’t find any more until after we emerged from the Shivaliks.

  This was unexpected and unwelcome news. The families had hoped to press on to the base of the pass, but we had to camp within striking distance of a water source. There was no choice but to halt.

  The group temporarily split up. Some of us, led by Jamila and Roshni, went a few hundred yards ahead with the pack animals, while the others herded the buffaloes off in search of fodder and shade.

  Jamila and Roshni set up their camps in the streambed, in a place where the canyon was about a hundred feet wide and bound on either side by nearly vertical walls of rock and earth that were speckled here and there with bushes and dead-looking trees. There was little flat ground, just a sliver of a bank along the eastern edge of the rao and some small spits of dirt that emerged like miniature islands from the water-worn stones. As a result, Jamila and Roshni chose spots about fifty yards apart from each other. The horses and bulls were unloaded, and the saddlebags, water jugs, food sacks and cooking pots were stacked on the ground in an impeccably organized arrangement; I saw that these women kept their temporary camps along the trail in as orderly a manner as they kept the huts at their deras. In fact, the word dera doesn’t just refer to the base camps or the huts in which a Van Gujjar family spends winters and summers. It connotes an idea of “home” and refers to the household itself—the most important parts of which are the people and the animals, rather than any physical structure or geographical place. The dera moves with the family—meaning that, on some level, wherever these nomads find themselves, they are home. If they keep their deras organized at their seasonal encampments, there’s no reason they wouldn’t do the same on the trail.

  Roshni was accompanied by her daughters Mariam and Khatoon, and her daughters-in-law Fatima and Akloo and their small children. Akloo, who was about twenty-four years old, was striking in her appearance, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and a face that would have been a sculptor’s dream. Her strong, perfectly proportioned features conveyed nobility and kindness and a flash of ferocity. She was married to Gamee—Yusuf and Roshni’s eldest son—and had two kids—Karim, aged four, and Hasina, who was about eighteen months old. Fatima, who was about twenty-five, was the wife of Chamar—Yusuf and Roshni’s second-born son—and was the mother of Rustem (six years old), Djennam Khatoon (three years old), Delai Ka (eighteen months old), and Halima (ten weeks old). Fatima often seemed weary from tending to so many small children, but was an astute observer of—and wry commentator upon—whatever was going on around her. Her husband, Chamar, had dashing good looks, the strength of a demigod, and a boyish, boisterous personality—unlike Gamee, who was more mellow and serious-minded, seeming to embrace the persona of a responsible first-born son.

  Jamila had brought Appa, Sharafat, Goku, Salma and Yasin with her, as well as Dhumman’s nephew, Mustooq. Mustooq’s father, Noor Alam, was deemed too elderly and sick to survive the migration, so Mustooq’s wife and two children stayed behind in the Shivaliks to care for him. Mustooq himself would return to them as soon as he had finished helping Dhumman move to the mountains. He was stocky, strong, and experienced, and a great asset on the trail.

  While decades ago virtually no Van Gujjar would have spent the summer in the jungles, it’s become increasingly common for some—especially the very oldest and most infirm—to remain behind. Most of Noor Alam’s buffaloes would go to the Himalayas with Dhumman and Yusuf, but he kept one back, plus a calf, for milk. With little natural fodder remaining around their dera, Mustooq said they’d have to bring in grass from a farm on the edge of the Shivaliks, which wasn’t cheap, but was doable with only one large and one small mouth to feed. They could only hope that the scant water sources would last until the monsoons hit.

  Once the horses and bulls were unloaded, Appa and Sharafat were sent out to the hillsides to find whatever grass they could scrounge and haul it back to the camp, so the buffaloes would have something to eat when Dhumman brought them in that afternoon. Goku and Mustooq took plastic jugs, each with a capacity of about five gallons, to fetch water from the last puddle we’d passed, while I foraged for wood, happy to be doing something useful. Meanwhile, Jamila got busy in the kitchen, making dough, rolling chapatis and cooking them on a pan over a fire; they’d be eaten later, smeared with butter and spicy chili paste.

  It was around ten o’clock in the morning, and the heat already pummeled the canyon with crippling force. When Appa and Sharafat returned with small bales of fodder, sweat pouring down their faces, Jamila teased them sarcastically about their skimpy loads. Agitated by exertion and frustrated themselves at their poor harvest, the two were in no mood for jokes; they protested angrily that they’d done their best—there simply wasn’t much grass to be found around here. A dose of sweet chai improved their outlook, and they were off again, searching in a different direction.

  When Goku and Mustooq returned with water, Jamila filled up a handful of smaller containers, leaving one of the big jugs empty. I volunteered to get more, and Jamila sent little Salma with me, to make sure I wouldn’t get lost. As we walked nearly a mile back to the water hole, she chattered away as though I understood every word she was saying. She was spunky and truly adorable, with large dark eyes, rounded cheeks, a winning smile, and a wild nest of hair that was usually pulled back in a braid. When we reached the large puddle, she took the small stainless steel bowl she was carrying, scooped u
p some water, and poured it into the mouth of the jug, proudly demonstrating what to do as though she was revealing a secret Van Gujjar technique that, as an outsider, I never would have been able to figure out on my own.

  The jug fit inside a bag made from an old rice sack, which had a long carrying strap. It was heavy and awkward and, after experimenting with a few different methods of lifting it, I put the strap over the top of my head, with the jug pressing against my lower back, mimicking the way we had hauled huge piles of leaves to Dhumman’s dera during my first day in the jungle. Since there was no cap, water sloshed all over me as I staggered up the canyon, as graceful as a drunk orangutan. When we reached the dera where the other Van Gujjars had told us that there was no more water upstream, they stopped me and explained—using hand gestures—that it would be better to put my head completely through the strap, which should rest on my shoulders. My shoulders would serve as a fulcrum, balancing the weight of the water behind me with the force I would apply by pulling the strap downward in front of my chest. That was the idea, anyway. In reality, the strap cut mercilessly into my shoulders and, with each step I took, the jug slid lower and lower on my back, until the strap pulled back against my throat, threatening to strangle me. I would stop to readjust, then make a couple of minutes of progress, then stop again. Meanwhile, my patient five-year-old friend talked on and on.

  Eventually, I got the jug back to camp with most of the water still inside. If I’d had any romantic notions about what it was like to be a nomad on migration, they’d already been dashed. Even this simplest of tasks was a massive effort, and more than a little painful. But I was glad I’d done it. It felt important to immediately establish that I wanted to be as useful as possible, hoping my presence would be more of a benefit to the family than a burden. During the first days of the migration, Dhumman and Jamila grappled with an impulse to discourage me from helping, since they still regarded me as a guest, and guests should not be made to work. But the advantages of a couple of extra willing hands were too great to dismiss.