Himalaya Bound Read online

  Later that day, Jamila, laughing, said that the people who had shown me how to carry the jug had been amazed to see an Angrez hauling water like that, as though they could not imagine a white person deigning to do such demeaning manual labor. Jamila and Dhumman both took this to be a good thing, though I’m not sure exactly why; they seemed proud that their family’s Angrez had defied stereotypes to work—even in a small way—like a Van Gujjar.

  By early afternoon, the young children wilted and dropped from the heat, passing out in dappled pools of shade. I took shelter under a tree that still had leaves, about a hundred yards from camp. Sharafat, done with collecting grass, joined me. It was simply too hot for anyone to do much of anything.

  This teenager had an obviously keen intellect. The previous autumn, Dhumman had been persuaded to take the very unusual step of sending him away to a boarding school in a small village about nine miles from their dera. But after a couple of months, Dhumman called his son back to the forest, needing his help with the buffaloes. Sharafat loved school, loved learning, and was deeply disappointed that he’d had to leave it. But neither of his parents, and indeed very few Van Gujjars at all, knew how to read or write, and while Dhumman sensed there’d probably be some abstract kind of value in it if Sharafat was literate, it wasn’t deemed important to his success as a buffalo herder. That was little comfort to Sharafat, who said he would much rather go to school than herd buffaloes. But he wasn’t about to leave his family and his world and strike out on his own in search of an education. Such a move would be unthinkably radical.

  There had been a time about a decade earlier when the non-profit Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK), which had helped Van Gujjars in their struggle to remain in Rajaji National Park in the 1990s, sent teachers into the Shivaliks to educate young nomads. Appa had studied in the program, and thrived in it, but it only ran for two years. Ten years later, she could still sound out written Hindi at about a first grade level, making her the best reader in the family. Like her brother, the little taste of education she’d gotten made her crave more—but unlike him, given the choice, she wouldn’t have traded her forest-dwelling life for it.

  As we sat in the shadow of the tree, Sharafat began to indulge his curiosities. He wanted to know what languages people speak in America, which religions are practiced there, and what kind of food people like to eat. Then he asked if I kept any buffaloes at my home. When I said “no,” he asked if I owned cows instead. I said “no” again, and explained that all of the milk that I—and most Americans—use is purchased in containers at a store. “Oh,” he said, “Like Amul, India’s best-known brand of packaged dairy products. “Exactly.”

  “But you know,” he said with a touch of disdain, “that’s not as good as fresh milk.”

  “Yes, I know,” I agreed. I then told him that many Americans prefer to buy milk that has virtually no fat.

  “Really??” he exclaimed, skeptically.

  “It’s true,” I said, explaining that the fat was removed before the milk was sold, and that this kind of milk was very popular. As Namith translated, I watched Sharafat’s eyes widen. I might as well have told him that only children under the age of ten were allowed to practice medicine. One of the fundamental truths of his world is: the higher the fat content, the better the milk. This didn’t seem like a mere matter of opinion, but like a fact as obvious and irrefutable as “water makes things wet.”

  After a pause, Sharafat changed the subject completely, asking if I was nervous about tackling Shakumbhari Pass. “No . . . ,” I said, “. . . should I be?”

  “Well, it’s not going to be easy,” he said. His family had been warned that the trail was in horrible condition and would be dicey, especially for loaded pack animals. It was even suggested that they wait until daylight to attempt it, so at least they’d be able to see what they were doing. “But, unless my father changes his mind, we’re going to try it tonight,” Sharafat said. After weighing their options, Dhumman and Yusuf had decided that the daytime heat would be more dangerous for the pack animals than the darkness.

  As the sun slid towards the jagged rim of the canyon wall, angular shadows stretched across the bottom of the gorge. Sharafat, Namith and I left the tree and walked over to the kitchen, where Appa was making tea. She smiled, with no trace of shyness or impropriety at being around two men who were not part of the family.

  Van Gujjar women are not raised to be demure or subservient. They speak their minds, whether cracking sarcastic jokes or voicing thoughtful opinions; though fathers have the highest status in the family structure, they generally respect what their wives and older daughters have to say. And while Van Gujjar lambardars are all male, they consult with and listen to the opinions of the women in the community. In their daily lives, and on the migration, men and women often do the same jobs, from milking and herding buffaloes to lopping and hauling fodder to loading and leading the pack animals. Women generally do the cooking and are the primary caregivers for the young children—but men are demonstratively affectionate with the little ones, too.

  Unlike many Muslim cultures in which men may take up to four wives, Van Gujjar men have only one at a time. And a Van Gujjar woman will only veil her face once in her life, for the same reason an American woman will: her wedding ceremony. Well aware of the symbology of the veil—and resoundingly rejecting it—the women have a saying: “Just because you wear a veil for your wedding doesn’t mean your husband can tie it around your neck.” If the marriage doesn’t work out, women can divorce their husbands without bringing shame upon themselves or their family, and without being stigmatized or socially outcast by the tribe.

  Appa herself had only recently returned to her family-of-origin after leaving her husband, with whom she was deeply unhappy. He was about eight years younger than she, making him about fourteen years old. “We have nothing in common,” she told me. “I can’t even talk to him about anything. He’s just a boy.” Her in-laws, she said, with whom she and her husband had lived, weren’t the most pleasant people to share a hut with. She had tried to stay, knowing that would be easier for everybody, but found it unbearable.

  Like most Van Gujjar unions, hers had been arranged by her parents as part of a larger marriage deal between families. Since, as a rule, a woman lives with her husband’s family, when a daughter leaves her parents, a gaping hole is created in that family’s labor force. As a result, marriages are often arranged as exchanges—in its simplest form, a girl from Family A marries into Family B, and a girl from Family B marries into Family A; in Appa’s situation, she was promised to a certain boy as part of a more complicated deal, the main goal of which was to get a new wife for one of Dhumman and Yusuf’s brothers, who was a widower. Being single, I quickly saw, was not a viable option for Van Gujjars, as the amount of work it takes to survive in the forest is too onerous for one person alone. If you can’t maintain your own household, you join a family member’s dera. The great fear, which motivates and perpetuates the arranged marriage system, is that one’s child will be left without a spouse.

  Thus it is common for marriage exchanges to involve a complex arithmetic of boys and girls or men and women between two or more families; perhaps a girl from Family A marries a boy from Family B, then a girl from Family B marries a boy from Family C, and a girl from Family C marries a boy from Family A—to give a fairly straightforward example. In order to make some of these arrangements work, it’s not unusual for children to be married—though a girl who is married at a young age will stay with her own family until her late teens or early twenties, when she’s deemed old enough to leave home.

  Love matches, however, are not unheard of. Sometimes when a man or a woman knows that they’ve been betrothed by their parents to someone with whom they don’t want to spend the rest of their lives, he or she may elope with someone else who they find more appealing, before their scheduled wedding day. Such behavior is discouraged since it throws the entire, larger marriage exchange between families into cha
os—but it’s also understood, and once what’s done is done, the illicit marriage is usually accepted by the parents of the bride and groom. The soap-opera-like intrigue around engagements and weddings and elopements and divorces is, naturally, a hot topic for gossip and is one of the Van Gujjars’ main diversions; in fact, it seems like the entertainment value of juicy nuptial dramas is as much a reason for maintaining the system of arranged marriages as anything else.

  Many arranged marriages encounter substantial turbulence, and it’s quite common for women to return to their own families for periods of time. When this happens, the effects often ripple out beyond the troubled couple. In Appa’s case, for instance, the wife of her brother, Mir Hamza, was her husband’s sister. Since Appa returned to her family, her husband’s sister was recalled by her own family to compensate for the loss of labor, and to use as a bargaining chip. So Mir Hamza would have to do without his wife for some time, possibly until Appa officially settled her divorce. Mir Hamza didn’t seem to mind.

  Unfortunately for Appa, divorces, whether initiated by husband or wife, must be mutually agreed upon, which—in her case—gave her husband the elephant’s share of the leverage in negotiating the terms of the divorce. Knowing that she couldn’t remarry until the split was finalized, her husband’s family demanded an exorbitant sum of money to sign off on it. While negotiations dragged on, Appa was stuck in limbo, unwilling to return to a husband she disliked, yet unable to take a new one and start a family of her own. Dhumman and Jamila both felt terrible about how things worked out for their daughter, and seemed committed to letting her choose her next husband. As soon as she was given the chance.

  Appa’s husband belonged to one of the families that had been evicted from Rajaji National Park and settled in a village called Gandikhatta, which was built for displaced Van Gujjars by the state government. Since she had gone to live there, she had missed the previous two spring migrations, and was thrilled to be heading up to the mountains once again. Summers in the lowlands were unbearably hot, and “living in the village is like being in prison,” she said.

  Though marriages are never made outside the tribe, it’s not unusual nowadays for matches to be made between nomadic forest families and settled village families. This introduces a whole new set of problems for married couples, especially for the women. When wives move from village to forest, they struggle with the physical demands of wilderness life; village life is simply easier, and a settled woman who is married off to a forest-dwelling husband rarely has the strength or the skills that her new life requires. Aside from feeling, at least for a time, like she’s been exiled to a jungle labor camp, she may also feel useless, like she isn’t being helpful to her husband’s family. Even worse is when her mother-in-law agrees.

  On the other hand, when women move from the forest to a village, as Appa did, they often chafe under the constraints of settled life. They have far more freedom in the wilderness, partly by virtue of the equality of the work they do, and partly because living out in the forest gives them a greater sense of autonomy and privacy than is possible in villages, where more people live more closely together and where more conservative religious beliefs have begun to take root among the traditionally liberal Van Gujjars.

  Appa was obviously relieved to be back with her family and back in the forest. This was home, and these were the people she loved. Occasionally, however, the cloud of her unresolved divorce overcame her naturally sunny personality, casting her into a place of distress and confusion. She had no idea when she’d be able to get on with her life.

  Sitting there in the bottom of the canyon as the heat of the day gradually ebbed, Appa listened raptly when I told her that I had once been married and divorced, when I was not much older than she. She wanted to know what had brought my ex-wife and I together, why we’d split up, and what happened after that. I answered honestly. Though my circumstances were completely unlike hers, since mine was a true love match that had failed, she was intrigued by the story, and took some solace from hearing that life can be much better after divorce, even if the process of ending the relationship is devastatingly painful.

  After a night bivouacked in the streambed, sleeping on whatever flat ground wasn’t occupied by buffaloes, we were awake by 2 am. The pack animals were loaded in darkness while chai was brewed on the fire. Soon after we set off, the canyon tightened. Turrets of rock towered above, like Gothic shadows against the moonless sky. Moving through the night, following the twists and turns hewn into the topography, we eventually found the route that cut up and out of the canyon.

  The narrow trail was notched into the face of a sheer cliff, as it climbed higher and higher, up towards the spine of the Shivaliks. The path was steep and often treacherous. In one place, we had to scramble about one hundred feet straight up a small landslide. Namith and I were advised to wait until all the animals had made it over this section, then follow, so we wouldn’t be caught among the herd, in case any of the buffaloes stumbled or fell. With much shouting to each other and at the animals, the family guided the herd up the chute of loose dirt. Once the way seemed clear, Namith and I started up. We got about halfway when Namith lost his footing and began sliding back down, clawing at the dirt to brake himself.

  He managed to prevent himself from peeling off the slope and tumbling to the bottom, but he was clearly shaken. “I don’t think I can make it,” he said, panting. “I have a heart condition, you know.” I didn’t know. I told him to stay where he was—I would climb up to where the landslide rejoined the trail, drop my backpack, then return and take his pack, thinking it’d be much easier for him to climb with no weight to carry.

  Just as I got to the trail and was removing my pack, Mustooq arrived. In an instant, he was bounding down to Namith with the dexterity of a heavyset goat; he shouldered Namith’s backpack and gave him his hand, supporting him step by step to the top of the landslide. Namith was profoundly grateful; I was amazed that, in the frenzy of the moment, anyone had time to think about us, since they were all completely occupied with preventing the animals from plunging over the edge of the cliff as their hooves skated across the loose pebbles that littered the trail. But we had not been forgotten.

  At last, with great relief but little celebration, the caravan made it through Shakumbhari Pass and over the range’s main ridge. In doing so, we crossed from Uttar Pradesh into Uttarakhand—an invisible borderline that was drawn along the crest of the hills less than nine years earlier, when Uttarakhand (then called Uttaranchal) split off from UP to become its own state. In the moment, this movement between states was meaningless, but it would prove to be of major significance in the days and weeks to come.

  Compared with what we had just conquered, the descent down the northern slope was fairly easy. By the time we reached the expanse of forest spread across the base of the hills, the hazy glow of first light filtered through the trees. We paused for a few minutes, readjusting the loads on the pack animals and redistributing the young children who were being carried in shawls. Mustooq gave Namith back his backpack and, to my surprise, Jamila handed me Kutta’s leash.

  We continued on over flat, well-trodden trails. Here, the arboreal clock appeared to be set a week or two behind the southern side of the ridge; while leaves littered the ground, crunching under foot and hoof, plenty of green still blanketed the branches above. I was happy with my assignment, and recognized its significance: the fact that the dog—who acted like it would have killed me when I first arrived at the dera—was now allowing me to handle it, seemed to symbolize that I was no longer a stranger to the family. I’d been accepted even by its most discerning member.

  Approaching the edge of the forest, the women gathered firewood, which they would carry atop their heads to the next camp—a few miles away—where they knew they would find none. Dhumman, Yusuf, and a handful of their children stopped for a few hours in one of the last groves of trees, keeping the herd where there was fodder and shade, as Jamila, Roshni, and the rest of the family guided
the pack animals on ahead.

  Most of the year, whether in the Shivaliks or the Himalayas, Van Gujjars dwell in isolated places out of sight of the rest of the world. They say they live ‘behind the veil of the forest,” and that is where they are most comfortable. But while they are migrating between the jungles and the mountains, they are exposed, living out in the open within sight of others. When they first leave the paths that run through the Shivaliks, stepping onto a paved road lined with villages and coursing with automobiles, the veil they normally live behind is suddenly lifted.

  That moment had arrived.

  3

  WAITING BY THE RIVER

  It was like waking abruptly from a dream.

  Walking out of the calm of the forest, we suddenly found ourselves in a jarring reality where trucks barrelled past on the road, frighteningly close and frighteningly fast, horns blaring. As we passed through villages, local people came out of their homes to watch the nomadic procession, to see this annual parade of strangers from the other side of the hills. It seemed to me that a subtle self-consciousness settled over the family as the gaze of others first fell upon them, but looking back on that moment, I wonder if I imagined that; if perhaps I was more sensitive to the differences between these Muslim forest dwellers and Hindu villagers than they were. I honestly don’t know.