Finding paradise in the Utteranchal Himalayas
Trip Start
Feb 29, 2004
1
13
33
Trip End
Nov 24, 2004
Bageshwar,
India
Monday, June 7, 2004
DELHI
After four days of sweating in 44°C heat (yes, I know this is getting boring, I'll stop moaning about the temperature very soon) it was surprisingly easy to leave Delhi. Bless Indian Rail for having a Foreigners Quotum - a few seats on every train are reserved for foreigners. So getting a ticket on the overnight train to Kothgadam, northeast of Delhi at the foot of the Himalayas, was no problem at all.
My time in Delhi was spent mailing cards and parcels home, shopping for a China travel guidebook, Indian music, and enjoying big city life
Kausani view
. I met up with Gaurav, a nature documentary filmer I had met in Rathjambore Tiger Park - we went to the New Friends Colony district to visit a modern bar (unremarkable for European cities but fairly unique over here), listened to western music (which is nearly absent in India) and drank a surprisingly good Black Russian. He's off to Ladakh (northernmost India) at the same time as me, to film the elusive Himalayan Snowleopard, so maybe I'll meet him later on again. The results of the elections had come through and Sonia Ghandi's decision not to become Prime Minister was sending shocks though the country. Streets in South Delhi (where the politicians live) were shut off as they buzzed from meeting to meeting to form a government and find a PM. I visited the Indira Ghandi museum in her house in South Delhi, and on the way out was held back for a while as the motorcade of Manmohan Singh passed by - he had just been made PM that day! I saw him in his big turban flash by in an official Ambassador car.
The Indira Ghandi museum was great - it really showed the Neru/Ghandis as a Kennedy-type political family. Indira spent her youth with her freedom-fighter-turned-PM father, and met all kinds of people like Mahatma Ghandi, the Kennedys, etc. No wonder she went into politics too
Langur monkeys
. The house was filled with photos and newspaper copies, and one of the rooms left in the original state had a Corbusier feuteuil, nice. The sari she was wearing on the day that two of her Sikh guards shot her (for ordering the army to attack their most holy temple) was on display, and outside a Czech-made glass walkway covered the garden path where she set her last footsteps. Also in the museum: the shredded pyjama and trainers that her son Rajiv (Sonia's husband) was wearing when he was blown up while campaigning. Her other son Sanjay was killed in a plane crash. Mahatma Ghandi (unrelated to this family) was shot too... Indian politics is a violent business.Lunch in a central Chinese restaurant was spent with an English-Indian cotton-exporting businessman who (not unlike a colleague of mine) was an expert on brothels across Europe - he was asking me if Yab Yum in Amsterdam was still any good. He had lived in Bucharest a few years before me, and who was nowadays messing with girls in Tajikistan. Living the high life. After that I walked around Old Delhi, the muslim heart of the city, getting lost in the tiny alleys, drinking fresh orange juice at a street stall, and finally visiting the immense Jama Masjid - India's biggest mosque.
At the Jama Masjid, tourists were in short supply due to the heat, but plenty of worshippers were streaming in through the gates to join evening prayers. I waited on a marble stone next to the central pool (which has goldfish in it, and where muslims wash before prayers) and observed the crowds. after a while, two youngsters who were messing around got overenthusiastic, and one of them got pushed into the pool, which was surprisingly deep - he went right under, came up splashing and screaming and had to be pulled out
Nainital lake
. Some men who were doing the serious business of the washing ritual were very pissed off that he had disturbed their ritual and polluted their washing water. A lone slipper left in the middle of the pool took ten minutes to be splashed within reach.I got a view of Old Delhi from one of the huge minarets: an endless cubist landscape of square multicoloured houses seperated by narrow alleys. Here and there, flocks of pigeons were being directed across the sky by pigeon-owners standing on the roofs and waving with sticks. This is a typical muslim pasttime, seen in many old city centres. I read that well-trained flocks can encircle the flock of a rival pigeon-owner, and force them to the ground or scatter their formation. Muslim children do the smae thing on a smaller scale by flying and fighting with kites in the evening breeze - they sometimes coat the kite lines with a mixture of glue and glass powder, and saw through the lines of their opponents. Crafty sports!
I left Delhi in a foul mood - on the day of departure, a backpacker who I had lent the Himalaya chapters of my Rough Guide had disappeared, taking my book with him. May he fall painfully of a steep cliff, be nibbled at by goats and eaten by eagles. With no chance of getting a new version before departure I now have to rely on the five-year old Footprint Himalaya guide (good, but not the same), and I have a feeling it'll influence my enjoyment of the area negatively until I find someone to make copies from. But then again, traveling without relying on a book too much may be a revelation... (but I'm a guidebook writer in real life, so I don't really believe that).
The night train to Kathgodam left from Old Delhi station - Delhi's largest, and just north of the old city, with the rails curving around the Red Fort towards the northeast. I had not been there yet, and was stunned by the crowds, the noise and activity.
Thousands of people were milling around the huge station like ants. Families rich and poor were camped out on the floors, eating sleeping drinking waiting. Porters with red turbans and shiny copper ID plates around their arms were walking to and from platforms, with sometimes two or three suitcases stacked on their heads, and a couple of bags on each arm too.
The departure information was a chaotic hand-painted sign, so with the help of a station master I located my platform, and on arrival was confronted with a train that stretched out of sight to both sides - it must have been over 30 carriages long. Locating the air-conditioned carriages is usually simple - at one end, and they're the only ones with glass windows.
Nobody on the platform near me knew which way I had to go, however and I went a random way (left, wrong), arriving at the back end without seeing glass windows. It was a ten-minute walk struggling through overladen families and porters to get to the other end again, and I had to hurry to get there on time. (At night the A/C carriages are locked off from the rest of the train to keep the heat and the riff-raff out - little chance of getting in after departure: you have to wait till the next station).
NAINITAL
I shared a compartment with a family from Mumbai, who were on their yearly holiday. They had eight days holiday only, of which three were spent on the trains heading up and back. These were the lucky ones though: they had money to leave home and visit the cool mountains. Even the newspapers report a growing trend of Indians heading to Singapore, Hong Kong, and even to expensive Europe on holidays, most Indians have no choice but to stay home and scrape together a life every day. They were heading to Nainital, the same hill station (the Indian term for hilltop holiday town) as I planned to visit, and kindly offered me a ride in the jeep they were taking, 30km up the mountain to Nainital.
Up in the mountains, trains don't run, and privately operated jeeps are the main form of transport next to private and state buses. While the buses have fixed departure times, and are sometimes excruciatingly slow getting up and down the winding pass roads, jeeps are much faster, slightly more expensive, and depart when the driver thinks they are full (note: this is no way related to the number of seats in the jeep).
After a ride up through my first Himalayan landscape, with terraced farm fields and pine forests, I was dropped off at the edge of the lake ('tal') that gave Nainital its name. it's an incredibly picturesque place - a lake of 2km by 500m at an altitude of 1936m dotted with rowing boats and even some sailing boats. It's surrounded by old wooden houses and hotels, with a peak of 2611m rearing up behind. It was deliciously cool up here, 25°C, nearly 20 degrees cooler than the simmering plains I left behind. June is holiday month in India, and the main road, the Mall, was packed with families from the plains strolling around, buying tacky souvenirs and photographing each other. Unfortunately, cars and buses also share the narrow Mall road, and the noise of horns is deafening, and really ruined the Nainital experience for me. Thankfully, in the afternoons and evenings the police shuts off the road for motorized traffic in the evening, leaving the blissful peace to be broken only by the bells of cycle-rickshaws.
I decided against using the 'ropeway' (cable car) to Snow View peak (2400m), and went the whole 675m up to Naini Peak, following a track up from the picturesque old bazaar through pine forests to the forestry cabin at the top of 2611m. The promised spectacular panorama of a 300km-long section of snowy Himalaya peaks was not visible due to hazy weather, but the walk was nice anyway, my first half-hearted attempt at getting into shape for the real mountain treks that were planned ahead.
By the time I went back down, clouds had closed in and the noisy Indian families had long departed, so it was just me and the animals on the path. A group of four beautiful black-faces, silver-backed langur monkeys leapt from the path into a nearby tree, letting me come very close. Further along, a pair of fearless gold-backed woodpeckers ignored me as they burrowed into the bark of nearby trees, and a golden bee-eater was chasing insects.
ALMORA
Taking an overfull bus (I was seated on what was left of the dashboard, next to the driver, with my back to the window pane, in full sight of some 40 bewildered non-tourist locals and with in-depth views of the sheer drops next to the road) and then a jeep, I got to the next hill station, Almora. This town has no lake, but a great setting on a narrow ridge between two hills; it looks like the houses have been draped over the mountain pass like a saddle on a horse.
Almora has the nicest bazaar area that I've seen till now. It follows the ridge, the flagstone road is traffic-free, has no cows, cow-shit or flies, and is lined by beautiful, centuries-old and brightly-painted wooden houses, with carved doorways and windows. The locals are friendly, and there are no hassles at all for the unsuspecting foreign visitor. There aren't many western tourists here, so the hotels are crappy and the restaurants make no concessions to sensitive tastebuds or to the demand for muesli and banana pancakes. Nice.
I found a local trekking agency that could arrange a guide for my first Himalayan trek, and in the hope of joining a foreign group that was said to be on its way, I decided to take off to the depths of nowhere for a day before starting the trek. A trekker who I met via the India website forum www.indiamike.com had tipped me on a village called Bhuveshwar, with a holy cave and nice views.
I set off too late from Almora of course, and missed all the morning jeeps heading northeast, so I boarded a rickety bus that was going all the way - 120km to Guptori, near Bhuveshwar in about six hours. The ride was beautiful - snaking up and down pass roads (we must have crossed 4 passes), through isolated villages, deep ravines and pine forests. It was also very very slow (the afternoon jeeps that I could have been in were overtaking us all the time), and pretty uncomfortable. There were too many seats crammed into the bus and in the back row, just behind me, a poor family of four was sharing two seats, and taking turns in vomiting from the window.
I was thinking of getting out at the first opportunity to change to a jeep but then the Buddhist deep inside me intervened, calmed me down, and told me to be patient, see the journey as a destination, and fore mostly to thank the gods (if any) that the bus driver was not mad and driving slowly. So I arrived in Guptori in high spirits, though a little shaky as the last stretch had been along a very narrow road on the edge of a cliff with a 600m drop. In Bhuveshwar there are only two options for sleeping, and as the cosy hotel was 'crammed' (as the locals always put it), I headed for the ashram (normally a cheap, simple pilgrims' guesthouse) where the bastards ripped me off by demanding 300Rs for a room that was not worth more than 50Rs. So much for Hindu honesty - it seems it's always the ones that are supposed to be most religious that seem to take foreigners for rich idiots, and demand lots of cash. (The next day I made a lot of noise about the price and ripping off tourists being bad for your karma, and stayed the second night free).
Early in the morning I was awoken at 05:30 by noisy families outside - and got up to see the stunning view of the valley below us filled with clouds like the view from a plane, and in the distance, where a normal Dutchman would normally expect high clouds, a magnificent row of huge, really fucking high, jagged, snow-covered Himalayan peaks. Wow, wow, wow.
After some more sleep (hurrah for earplugs) I headed for the famed cave, just outside the village in a steep part of the woods. The priest didn't seem a particularly religious guy to me - he only was interested in the 100Rs coming from my wallet, and behaved pompously by demanding to see and check my passport and jotting down useless numbers before letting me into his crappy cave. I had stupidly left my headlamp behind in Kerala, so I was forced to take the 100Rs guide as well.
As this is India, and as these are Hindus, it was messily set up. The village has impressive power lines leading to it, but there had been a 'power shortage' for a week already. So the few light bulbs inside the cave were powered by a huge, noisy generator outside which decided to conk out just before I entered. The generator-repairman (a fulltime job) banged around with some hammers and spanners, and the village idiot dropped by to give him a hand starting it up again. Once going, it belched out thick black smoke that drifted up into the virgin forest, and made an incredible din that could be heard for miles. (Call me cynical, but if they invested just part of the 200Rs that foreigners pay into the solar-powered lamps that villagers across the region use, and they would not pollute the whole place. Indian tourists, however, do not see this problem/solution, and do not complain, so nothing will change).
The cave was unspectacular for European terms, where there are many more beautiful, larger and well-lit cave complexes. But this was not just a cave, it's an old temple that was mentioned in ancient Hindu scriptures. Apparently it was used for centuries long ago, then forgotten and 'rediscovered' by an army general in the previous century. All of the stalactites, stalagmites, pools and rock formations have religious significance, and are holy.
The sensation of padding barefoot (it's a temple remember) through a slippery, muddy cave, and having the guide bow down to a lingam, ring a bell and mumble some prayers was quite new to me. I always escape from doing puja (offering) and getting a tilak (dot) on my forehead by saying I'm Catholic, which I hope doesn't sound as offending to them as saying I'm a complete atheist. The guide pointed out formations, and explained their relevance to Hindu mythology, but failed to say anything real about the cave and its history. Besides, some of the formations though proclaimed to be made by gods, looked very much man-carved to me. But let's not start a religious riot, and talk about the village.
Spread out between terraced fields overlooking the deep valley were a couple of hamlets, clinging to the mountainside. I walked among the fields along concrete paths to visit a few of these villages. The houses here are Himalayan-style - built with two storeys, with a thin wooden floor between the two. The idea is that the cattle stands below, and their heat (plus some sounds and smells) rises up to help heat the main living room and kitchen. Very smart.
I walked from hamlet to hamlet along the mountainside, meeting a young navy officer dragging two heavy suitcases on the way back. Deepak Singh was on his way home on leave, and invited me for tea with his family. Indians are not the people to show emotions in public (except when rioting), so the meeting with his parents was subdued, his mother saying hello from a distance and disappearing into the kitchen to cook something up, and with Deepak touching his father's and grandfather's feet before shaking hands - a sign of respect. Of course it was not just tea I got but a full meal served within minutes. Palak paneer: spinach with feta cheese and rice, eaten with the right hand.
PINDARI & KAFNI GLACIER TREK
My first trek is around the Nanda Devi sanctuary. Nanda Devi is the highest mountain in India within its borders, and because of political trouble with China from the 1960s onwards, the area has remained 'unspoilt' and closed for foreigners till recently (while in the meantime Nepal ploughed ahead, creating a global reputation for good trekking). it's also the area where many famous Himalayan climbers first came to practice - Edmund Hillary's first Himalayan peak is here. I'll stick to the valleys for the time being though. I was to meet Tarun, my trekking guide, in the town of Bageshwar the next day. Taking the first jeep out of Bhuveshwar at 08:00 and changing to different jeeps four times, I met him at the Milan restaurant at noon.
The first stretch - past the 600m cliffs - I sat on the roof of the jeep as it was crammed full. With the sun in your face, a cool breeze and an unlimited view of birdlife and the chasm next to us, it was much preferable to sitting inside. At least when the jeep (full of people who believe in reincarnation) tips over the rim of the abyss, you can try to save your skin, and only life, when you're on the roof.
In one of the other jeeps I took this morning (a Mahindra Maxx, built to cram), I counted 23 people in, on and hanging off the car! Six people on the front seat (two children on laps, one person sideways half behind the driver and operating the gears), five on the middle seat, eight (including me) rammed onto the two lengthwise benches in the back, two on the roof and two hanging off the back, standing on the thingy that usually holds the spare tyre. Where I come from, 23 people is usually what just fits into a bus.
With Tarun (the closest Indian name to Jeroen) I took two more jeeps up the valley, into a increasingly wild landscape with small villages and small rivers in huge river beds that would become destructively strong in spring. We drove through as gorge up to the village of Loharket at the beginning of the trail. Leaving my surplus weight behind at the Porter and Mule Association building, we climbed up for 30 minutes to reach the first KMVN (the local government mountain association) 'tourist rest house'. The bungalow, a standard design found in many places along the trekking routes, had four large rooms with fireplace and own bathrooms. No other heating or hot water supply though: wimps who can't stand cold mountain water can order buckets of hot water from the kitchen. At least this rest house had electricity, as it was still close to civilization.
Food is available in privately run little kitchen shacks near the rest houses, and invariably it will be a messy, primitive, soot-blackened kitchen with the cook crouching on the ground pushing logs into the fire. But these cooks are somehow capable of serving delicious and varied vegetarian food from just a few pans and all in a flash. I had some of the best Indian food (and tea, and conversations) on the trip in these smoky medieval kitchens.
I climbed to a rocky point in the middle of the valley, admiring the terraced fields all around that crept up the mountainsides from the river to the top. Apart from the small village below, farmhouses were dotted all over the mountainsides, sometimes in seemingly impossible positions, only reachable via small footpaths clinging to cliffs. Good land is at a premium in the Himalayas, and the farmers will go far to sow. On our side of the river I counted more than 250 levels of terraces, some with two-metre high terrace walls.
The next morning, after hot porridge, the trek really started. We were to walk up from Loharket at 1830m to the Pindari Glacier at 3850m, back down the valley a bit and then up to the Kafni glacier at the same height. A total of six nights in rest houses, and seven days walking on foot in places where wheels (and car horns) can't come. This trek is supposed to be one of the busiest in the region as it can be done without bringing tents or provisions, but still we only met about twenty foreigners (including one large group) and maybe forty Indian trekkers, mostly holidaying families - the rest were locals walking to their villages or shepherds with sheep or cows.
The trekking fee I paid was about €17 per day, including all food, drinks, accommodation and transport... a bargain for western terms, but in retrospect it could have been done at half the price (and including a porter to carry my bag) if I had done it myself... but this was my first trek, Tarun was good company, and it was really very nice not to think about money and organisation *at all* for a whole week - a bit like childhood holidays with your parents again. "What time would you like your morning tea?".
Though the cloud cover and rain obscured the sight of the high peaks every afternoon, mornings were dazzlingly bright and sunny. The landscape was varied - first a pass route (2900m) to get into the adjacent valley, then slowly down through farms and fields to the beautiful village of Khati (2194m), where a walk though the village had dozens of cute snotty children peeking out of the carved wooden windows at me, folding their hands in the traditional Hindi greeting, saying namastee. After Khati, it was wilderness all the way up to the glacier. Only resthouses, locals and trekkers here. (And one holy man, of course).
My guidebook claims that this region has the least spoilt forests and village landscapes of the Himalayas, and the walk up through humid moss-covered woods was beautiful. Colourful birds I had never seen darted all over the place. The top stop was the frigid cold Phurkiya rest house (3260m, 5°C at night), from where we did an early morning departure to the glacier and back with two amiable Israelis, hoping to see the valley clearly before the clouds set in. We were in luck - after four hours of walking we arrived at the glacier's moraines (rubble) at 09:00, with a bright blue sky, the sun slowly removing the shadow from the valley floor and the tip of the Pindari glacier 200m away, spilling from the mountains. All around were huge peaks, like Panwali Dwar (6683m) and the chopped-off pyramid shape of Nanda Kot (6876m). What can I say... amazingly beautiful... very quiet... crisp air with the sun burning away. We ate our breakfast of spicy potato parathas on the top of a moraine heap, looking at the glacier and the mess of rocks it had left behind on the valley floor. As the sun heated the valley, small clouds began to form, and the glacier heated up - we were lucky enough to witness a part of the glacier breaking of and smashing into pieces on the rocks below with a rumble as loud as thunder.
Possibly the most memorable thing about the day was meeting Baba-ji, a Hindu holy man who lived in a very sturdy stone house in the glacier valley. He's about my age and is from Orissa, in the hot southeast, but has lived here for half his life as an ascetic. We met him on the way down, when he had just returned from religious duties at the mountaintop temple, 1000m above us. Wearing an orange long robe covered by a North Face fleece jacket, he takes care of the pilgrims who make it up here, and tends to the temples, only leaving the valley for two months each year in the mid of winter. He also makes a mean cup of tea for passing trekkers. I talked shortly to him about the state of technology of digital cameras, something he knew a lot about (he must get a lot of modern hardware passing his hut).
The next day we did a long trek up a side valley to see the Kafni glacier. A long one - 11km both ways, with only one small teahouse halfway offering rest, shelter from a hailstorm and a cup of chai. Again, we arrived in time before the clouds. This valley was even more stunning; much wilder and emptier, except maybe for the house-sized blocks of stone that had rolled from the mountainsides. Other than the Pindari glacier where there is a dangerously unstable valley of moraines between the path and the ice, you can walk right up to the ice of the Kafni glacier. While higher up there are crevices of white ice visible making their way down the mountain, the tip is a slanting slab of dirty-grey ice with rocks and sand piled on top. Walking over huge wobbly stones we came as close as was safe - the sun was rapidly heating the stones up, and occasionally a rock would dislodge from in or on top of the ice and come crashing down, letting rock splinters fly in all directions. After some quick photos we chose a safe distance to eat our parathas, and headed back.
As this is a dead-end route we walked back over the same paths all the way to Loharket. I was surprised that it was more different to the way up - with no stooping and sweating going on, there was more time to enjoy the surroundings. On a sad note, we passed a memorial stone to Peter Kost, a 54-year old German trekker who died of a heart attack on the way up. "Your paradise is here" it reads. We passed the memorial on June 3, exactly the day that he died, four years ago... so we left some flowers, our way of offering puja to the mountain for our safe return. Tarun and I parted in Bageshwar, from where I traveled 40km to the hilltop town of Kausani to rest my weary knees.
KAUSANI
Kausani has absolutely nothing to do. There's a bunch of hotels perched on the ridge, an ashram where Ghandi once wrote part of a book, there are walks through the forests and tea plantations, and that's it. The only internet café in town is run by a star enthusiast who has some good star-gazing gear (and his wife sleeping in the room where the computers are), and who enlightens Indian tourists about the planets and the stars every evening, clouds permitting. Time to close off this long chapter and to join him on the roof - the moon's coming up soon!
*********************************************
Next up: the Milam glacier trek, solo, and a visit to the yoga capital of the world, Rishikesh (of Beatles fame).
Weather: cool at 25°C at 1000m, 8°C at 3000m.
Stomach: one day of subdued protest against greasy food after weeks of trouble-free gorging.
Mood: sky high
Sign of the day: "Short cuts may shor your life" (misspelt Utteranchal state road sign).
