Forests, Meadows, and Villages of the Kaban Valley

  Birnelli, India
Saturday, August 4, 2007

Bluebells in Kaban Valley, part I

For most of the hike from Shol at the base of the Kaban Valley to Birnelli village almost one thousand meters higher, no villages were present, enabling a landscape touched only delicately by the hands of humans.  For much of the trip, raging rapids roared next to the trail as we passed through rich forests and meadows with flowers as tall as people in places.

The forests were diverse, both in terms of species as well as their age and mixture and distribution.  Forests perched on steep slopes.  Forests rested gently in deep, rich soils.  Forests fell into the stream. 

Kaban Valley Forests

Forests grew large and tall in places.  In richer soils, the deodar cedar trees grew to a wide girth along with fir and spruce. 

Cascade in the Kaban Valley

Walnuts, maples, birch, hazelnuts, cottonwoods, larches, and yew grew in richer soils with understories of strawberry, ferns, violet, bedstraw, purple geraniums and mints.  Pines, being opportunists, were present under all conditions, but prevalent on some steeper slopes.  Himalayan Slaty-headed Parakeets flew between the deodar trees across the rapids.  Himalayan Griffon soared high near the mountaintop thermals. 

Field of Touch-me-nots

In the meadows were bluebells, cannabis, thistles, elderberry, and dozens of composites, along with tall touch-me-nots in the wet areas.  Thickets of willows created dense areas for Yellow-breasted Greenfinches along the meadow edges.

Kaban Valley Scene

We were heading up Tenzin's home valley of 130 households, where he grew up before leaving for Gulabgarh as many other Buddhists had done.  Jigmet, Gudrun, and I reached Birnelli village, with 12 households, at 10,400 feet and decided to reconnoiter, surrounded by meadows, the Chanaur and Hadu pastures, mountains and with a view of Kaban village further up the valley. 

Kaban Village

A woman was crochetting a pair of colorful woolen socks, which she would sell in either Shol or Gulabgarh.  Her family would also sell sweaters, grass shoes, honey, beans, peas, wheat, and barley to the villages downstream.  At the same time, they would regularly travel to Shol or Gulabgarh for sugar, kerosene, oil, rice, and flour.

Birnelli Woman in Red Listens to Jigmet and Gudrun

Jigmet and Gudrun talked to a small group about wildlife on a flat rooftop.  The villagers talked about the mother bear and two cubs who recently attacked 30 sheep in a local pasture.  They also mentioned selling animal parts to traders who occasionally visit the village, likely middlemen involved in the lucrative Chinese medicine trade.

In the Chanaur and Hadu summer pastures were between 400 and 600 cows, between 200 and 300 dzos (a yak/cow hybrid), and five yaks.  Each family owns about 40 goats and sheep, for a total of about 5,000 animals, according to the villagers' best estimates.  The dzos and yaks came from Zanskar, which can be reached from the upper valley.

Sonam Dorjay, Elder Zanskari in Birnelli Village

Sonam Dorjay, as he smoked his pipe, recounted his travels to Zanskar.  His mother married in Zanskar, as traditionally women went to Zanskar for marriage, whereas men came from Zanskar to the western valleys of the Himalayas.  Sonam lived in Zanskar in Shaggar village until he was eight years old, when his father died.  He and his mother returned to her maternal valley.  Since then, he has been to Zanskar ten times, carrying rice to exchange for precious salt on the backs of sheep, whose hooves could tackle the ice and rocks of glacier and rock travel.  They went in groups of 15 to 20 people and stayed in caves along the way for ten to twelve days.

Many of the children of Kaban Valley now go to Gulabgarh, to the Buddhist school at the temple or to the high school.  Sending a son to the local monastery, common elsewhere, is not practiced regularly here.  Now these children have Tibetan names, such as Tenzin, whereas before many children were given Hindu names, reflecting the power of local Hindu teachers and officials only a generation ago. 

Yellow Compositae

On the rooftop was a trident of birch, symbol of Latho, the protector deity of the home.  The family offered juniper incense to purify.  High in the mountains was the protector deity Shanold.  A local shaman transmits Shanold and comes to the Kaban Valley from Dundee village once a year for the Nague Festival, celebrated in mid-August, perhaps around the new moon.  A story tells of two Golden Eagle Deities.  Now there is only one, as the other one flew away.  If the remaining Golden Eagle is facing you, then things are "very happy."