by Ruskin Bond
While the woman is being served, the shrill whistles and shouts of men herald the approach of a string of pack mules, carrying cloth from the Moradabad handlooms to the markets in the interior of the hills. The sweating mules have had a stiff climb up the road from the foothills, and while they are having a breather the four men in charge have sat down on the bench provided by the bania for his customers and are treating themselves to a cigarette and a glass of milk. Milk is the strongest drink that has ever been served at this shop, or at any other of the hundreds of wayside shops throughout the hills, for, except for those few who have come in contact with what is called civilization, our hill men do not drink. Drinking among women, in my India, is unknown. No daily paper has ever found its way into the village, and the only news the inhabitants get of the outside world is from an occasional trip into Naini Tal and from wayfarers, the best-informed of whom are the packmen. On their way into the hills they bring news of the distant plains of India and on their return journey a month or so later they have news from the trading centers where they sell their wares.
The tea the old lady has prepared for us is now ready. You must be careful how you handle the metal cup filled to the brim, for it is hot enough to take the skin off your hands. Interest has now shifted from the packmen to us, and whether or not you like the sweet, hot liquid you must drink every drop of it, for the eyes of the entire village, whose guest you are, are on you; and to leave any dregs in your cup would mean that you did not consider the drink good enough for you. Others have attempted to offer recompense for hospitality but we will not make this mistake, for these simple and hospitable people are intensely proud, and it would be as great an insult to offer to pay the dear old lady for her cup of tea as it would have been to have offered to pay the bania for his packet of cigarettes.
So, as we leave this village, which is only one of the many thousands of similar villages scattered over the vast area viewed through your good field glasses from the top of Cheena, where I have spent the best part of my life, you can be assured that the welcome we received on arrival, and the invitation to return soon, are genuine expressions of the affection and goodwill of the people in my India for all who know and understand them.
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DEV BHUMI*8
Bill Aitken
Many regions of the Himalaya lay claim to the title “abode of the gods” but strictly speaking Uttarakhand is the only genuine claimant. It is true that Kullu at Dasehra is the abode of the gods for they all foregather at the famous annual festival. But this is their temporary abode and the gods thereafter return to their favored sites. Garhwal in the ancient scriptures is also known as Kedarkhand. No one is agreed about the meaning of the word kedar which is the place of Shiva’s meditation. However at 11,500 feet where a solid stone temple was built in his honor a clue to the word’s derivation is found in the marshy meadows that characterize the site. Many small shrines have been built to enclose the numerous tiny springs (kahi dar) that bubble up and traditionally the pilgrim is invited to say “Shiva Shambu” to which there is an immediate response in the “bloop-bloop” of bubbling water.
These many springs may have lent a magical aura to this superb site at the base of the vast snow ramparts of the Himalaya. None of the other dhams of Uttarakhand have this scintillating backdrop. Badri, the abode of Vishnu, appears to have been chosen for the hot springs in attendance, as does Yamnotri, the religious source of the Yamuna.
Gangotri has neither a snow panorama nor hot springs but possesses Bhagirath Sheel, the penance stone on which the meditating king influenced Ganga Maharani to flow from Shiva’s Kailash down to earth. Could it be that this very ordinary stone once marked the source of the Ganga which has now receded more than nineteen kilometers to Gaumukh? The Gangotri glacier is melting at an alarming rate. When I first went there twenty years ago it was receding at the rate of 30 feet a year; today the ice is retreating at 30 meters a year. By the year 2050 the glacier may not exist.
There is no temple to mark the Gaumukh source of the Ganga because of the changing terrain. The Ganga rises southeast of Gangotri and is blocked from any passage south by the bulk of the Kedarnath massif. Gangotri is remarkable for the broad Bhagirathi river which suddenly narrows near the temple and then after crashing over a spectacularly sculpted waterfall enters a narrow gorge only a meter wide. Instead of seeing some proof of a scientific claim for this being the original source of the river, pilgrim mythology holds that King Bhagirath had built a canal to lead the Ganga round the obstructing Kedarnath.
The Yamnotri and Gangotri temples are both sited under the tree line while Kedar is above it. It is likely Badri once had tree cover that has fallen over the centuries to the demands of pilgrim fuel. At Bhojbhas a few kilometers short of Gaumukh (and higher than Kedar) twenty years ago there were slopes of bhojpatra (birch trees) which have all been cut recently thanks to the increase in pilgrim traffic caused by the building of a motorable bridge to Gangotri. When pilgrims had to walk ten kilometers to the temple fewer came and the environmental toll was bearable.
Now only Yamnotri and Kedarnath require some trekking. The day spent in walking to these shrines and the act of stretching one’s legs and lungs makes for a much better mood on arrival. Usually pilgrims who alight at the bus terminals of Badri and Gangotri feel tired, dusty, and bilious. The last thing they need on arrival is the noise and pollution of these seething bus stations with their crowd of porters, hotel touts, and soliciting temple “pandas” (priests). One of the first rules I learnt for visiting pilgrim shrines was from Sri Krishna Prem who had walked from Mirtola to Badrinath in the old days before the roads came: always hire a panda immediately on arrival, for he will keep the others away.
The pandas have their own extremely thorough system of allotting new arrivals, depending on the area they come from. India is divided into districts and a panda’s family takes responsibility for catering to the requirements of pilgrims from their allotted area. Your panda will arrange accommodation, food, and darshan in return for an offering. Furthermore he will have kept an accurate register of all in your family who have visited before and to make this more meaningful he will have got the pilgrim to personally write in his register. He will show you the authentic signature of your ancestor and the dates of his stay.
Those who belong to parts not accounted for (say from Pakistan, China, or Peru) have a special panda allotted to them. These arrangements work flawlessly and the stories you hear about the greed of the pandas need to be taken with a pinch of salt. If they were so greedy no one would continue with their services. Whenever Prithwi and I have trekked on the Char Dham circuit the pandas have gone out of their way to show kindness. They have learned the art of good public relations and know that our friends would seek them out by name because of our recommendation.
At the end of May 1980 Prithwi decided to have darshan of Badri Vishal and we set off in her Fiat from Mussoorie taking care to pack a small spade. This was needed to dig out the back wheels from muddy patches found along the little-used road linking Tehri with Srinagar. We spent the first night at Nand Prayag and were lucky to get a room in the forest bungalow since the district forest officer was in residence and gave us permission. The bungalow lay alongside the meeting of the Alakananda and Nandakini rivers and in those days was very peacefully situated. Apart from pilgrim buses, army convoys, and government jeeps, there was no private traffic. The age of nationalized banks and government loans to buy taxis had not yet arrived.
This confluence of rivers marked the traditional site of Shakuntala’s ashram in Kalidas’s drama. It would be hard for Shakuntala’s king to go hunting in these parts nowadays because there are so few trees left. Yet only 150 years ago according to Atkinson’s Gazetteer tigers abounded in the forests around Karnaprayag.
A new road left Nand Prayag for the interior following the Nandakini as far as Ghat. This was a convenient junction for treks to Rup Kund and the Kuari Pass. O
f all the unspoilt sylvan trails in Garhwal the climb to Kuari from Ramni (above Ghat) is amongst my favorites. This bridle path through ancient clumps of mixed forest was known as the Curzon Trail because the viceroy had chosen it for its reputed scenic beauty. However the viceregal party only got as far as the first stage when the trek had to be called off. They were attacked by wild bees, a feature of these hills.
Returning from one of my treks to the source of the Nandakini when I came to the village of Sutol I found not a single male at home. They had all gone to raid the hives of the deadly wild bee. The bees hang their large combs of honey under some inaccessible cliff safe from the wind and rain and beyond the reach of a ladder. But the enterprising villagers lower a man from the top of the cliff and as he dangles in midair he tries to smoke out the bees. Then in a desperate maneuver he breaks off the combs which drop to those waiting at the base of the cliff. Needless to say many are badly stung in this uneven battle and the rewards hardly seem to offset the pains incurred. But the sheer physical courage of the villager lowered almost literally into a hornet’s nest is something you cannot but applaud.
Honey enjoys a high religious status in the hills and is believed to be good for every complaint. The theory that it contains the essence of many Himalayan plants is belied by the fact that much of it originates from village sweetshops where due to the paucity of flora the bees are forced to forage. Keeping domesticated bees in the hills is hard work. During the cold weather you have to feed them rather than the other way round. For the rest of the year they require a lot of protection from bears and pine martens. Perhaps their worst enemy is the wasp which comes in several sizes in the hills. The biggest species of hornet runs to two inches in body length. In swatting one of these which was attacking the Mirtola hives I accidentally put my foot on it when it was already dead, but its sting nevertheless penetrated my foot and I had a severe temperature for a week. This variety breeds in combs in the ground and has such strong poison that three stings can be fatal.
After the leafy surroundings of Nand Prayag, Badrinath came as a bit of a letdown. The sprawl of dharmshalas and the crudely painted temple in PWD pink gave the place an air more of a refugee camp than a spiritual destination. The valley hereabouts is very open and we walked up to the village of Mana. Here we experienced some true religion albeit of the local variety. A women was possessed and uttered oracular outbursts which went largely unheard since most of the men were staggering around totally drunk on locally distilled booze.
It is a curiosity of spiritual alchemy that Lord Badri, the most orthodox of Hindu icons and cared for by Namboodri Brahmins, likewise commands the allegiance of these toping Marchas (as the local people were then designated). To prove the point the Rawal of the Badri temple rode up on horseback to bless the bacchanalian ceremonies afoot in Mana.
The word “Badri” is said to derive from the beru (wild fig) on which Lord Vishnu is believed to have survived while doing penance in the valley. The jujube tree is a claimant but does not grow above 6,000 feet. A more likely candidate is Hippophae salicifolia, a shrub with an acid fruit that makes a palatable preserve when boiled with sugar. The hill fig—eaten as a vegetable after the latex has been boiled out—grows around Joshimath where Lord Badri descends to spend his winter. In fact Joshimath is famous for possessing what is claimed to be one of the oldest trees in India. This is a fig but of the non-fruiting variety, similar to the tree under which the Buddha sat for enlightenment in Bodh Gaya. Is there a clue here to the origins of the temple?
The insignificance of the structure at Badrinath and the attribute of “vishal” to the deity has led some to argue that the real Badri was higher up on the Tibetan border where there are large, ancient Buddhist stone figures. This would explain the word vishal (great). Controversy exists over the belief that Shankaracharya had rescued the image of Badri (said to have been thrown in the river by Buddhist polemical rivals) and reinstated it at the site of the present temple. Another version is that Shankaracharya’s followers, after the victory of their guru over the Buddhists in debate, had simply taken over the temple as their legitimate spoils. A similar case has been made for other temples as at Puri, Ayodhya, Kanchipuram, and Srisailem. Chinese travelers before the advent of Shankaracharya describe in detail several Buddhist shrines that mysteriously since then have found their way into Brahminical custodianship. While contemporary Hindu chauvinists list temples destroyed by Muslims, there is silence on Hindu takeovers of Buddhist and Jain sites. Evidence of the likely brahminical takeover of Badrinath lies in the carefully concealed fact that the image worshipped in the temple (invariably obscured by the pujari’s floral offerings) is of the Buddha in the lotus posture. Hindus try to evade this awkward fact by claiming that it is as an avatar of Vishnu that Buddha is worshipped in Badri. But why then should Buddhists have thrown the image in the river? And why would Shankaracharya attack an avatar of Hinduism? The truth is many Hindus consider it bad luck to keep an image of the Buddha in their house. Likewise Hindu pilgrims studiously avoid visiting the birthplace of the Buddha and the place where he died.
The next day we walked to Vishnu-paduka to glimpse the lovely vista of Nilkantha framed at the end of the valley. What a superb peak this is and how soiled its reputation became in international mountaineering circles thanks to H. C. Sarin, the president of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF). The IMF was established to put India on the world mountaineering map and keep up with the Joneses in putting Indians atop Everest. The fact that the IMF was originally housed in the defense ministry compound hints at the early departmentalizing of the infant sport of climbing by the government. Its office was a tiny room in an asbestos barracks where Babu Munshi Ram sat at a desk surrounded on all sides by mounds of yellowing files. A more unmountaineering atmosphere would be hard to imagine but at least Munshi Ram hailed from the hills, which is more than could be said for many of the bureaucratic “experts” who had never set foot in the Himalaya. Sarin’s credentials for leading the IMF were based on the fact that as a student he had undertaken a bicycle tour of Norway! But he was defense secretary and effectively controlled the destinies of India’s budding mountaineers. This thirst for mountaineering headlines had disastrous repercussions. Nilkantha is a peak as hard to climb as it is beautiful to look upon. The Indian team that claimed to have climbed it did so under extremely adverse conditions. Their leader was invalided back to base with serious frostbite that cost him his toes and the would-be summiters battled with hunger and blizzard conditions to reach what they assumed to be the top. Ignoring the need for cautious appraisal Sarin rushed the news to the press. What followed was a Himalayan pantomime involving a crude cover-up and the unedifying spectacle of climbers wriggling out of previously stated positions.
Jagdish Nanavati of the Himalayan Club, known for his scientific exactitude in recording mountain data, happened to have undertaken a mountaineering course with Sharma, one of the summit claimants. He compared the official version with what Sharma told him. Nanavati plotted on a graph the heights of the various camps and the distances between them assuming they would tally. But there were severe contradictions in the summiters’ and official accounts of the time taken to reach camps, a complication being the blizzard conditions. Another crucial factor to be reconciled was the energy levels of the summit party who were out of food and deteriorating rapidly.
Writing a monograph with calculations based on the various versions put out by the expedition Nanavati convincingly demonstrated that an exhausted summit party could not have reached the top but had probably mistaken a lower point as the summit owing to the blizzard. As honorary librarian of the Himalayan Club I discovered Nanavati’s monograph in an old trunk. It was addressed to Pandit Nehru but had merited no reply.
Realizing the IMF’s reputation was on the line, Sarin appointed a committee to scrutinize the expedition’s schedule and detailed a professional surveyor to give his opinion on whether the climbers could have made it to
the top in view of Nanavati’s reservations. Nanavati was not invited to join the inquiry committee and worse, it was composed of military personnel, all of whom were dependent on Mr. Sarin for their promotions. Aerial photographs were taken and the military surveyor gave his verdict that Nilkantha could have been climbed. Unfazed and using the committee’s own findings, Nanavati now drew up a series of photometric angles to prove the top could not have been reached. The military surveyor’s narrow interpretation might have been plausible but for the omission of the crucial realities of the weather and the starving condition of the climbers.
From Badri we drove down to Govindghat and set off with our dogs Puja and Chow Chow to visit the gurudwara at Hem Kund. Prithwi had been brought up in the Sikh religion and this was considered a very special pilgrimage. However it was not an old one. In 1930 Sardar Sohan Singh from Tehri, a keen student of the Granth Sahib, had come across a reference that in a former life Guru Govind Singh remembered meditating in a valley surrounded by seven peaks. Like a good pilgrim Sohan Singh checked out many valleys until at last he alighted upon Lokpal (as Hem Kund was formerly known). Immediately he knew his quest had been rewarded by the guru’s grace and he now made it his mission to tell other Sikhs about the glories that awaited them if they climbed to Lokpal. When he became too old to climb to the gurudwara his successor Sardar Mohan Singh sat at Govindghat doling out handfuls of channa to encourage pilgrims to divert from the trail to Badri.