It’s difficult to describe the perfection of the weather here at this season. There’s nothing quite like it in Ireland, but the nearest would be a clear, sunny, late September day. The visibility is fantastic now: a few days ago I could distinctly see Simla from the heights above the Nursery.
The current Indian custom of measuring distances by both miles and kilometres imposes a severe mental strain on travellers with no flair for arithmetic. Every other signpost or milestone uses a different measure and to add to the confusion English is now being replaced by Hindi, a move which has been universally acknowledged as a specially pure form of lunacy. Almost everyone who can read Hindi can also read English and most citizens can read neither – so why take it out on the unfortunate foreign traveller? It seems absurd that both scripts can’t be used, as Pakistan uses Urdu and English and as we use Gaelic and English. The Government intend soon to replace English by Hindi as India’s official language and this is bound to worsen the already formidable chaos of Indian bureaucracy. Even in the military sphere it will have a disastrous effect on communications, which by all accounts are shaky enough already – rumour has it that the proposed change delights the Chinese! And, when a large proportion of the people’s democratically elected representatives are no longer able to understand one syllable of their country’s language, proceedings in the Lok Sabha will degenerate from the present tragi-comedy to undiluted farce.
I spent a pleasant evening with the Peace Corps boys, catching up on my letters and reports and enjoying a first-class Mozart concert from Russia; in this part of the world the most reliable source of classical music is the USSR and on the whole reception is excellent. Today we were on the road by nine o’clock and despite a strong, persistent headwind I felt no more than pleasantly tired when we arrived here at 4 p.m., after covering sixty miles; so apparently getting back into training isn’t going to be the painful process I’d expected.
At Baijnath, eleven miles from Palampur, the Kangra valley ends and from here the road climbs very steeply for about three miles before crossing the state boundary into Himachal Pradesh. Twelve miles further on comes another stiff climb and then for thirty-five miles one is descending gradually from a 4000-foot pass to Mandi, which is only 2400 feet above sea-level. Thus far we have been following the road to Simla, but though I remarked on what lovely country this is when first seeing it last month, I hadn’t really appreciated its beauty – one doesn’t from a Land-Rover seat!
Today there was very little traffic, beyond the occasional local bus, and as these rough mountains and stony valleys offer little encouragement to settlers, most of the people we passed today were Tibetans walking to Dharamsala to receive His Holiness’s blessing and visit their children there. Some were also bringing children for admission to the camp, and I examined fifteen of these Tiblets, twelve of whom appeared to be in the best of health; of the other three one had a very bad cough and may be a TB case and two had chronic dysentery and looked quite emaciated.
In Delhi I had been given a letter written in Tibetan explaining the purpose of my Kulu tour – but of course none of these parents could read. However, the mere fact that I produced a document in their own script reconciled them to the peculiar behaviour of the white female cyclist who suddenly dismounted, stripped their children by the way-side and scrutinised them all over!
Roz was being pushed up a steep slope when we encountered the first group of Tibetans; before seeing them I had heard gales of laughter from round a corner of the mountain and known that they were coming – simply because Indians, on the whole, don’t laugh in the course of their everyday life. What a gay people these refugees are! You get ten smiles from a group of ten Tibetans and one smile (if you’re lucky) from a group of ten Indians. Moreover, you can never be quite sure why you’re getting the one Indian smile, whereas you know you’re getting the ten Tibetan smiles out of sheer benevolence towards the world in general.
My inside is still giving a poor welcome to solids so I stopped often at tea-houses to refuel on that heavily sweetened beverage which passes for tea in India. It’s a characteristic of Indian villages and small towns that whenever foreigners appear everyone who speaks English collects around as if by magic, and today I used these conversational opportunities to test local reactions to Tibetans. It’s sad, but inevitable and understandable, that the refugees are extremely unpopular – and the reason usually given for not liking them was their personal filthiness, which to a Hindu of any caste is unforgivable. Nor can one criticise the Indians for taking up this attitude. Their religious scruples about bodily cleanliness obviously originated in the absolute necessity for it in a climate like theirs – and the various infections to which the refugees are so prone prove the Hindu point. Yet most of those to whom I spoke today admitted that they found the Tibetans uniquely gentle and honest – though many Indians probably regard the latter virtue as a form of stupidity.
Yesterday I picked up an interesting piece of information. The Tibetan road-workers in the Chumba valley have recently presented a new Willys jeep to His Holiness and this vehicle was bought out of their accumulated savings with cheerful disregard for the fact that His Holiness already possesses a fleet of motors. Undoubtedly the Dalai Lama will convert this gift to the benefit of refugees somewhere, providing the decision is left to himself, but what intrigues me is the financial significance of this presentation. If road-workers can afford to buy a jeep out of their savings then they can certainly afford to contribute substantially to the maintenance of their children.
This town is a most attractive little place, with mountains crouching close on every side and the River Beas frisking along in its deep bed – though all local rivers are rather subdued during these months of frozen snows. The landscape was quite wintry today; many trees were leafless, others wore our sort of October colours and the meagre grass was brown. But the sky remained that intense blue which we call ‘exaggerated’ on postcards and when one got out of the wind the sun was warm. Tonight I’m staying at the Dak-bungalow and it’s good to sit here writing quietly in my own room, beside an electric fire that doesn’t work, with Roz leaning against the end of the bed and both of us feeling younger after the day’s run.
TIBETAN ROAD-CAMP NEAR PANDOH: 21 DECEMBER
When we left Mandi at eight o’clock this morning it was very chilly, with a dense river-mist filling the valley. But soon the first rays of the sun penetrated the gorge and the mist suddenly turned to a pinky-gold softness floating over the water – and a few moments later had vanished. Yet for another two hours it remained cold in the shadow of the giant cliffs that rise sheer to more than a thousand feet on both sides of the river.
There is one-way traffic only over the twenty-five miles of this narrow, twisting road through the Mandi-Larji gorge, but at many dangerous bends Tibetans are now blasting away the cliff-face and before long normal traffic should be possible. Actually there was no traffic today, one way or the other, though in summer quite a number of tourists come to Kulu.
As we went up the gorge I quoted to myself from Kubla Khan, where Coleridge refers to the Beas under its ancient name of Alph.
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea …
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart the cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced …
I little thought, when resentfully swotting these lines more than twenty years ago, that one day I would travel through this ‘cavern measureless to man’. So accuratel
y does Coleridge describe both the physical aspect and the atmosphere of the gorge that it is difficult to believe he never saw or felt it; perhaps opium has stranger side-effects than we know of.
I spent most of the morning finding and examining the forty-eight Tiblets who live in the road-camp between Mandi and Pandoh. That camp is situated at river-level, and to approach it safely from the road one would need the agility of either a goat or a Tibetan. It’s a small settlement of about one hundred adults, most of whom work all day on the road far above; however, a few elderly relatives remain among the tents and prevent the children from getting into too much mischief. This group owns two milking buffaloes, which like all Indian cattle appear to live on fresh air. The tents in all these camps are ex-army models provided by the PWD and some of them are in bad repair; even the sound ones must seem a very poor substitute for the yak-hair tents of Tibet, which were proof against any extremes of temperature and usually wore well for about fifteen years. Unfortunately such tents are very heavy and cumbersome, and so few of the refugees succeeded in bringing them to India.
The foreman of this gang is a Sikh who lives in Mandi and whose directions are translated by the camp-leader, an ex-officer of the Tibetan army. This handsome, rather sad-looking man speaks Hindi quite well but naturally knows no English, so our conversation was confined to basic questions and answers about food and health.
I’m spending the night here at Pandoh camp, which is one of the biggest in the area – one could call it a tent-village, for it accommodates 660 people, including eighty-seven Tiblets. Over 500 adolescents and adults are building a new road along the precipitous mountain on the other side of the Beas. Children under fifteen are not meant to work on the roads, but some of them do; the fifteen-to eighteen-year-olds earn one and sixpence a day. Ninety per cent of Indian road-making is still done by hand, with blasting as the only supplement to human energy, but on this particular section a bulldozer is in action operated by Indians, which indicates the strategic importance of the new road. It’s quite terrifying to stand on the opposite bank of the river – no more than fifty yards wide at this point – and to look up at that gigantic machine edging its way along a narrow shelf newly blasted out of the virgin cliff. Dislodged hunks of mountain come continuously bouncing and rumbling downwards to splash into the Beas and soon I realised that this was forbidden territory; when the foreman noticed me he began to shout inaudibly and to gesticulate in a manner which said plainly enough that I was to go back where I came from. Some ten minutes after my retreat up to the camp there was a terrific explosion, of such force that the ground beneath my feet trembled as in an earthquake. Great jagged fragments of mountain went hurtling through the air in all directions, some landing on this side of the river – which explained the foreman’s aversion to my presence there.
Later, when I spoke to this man, he confirmed what his colleague had said to me earlier today – that because of their great strength, energy and nimbleness the Tibetans are ideally suited to road-making. Certainly it demands all these qualities; it’s awe-inspiring to see half a dozen men and women tie ropes around a colossal rock, push and pull it across the road to the edge of the gorge and leap acrobatically aside as it goes over. Then one of them scampers gaily down the dangerous slope above the torrent to retrieve the rope, secures it around his waist and climbs swiftly back to the road. I asked how long it takes to widen one corner at this rate of progress, but no one cared to commit themselves to a definite reply. However, though these labours may sound to us like some form of infernal punishment the Tibetans seem positively to enjoy them, if one is to judge by their beaming faces and incessant singing of jolly choruses; it’s beyond me where they get the breath to sing while performing such feats.
I’ve now seen for myself a little of the road-camp dangers and discomforts, from the Tiblets’ point of view. Babies are normally taken from the tents to the roadworks on their mothers’ backs and are then transferred to little ‘cradles’ made of wooden boxes, while ‘Amela’ gets on with the job, stopping at the appropriate intervals to feed her infant. Toddlers also sometimes accompany their parents, if there is no one at home to care for them, but their obedience to parental orders means that they are less accident-prone than might be imagined. Yet those serious illnesses and accidents which do befall both adults and children are inevitably neglected in the camps – often with fatal results. The choice lies between separating hundreds of children from their parents, as a precautionary measure, or leaving the families united and accepting the consequent disasters as the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately our cushioned society has become so obsessed by physical safety that many Westerners regard removal from the Danger Zone as the only proper solution to the problem – and they tend to push this attitude onto a people who are traditionally resigned to such hazards.
The leader of Pandoh camp is a dignified, elderly man named Lobsang Dowa, who speaks only Tibetan; but he has a most efficient interpreter who is fluent in Hindi and also knows a fair amount of English. This young man – Pasang – met me on my arrival, carried Roz up the steep stone ‘stairs’ to the level stretch of ground on which the camp is situated and then brought me on a ‘conducted tour’. He told me that these families have now been established here for fourteen months and the community has its own cobbler, tailor, butcher and vegetable gardens. It also has a dispensary tent, stocked by the Tom Dooley Foundation and American Emergency Relief, and until recently, when the Tibetan authorities at Dharamsala quarrelled with the Indian doctor in charge, a Tom Dooley Foundation Mobile Medical Unit toured these camps about once a fortnight. This service helped to keep the health situation from deteriorating beyond control, as far as TB and injuries were concerned, yet its limitations were many and the fact that no other camp has anyone of Pasang’s ability to supervise the carrying out of the doctor’s instructions meant that his fortnightly visits were often wasted. Pasang has had no medical training, but has taught himself enough to be able to cope efficiently with minor diseases and mishaps – and to recognise those cases which require more specialised treatment.
There are 215 children from this camp in Dharamsala, Dalhousie, Mussoorie and Simla and I see no reason why they could not have been here at Pandoh for the past fourteen months. Educational opportunities equal to those available in the schools could be provided on the spot – and so could improved medical attention. Such a project would perhaps demand more organisation on the part of the relief agencies, but it would certainly require no more money than is being spent at the moment – possibly less – and it could avert a great deal of unhappiness.
One feels here that one has got as close to the Tibetan way of life as is possible; in contrast to this camp Dharamsala seems cosmopolitan. When the eighty-seven Tiblets who remain had been examined, and my findings jotted down, I took a stroll around the ‘village’, with its ‘streets’ of beaten earth between the rows of tents. The men who would be going on night-shift at 8 p.m. were sitting drinking illegally brewed ‘chang’ and playing dice or mahjong – Tibetans love gambling – and it was touching to see that their stakes were of Tibetan coinage; an act of faith if ever there was one. Many of the people used the old greetingform of rural Tibet, and on my approach bowed low and stuck out their tongues three times. Everywhere I was welcomed graciously, if at times shyly, but the comparative aloofness of the children was very apparent. Unlike their less fortunate brothers and sisters in the various nurseries, who cling to any passing stranger in the hopes of receiving some affection, these Tiblets had shown a normal childish timidity when I first appeared. Yet while being examined outside the Dispensary tent they were as docile and uncomplaining as any of ‘my’ Tiblets at Dharamsala.
Tonight lousy sheep-skins have been spread for my benefit on the smooth earth floor of the Dispensary tent. I had brought bread and bananas for my supper (this being a prudent anti-dysentery diet), but Pasang insisted on serving me three eggs fried in rancid ghee – though eggs are both scarce and very expensive in this reg
ion. It remains to be seen how my inside will respond to this manifestation of hospitality.
MANALI: 22 DECEMBER
From Mandi to Pandoh the Beas is on one’s left, going towards Kulu, but at Pandoh there is a break in the gorge and for a half-mile or so the river curves south, to find a way through the mountains. On the outskirts of Pandoh village a suspension bridge takes the road to the north bank and when the gorge closes in again, the Beas is on one’s right for the remaining twelve miles to Aut.
By eight o’clock this morning we were on our way – after the proudly beaming Pasang had served me with another three fried eggs – and we arrived here at six o’clock. Those sixty-eight miles were all uphill and involved so much walking that tonight I feel quite exhausted. But what a glorious region this is! Mild exhaustion is a small price to pay for the joy of seeing Kulu on a sunny winter’s day.
This ‘Valley of the Gods’ – to give it its alternative and more appropriate name – begins at Aut, where the Mandi-Larji gorge ends, and continues for about fifty-five miles. At no point is it more than a mile wide and at every turn of the road its beauty increases. The last twenty-five miles from Kulu town to here are almost as lovely as the Hindu Kush – and almost as desolate. By this stage one has risen to about 5000 feet and as the road climbs the final 1000 feet to Manali the landscape becomes really wintry. Many bare oaks and elms and chestnuts stood out blackly against the evening sky, flocks of rooks and starlings flew noisily towards their roosts and dry leaves rustled along the road before the wind. Yet some trees, down the valley, still glowed in autumn reds and yellows, looking rich and splendid against a dark background of distant pine-forests. On the lower slopes patches of new snow dazzled from clearings between pine-trees, while the white brilliance on sharp, remote summits was almost painful beneath an intense blue sky.
Tibetan Foothold Page 17