I had hoped to find a Tibetan camp near here, but it’s further up, towards the Rothang Pass, so I’m staying at a rest-house where there is no food, water, light or heating. There’s only one answer that I know of to this sort of situation and luckily I noticed its source on our way through the bazaar – ‘Spirit Merchant’! Having purchased some of this gentleman’s wares, as a Christmas present to myself, I’m now slightly drunk and very warm, despite six inches of snow outside.
We passed several camps today where ragged prayer-flags were flying, and of course I at first assumed them to be Tibetan, but on investigation I discovered that they were the winter settlements of some Spiti nomads. The inhabitants of Lahoul and Spiti are racially, religiously and linguistically akin to the Tibetans, though their remote valleys and plateaux are now politically part of India. The only way for an outsider to distinguish between Tibetans and Spitis is by studying the women’s aprons; Tibetan aprons have horizontal stripes, Spiti aprons have perpendicular stripes. Similarly, when pilgrims from Ladakh came to Dharamsala to receive His Holiness’s blessing we could distinguish them from the Tibetans only by noting that their women wore aprons both front and back.
In Spiti as in Tibet, the yak is the most important item of livestock and these nomads bring a supply of dzo butter with them on their annual migration – so it was while being entertained in one of these camps this afternoon that I first sampled the genuine Tibetan buttered tea and tsampa. Contrary to popular opinion this is not a revolting mess but a palatable and sustaining meal. But I took four sulphaguanidine as a second course, because of my present delicate condition – which has not been improved by that surfeit of fried eggs.
On my way through the bazaar to patronise the Spirit Merchant I called briefly at the local Mission Hospital where Dr Snell, his wife and two nurses – one of them an Irishwoman – do what they can to care for the local Tibetan workers. Dr Snell remarked on the Tibetan susceptibility to TB at these altitudes and gave it as his opinion that though the roadworkers in general now show such cheerful energy it can only be a matter of time before the combination of heavy labour and protein deficiency breaks their natural stamina. When one remembers the amount of protein consumed in Tibet this seems only too likely.
TIBETAN ROAD-CAMP NEAR FOOT OF ROTHANG PASS: 23 DECEMBER
The road-surface from Mandi to Kulu town is excellent and from Kulu to Manali it remains tolerable, but Dr Snell informed me yesterday that no road – only a rough bridle-path – exists between Manali and the tiny hamlet of Rahola at the foot of the Rothang Pass. So as the distance is only ten miles I decided to walk, leaving Roz at the rest-house, where the decrepit but amiable chowkidar swore to guard her with his life. Actually this path, though rough and stony, is no worse than many of the main roads Roz endured on our way through Persia and Afghanistan – and it’s a lot better than some! Yet I was glad I hadn’t risked taking her today since our spare-tyre situation is precarious at the moment.
When I left Manali at ten o’clock this morning last night’s snow had almost vanished, but it was cool enough for me to need a sweater. From the rest-house the bridle-path descends through a wood of giant pines, crosses the narrow young Beas by a cantilever bridge and turns left up the north bank of the river.
Yesterday’s trek was superb, but today’s had a unique quality – not only because of its beauty, but because for hours on end I was surrounded by that strangely moving stillness which pervades unpeopled mountains with the force of a living spirit.
In these regions the landscape changes its aspect dramatically. Between Manali and Rahola one is in a different world from that of the lower Kulu valley – a world of broad, vivid green moors, bounded by the silver-grey rockiness of its mountain walls, their white crests encircling the horizon. On some of the precipices isolated pines grow from what appears to be bare rock, and this phenomenon occurs right up to the 10,000-foot summits of the lower peaks. The effect is extraordinarily beautiful, as these simple lines of rock and tree sweep upwards in harmony. All day the sky remained quite clear but the few wisps of white cloud that did go drifting over the highest peaks looked dingy beside those immaculate snow-caps. It was very unpoetic of me, but I couldn’t help thinking of ‘Persil Washes Whiter!’ Even up here at the head of the valley it got so hot around midday that I had to remove my sweater and walk in shirtsleeves; but now, at 7 p.m., the frost is severe.
There are only twenty-three Tiblets in this small camp, which is sheltered by a straggling copse of pines on the river-bank. Next week these workers will be packing up and moving down to the Kangra valley until the worst of the winter is over.
The camp-leader’s tent, in which I’m receiving hospitality, accommodates a family of eight – granny, her two sons, their wives and two babies of seven and four months. Granny and I are to share sheepskins tonight so it’s likely that by morning my already considerable stock of vermin will have acquired companions. Happily lice and bugs don’t discommode me to any great extent, but dearly as I love the Tibetans it is impossible to get accustomed to the nauseating odour of that rancid butter with which they lavishly oil their hair and anoint their bodies. When used on the hair this repulsive unguent is alleged to deter lice and when applied to the body it keeps out the cold; yet however practical its uses may be no one save a Tibetan could ever become resigned to its stink. I’m sitting beside a wood fire now, writing by flame-light with wood smoke tears streaming down my face – but at least this acrid smoke does something to obliterate the butter stench. Even the babies’ almost bald heads have been plastered with the ghastly stuff. In all these camps Tiblets’ heads are similarly treated and, having had scores of them laid on my bosom within the past few days, my shirt is now so saturated with grease that even when walking through the wide open spaces I cannot get away from the stink.
It’s interesting to observe that the unexpected arrival of a foreign guest does not throw Tibetans into the state of embarrassed confusion common among Indian peasants in similar circumstances. This may be partly explained by the fact that Tibetan peasants have no conception of standards other than their own, whereas Indians are uncomfortably aware of the style to which Westerners are accustomed. But one suspects that it is also connected with the Tibetan temperament and with their freedom from religio-social taboos; these people display a splendid mixture of ease and formality while receiving you into a simple tent and before many moments have passed they manage to make you feel completely at home. There is no English speaker in this camp, but the language barrier has long since gone crashing and we’re all the best of friends on a system of smiles and gestures.
As usual I brought my own food with me today but – again as usual – I’m not to be allowed to touch it. A form of porridge is now being cooked for supper and into this Granny has just thrown handfuls of chopped onions and dates, while I looked on with the resignation of despair. By all natural laws the diet of the past few days should have completed my internal disintegration, but instead I seem to be rapidly returning to normal.
TIBETAN ROAD-CAMP NEAR RAISON: 24 DECEMBER
Christmas Eve in the Workhouse – scene as before – rancid butter and wood-smoke and eccentric porridge for supper. Fortunately I bought myself another Christmas present on the way back through Manali, which was a horribly extravagant thing to do – yet perhaps such extravagance is forgivable when there’s no one else around to give me a present. Indian whisky is about the same price as Irish whisky, but that’s the only point of resemblance between the two distillations. My plastic mug is showing signs of melting in a very odd way since it began to come into nightly contact with Indian whisky – which may account for the brew’s curiously chemical flavour.
I left Granny and Company at half-past eight this morning and by walking briskly was back with Roz at eleven o’clock. Then we enjoyed the twenty-five mile freewheel back to Kulu town, before branching off for an eight-mile trek to this camp. There are fifty-eight Tiblets here, the majority in excellent health.
&n
bsp; Today several men passed us carrying water in bear-skins. I’ve seen pig-skins used thus in Spain and goat-skins in many places but bearskins were a novelty to me – and those bears were so massive that it takes two men to carry a full skin. I just hope never to meet such a skin containing its original owner!
What a splendid Christmas Eve this is – truly a silent night, and a holy one, in the shadow of these mountains.
10
The Valley of Refuge
MALANA: 25 DECEMBER
What a Christmas Day! If I live to be a hundred I am unlikely ever to ‘celebrate’ the festival more strangely. Really I’m in no condition tonight for diary-writing, but it’s best to get it all down while the details are fresh in my mind.
When we left Raison at 7.30 a.m. the sun was just up, but not yet over the mountains, and the bitterly cold air numbed me as I freewheeled down the valley. By 8.30 we had reached Bhuntar, six miles from Kulu town, and here I chanced to notice a weather-beaten little signpost pointing off the main road and saying – ‘Jari: 14 ms.’ On seeing this name I remembered that Jari was the next village to Malana – a unique settlement which I had supposed to be nearer Spiti and inaccessible during winter. I was then making for a Tibetan camp some twenty miles away, but when I realised that Malana lay so near the temptation to explore was too much for me. I said to myself, ‘Dash it, this is Christmas, why not take a short vacation?’ So I left the main road, crossed the Beas by suspension bridge and headed up the Parvati valley.
Malana is an autonomous community of some 600 people, who live on a 9000-foot plateau, independent of all outside influences, and one of the many remarkable things about them is their language. Some philologists claim to find definite links between Malani, Magyar and Finnish; it is also allied – more understandably – to Pharsi. Archaeologists and anthropologists estimate that the Malanis have been living on this remote plateau for about 5000 years, and their religion, a primitive form of Hinduism, consists in the worship of the god Jamdagnishri – also known, more pronounceably, as Jamlu. Jamlu is believed to be a sort of demon-spirit and, like the Malanis, he has an independent nature and does not pay homage even to Raghunathjee, the principal god of the Kulu valley, to whom most other local gods do reverence. All the cultivated lands around Malana are regarded as Jamlu’s property, the Malanis being merely his tenants. The village treasure is also his property, and the treasure-house is rumoured to contain uncountable quantities of cash, jewels, gold and silver ornaments and the silver images of a horse which are the customary offering to this particular god.
To the Malanis their territory is known as the ‘Valley of Refuge’ and unsubstantiated oral tradition says that the original inhabitants fled there during some long-forgotten crisis. Now, out of gratitude to Jamlu, who protected their ancestors, these people unquestioningly offer refuge to anyone fleeing from any sort of trouble – though only caste Hindus are permitted to enter the village itself. This provision of sanctuary is occasionally of use to local criminals, who know that the villagers won’t hand them over to the police.
The Malanis have never had anything to do with any ruling power and they take no part in the life of the nation. A committee of eleven elders governs the community, and when the Government of India insisted on opening a village school twelve years ago the elders forbade anyone to attend it – though for the past five years it has had one pupil. When anyone falls ill they are taken to the chief, who asks them what moral wrong they have done to cause the illness (5000-year-old psychology!) and gives them a magic brew of herbs. If they die despite this brew the wrong done is presumed to have been too heinous for reparation in this life and they are then cremated after the orthodox Hindu fashion, on the banks of the little Malana nullah. On the death of the head of a household his goods are divided equally between all his children, who are expected to contribute a share each to keep their mother in the state to which she was accustomed. Marriages are arranged on the usual Hindu basis, but divorces may be had simply by paying Rs. 20 (about £1 10s.) to the wife – an unusual deviation, since throughout India proper they are very difficult to obtain. Theft is unknown in this community and any crime is rare, but if there is a question of one of two people being guilty both parties bring a lamb to the chief, who slits the animals’ throats and inserts an identical quantity of cyanide into each slit – and the owner of the lamb which dies first is regarded as the guilty party.
The Malanis collect the roots of a plant used to make incense, and many medicinal herbs which they sell or barter, but most of their cash comes from hunting the musk-deer. This animal abounds here – though being very fast and elusive it is extremely difficult to shoot. I was told today that one musk is worth Rs. 1000 (£75) and that so far this season the Malanis have shot thirty-five male deer. These figures sound almost incredible; if they are true then the Malanis’ austere mode of life is from choice, not necessity! Or does most of this cash have to go into Jamlu’s treasure-house?
The fourteen miles from Bhuntar to Jari were all uphill, through yet another indescribably lovely valley – and it was yet another perfect day of clear, deep blue skies and warm, golden sunshine, with the air so pure that merely to breathe was a joy. It’s not surprising that the Kulu valley and its side valleys were chosen by sages and saints in Vedic times for meditation and prayer – I’d choose them too, if I were given to either meditation or prayer! And Mr Nehru, a regular visitor to Manali to get away from it all, is evidently in agreement with me.* Each of these valleys, and each hamlet in each valley, has its own tutelary deity, and as the region has been virtually untouched by modern developments of Hinduism the local religion remains strongly tinged with animism. Throughout all India’s history the Kulu valley (known as Kiu-Lu-To in the days when it was at the southern boundary of Kublai Khan’s Empire) was never conquered or occupied till the British came; in recent times the area was called the State of Rupi and had its own rajah (usually a pretty degenerate type) until the line faded out in the 1920s.
The road we travelled from Bhuntar was part of one of the old trade-routes going from India through Spiti and Tibet to China. It’s no more than a track and has the worst surface we’ve met since leaving Gilgit, with the difference that if you went over the edge here you’d only fall 500 feet, instead of 1500 as in the Indus Gorge. The Indian Government is now investigating local uranium deposits but so far has not determined their value – or isn’t telling if it has! Large notices, warning All Unauthorised Persons to keep off the relevant sites, come as a shock when they suddenly appear in this otherwise unspoiled region. For two miles this morning, about halfway to Jari, the cliffs on my right were gigantic walls of rough, red marble and the track was strewn with red chips and dust, producing a fantastic effect in the brilliant sunshine; I walked through a dream-like rosy haze and even the emerald river, flashing along the valley floor far below, appeared to have changed colour. Between Bhuntar and Jari we passed two tiny hamlets, where the people were as grim and dour as elsewhere in Kulu: I don’t ever remember travelling among such unfriendly peasants as these. Yet when you stop for tea, or to buy fruit or cigarettes, they are courteous – it’s just that they give the general impression of not wanting strangers around the place. Aloofness is quite against my principles as a traveller but I’ve abandoned the habit of saluting passers-by, since the response is always a cold stare.
At 11 a.m. we reached Jari, which was just what I had expected it to be – an impoverished huddle of disintegrating mud and wood hovels where milk was scarce and fruit, eggs and sugar were unobtainable, but where the surrounding beauty was so exhilarating that to a nonresident nothing else mattered. Going straight to the Forest Rest House I received the chowkidar’s permission to leave Roz there for the night and then asked him to show me where the path to Malana began. The poor man obviously thought me off my head (now I know why!) and said ‘Malana ne! You go Manikand – yes?’ (Manikand is famous for its hot springs and is approached from Jari by a seven-mile bridle-path.) I was shaking my hea
d and firmly repeating ‘Malana – I go Malana,’ when such a fantastic coincidence occurred that I can only regard it as a Christmas present from Jari’s tutelary deity.
Two constables of the Punjab Armed Police suddenly materialised beside me to enquire into my presence in a Restricted Zone, and having sorted that one out I enquired into their presence, since tiny hamlets don’t normally have resident policemen. In reply they explained that they were about to conduct an election agent to Malana, as the three-yearly Punjabi state elections are now in progress. At that point we were joined by the election agent, a plainsman from Chandigarh who was shivering despite layers of woollen garments and what felt to me like hot sun. His present duties were evidently not suiting him in any way and he wore a distinctly martyred expression – which temporarily changed to one of astonishment when he saw me talking to his bodyguard. On discovering my destination he looked rather startled and said, ‘But why are you going there?’ I answered, ‘Because I want to,’ which seemed to me a flawless reason; yet it obviously struck my companion as hopelessly inadequate, if not actually insane. The agent then pointed out, in words of one syllable, that people only went to Malana under compulsion. ‘The Malanis are dirty savages,’ he concluded, ‘and the way is very tedious.’ I discounted both these statements, realising that by Hindu standards I too was a dirty savage, not having washed for a week. In reply to my query as to why a Punjabi election agent had to visit this autonomous community I was told that the Malanis are now citizens of Asia’s biggest democracy and have to be given the opportunity to vote. I next asked what happens when the election party reaches the village and the agent said that they put up a notice (which no one can read), improvise a polling booth (which is pointedly ignored by the villagers) and then spend two nights and one day gambling mildly together before returning to Jari! We were now joined by a friend of the agent, who was accompanying the party to make a four at cards and dice; to me the whole thing was enchantingly Gilbertian and I happily received their reluctant consent to my accompanying the expedition.
Tibetan Foothold Page 18