Himalaya (2004)

by Michael Palin

  ‘You will need another five years to get it right.’

  Hearing that we’re leaving today, Jadab Burah, who played a milkmaid yesterday, and Lila Ram, who played the devil, invite me to have a last tea in the room they share. Jadab is 18 and first came to the monastery when he was nine. His parents live less than a mile away and he still attends the local school and has friends, including girlfriends, outside the satra. He came here to learn dancing and is quite sure he’ll stay for life. Lila Ram, who has been here for 16 years, is learning gayan, the art of cymbal playing.

  They are delightful company, but when I leave they have to work out what I’ve touched in the room, as that object will now be impure and their vows require them to wash thoroughly should they come into contact with it.

  All this is done with great ease and much laughter. In most institutions, however benevolent, you feel like an outsider looking in, but the special quality of Uttar Kamalabari is that everyone, from the young boys to the grey-haired older monks, has gone out of their way to include us in the life of the satra.

  It seems a place of rare and genuine happiness, where the hardest disciplines are artistic rather than religious and the goals are more concerned with fulfilment than denial. I catch myself thinking it’s too good to be true, but maybe that just sums up the difference between our world and theirs.

  Back on the river, the wide, open reaches of the Brahmaputra are as calming as the monastery. Most of the vast, impermanent mud flats are devoid of humans or livestock. A few other boats pass, including a travelling theatre group in a green barge, noisy and low in the water. Mobile theatre is highly popular in Assam.

  Time drifts by. A flock of lapwings from the other side of the Himalaya wheels above us. A solitary vulture turns slowly over the southern bank. Maan takes my binoculars and has a closer look. He is searching for more vultures and their absence confirms his worries over their dramatic decline in numbers, thought to be largely the result of chemical pesticides.

  Where we shall be tonight is considered a shining example of how environmental protection can work. Kaziranga, which boasts the disconcerting slogan ‘Come. Get Lost’, is a 293-square-mile (760 sq km) reserve on the banks of the Brahmaputra. It was the first wildlife sanctuary in India, set up 100 years ago, by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, after his wife had gone to see the famed horned rhinos of the area and returned without encountering a single one. Since the Rhino Protection Act of 1913 the horned rhino has returned from the brink of extinction, and Maan tells me there are now 1500 to 1600 of them in the park, 70 per cent of the world’s population, protected by 400 staff and 120 anti-poaching camps.

  Not everyone sees this as a fairy tale. Serious concerns have been raised that animals matter more than people and that the local population has paid a high price for Kaziranga’s ‘success’.

  We shall see.

  Day One Hundred : Kaziranga

  We’re at the gates to Kaziranga National Park, awaiting the opening ceremonies of the much-publicized 2nd Elephant Festival. There could hardly be a greater contrast with the serenity of Majuli Island. Crowds are gathering on both sides of the road and, occasionally, a policeman will stride into the middle of them, waving his hands and blowing a whistle as if his life depended on it.

  A constant blast of truck horns reminds us that the road we’re standing beside is the NH 37, Assam’s equivalent of the M1. Large signs call this stretch of it the Elephant Corridor, but it takes more than a sign or two to turn truck drivers into conservationists, and the presence of the crowd only seems to encourage them to drive faster.

  The rich are here, men in suits and women in gorgeous saris, and the poor, in extended family groups, stand and watch them. A procession of elephants is gathered further up the main road, but nothing can begin until the local big-wigs are here.

  Maan and I pass the time talking about Indian politics. He gets vociferously angry about the general level of corruption, but even more worried about the BJP, the right-wing Hindu nationalists currently in power. They’re communalist, anti-Muslim and suspicious of ethnic minorities of any kind. A travesty, he thinks, of the principles of tolerance and diversity on which India was founded. He’s about to tell me more when hysterical police whistle-blowing announces the arrival of a ministerial convoy accompanied by a jeep with a machine gun mounted on the back. This, it transpires, is only the Minister for Environment and Forests and it’s a further hour before incandescent whistle-blowing and ferocious arm-waving narrowly avoid members of the public being mown down by the vehicles bearing Chief Minister of Assam and his party.

  Priorities having been duly established, the long-suffering elephants begin to process down the road towards us. I count 41 of them, all colourfully attired in the national colours of red and green and carrying advertising for the Numaligarh Oil Refinery, whose tankers have been scattering us to the sides of the road all morning, and who are, astutely, chief sponsors of the Elephant Festival.

  The elephants walk slowly, silently, with expressions of infinite patience. Their mahouts, in freshly pressed brown overalls and matching safari hats, look solemnly ahead. The crowd streams after them along the avenue of rosewood trees that leads through the fields to the arena. Many of them are representing local groups and organizations. They carry their pro-conservation banners aloft, shouting, singing and sidestepping the increasingly generous piles of elephant dung.

  Once in the arena, a short speech explains that the motivation behind the elephant festival is to encourage local people to see the elephant as their friend and not something that tramples through their villages, damages their crops and destroys their livelihood. Unfortunately, this is but the first of many speeches on the theme of elephants as our friends, which the elephants and ourselves have to stand and listen to for over an hour in the hot sunshine.

  Once the long paeans to biological diversity and ecological integrity are over, the elephants can get on with what they’re there for. Playing football. It didn’t seem a very bright idea when I first saw it in Kunming and it doesn’t seem so here. Elephants are not natural footballers. You might as well get the Arsenal squad to pick up tree trunks with their noses. It’s just not their field of expertise. They do their best, of course, but their ball skills are painfully slow and their ponderous movements and the commentator’s attempts to present this as the last few seconds of a World Cup Final hint at desperation.

  The elephant tug of war, on the other hand, is much more promising. The point here is quite simple - to show how much bigger and stronger elephants are than humans. Not an oft-disputed fact, you might think, but the proof of it is wonderful to watch. No matter how many men rush out of the crowd to grab the rope, and I reckon there were at least 60 clinging on to it at one point, the elephant merely has to walk a couple of steps to have them tumbling after him like the tail of a kite.

  Later in the day, when the elephants have been taken away from the arena to be fed and watered, I encounter them in a different and quite unforgettable light. We are allowed close to three elephants and a calf as they trundle down to a muddy creek for their evening ablutions. At first, like all of us, I’m a spectator, impressed by the rapport between the mahouts and their charges, marvelling at the ease with which they persuade these colossal creatures to lie on their sides in the water. This is a rare thing to see, and can only happen if there is absolute trust between elephant and man and an environment with no outside threat.

  Then they ask me in among them. At first I’m apprehensive. I have once in my life, in Africa, seen the terrifying power that can be unleashed when an elephant takes a dislike to you, and I approach very warily, stepping gingerly into the ankle-deep mud. As I do so, one of the elephants, a 55-year-old bull called Joiraj, decides to stand up. Like a small island coming to life, he rears up above me, stretching up to his full 14 feet and proceeding to fling water from his trunk over his back.

  He’s a magnificent animal with a proud set of long, curved tusks and not someone I’d mess with. Th
e keeper, however, has no such qualms.

  ‘Boit! (Sit!) Tere! (Lie On Side!)’ he shouts and within a matter of seconds he has several tons of bull elephant crumpling down into the water and rolling over like a dog waiting to be scratched.

  The mahout beckons me forward and indicates where Joiraj most likes to be washed.

  So it is that at the age of 60 I find myself rubbing an elephant of 55, behind his ears and particularly at the point where the tusk disappears into the folds of his cheek. His eyes roll towards me, registering languid approval. I’m told that he likes nothing better than to be slapped quite hard on the bridge of his nose. Tentatively at first, then, at the mahout’s urging, rather more powerfully, I strike the top of his trunk. But it’s only when I give him a really good whack that he appears to enter elephant heaven, rolling his eyes, stretching out his legs and emitting an infinitely appreciative rumble. The sound of a contented elephant is a wonderful thing, and I’m amazed that this battleship-grey hide, and these hard, immemorially ancient flanks can be as sensitive as a cat’s chin.

  In the evening we’re driven into the heart of the park for a barbecue organized by the Minister for Forests at one of the anti-poaching camps.

  One of the guests is a fellow Englishman, Mark Shand, who knows about conservation and knows his Himalaya well too. We swap a few stories. He is very keen that we should film a man he’s just met who claims he can call rhino.

  ‘Looks a bit like Benny Hill, round glasses, big grin. And he’s best after lunch, when he’s had a bit to drink.’

  Day One Hundred and One : Kaziranga to Guwahati

  In the park at first light, a layer of mist draped like gauze across the cotton trees. Maan and I are climbing aboard for an elephant safari, getting on the easy way, up an access tower and then straight onto one of the wood-frame howdahs that can accommodate six people.

  By happy coincidence we’re aboard my new friend Joiraj, and as we step ponderously out into the park, I ask Maan about the future of the elephant in Kaziranga. He thinks that it’s all part of a wider picture. Unlike in Africa, there has been a long tradition in India of domesticating and training elephant, primarily for the logging industry. Now the pendulum is swinging away from cutting down and more towards the preservation of forest, so a different role must be found if the elephant is not to return to its natural state, with all the damage that can cause to local inhabitants.

  As far as Kaziranga is concerned, there is work for them, not only on tourist rides like these, but in patrolling the park itself. Wet, often swampy ground and stretches of thick grassland standing 15 feet high make large swathes of the park inaccessible by motor vehicle. For surveillance and accessibility elephant is still best. But they are expensive to run, in feed, maintenance and, believe it or not, elephant pensions, paid on retirement to the animal rather than his keeper, so some form of culling may have to be considered. Of course, as far as Joiraj is concerned, this is unthinkable and I might have to ship him back to London.

  This morning, though, he earns his keep and from our perch we have a wide view over the tall ikora grass and the shorter grass in front, where beads of dew catch the morning sun and storks and pond heron strut about. We see swamp deer and hog deer, wild buffalo and a few energetically chomping wild boar, with their thin, bristly black hair parted across their backs like cheap toupees. A long-legged, duck-like bird flies by and Maan becomes very excited. It’s a Bengal florican and there are only 400 to 500 left in the world. Which makes the rhinos of Kaziranga seem positively commonplace.

  And at last we come across one, a greater one-horned rhino, with its wide lip and protruding upper jaw for better grazing, encased in almost colourless armour platelets, and standing still as a statue, like a great silver-grey rock. It measures about ten feet long and four high and Maan estimates it must weigh nearly a ton and a half, some 1500 kilograms.

  Unruffled by our presence, the rhino lowers its head and carries on with breakfast.

  By evening, we’ve left this expanse of unpolluted nature behind and are ensconced at the Dynasty Hotel in the Muslim quarter of Assam’s capital, Guwahati. From my window I look out over an urban panorama, a mosque, a row of shop units, endless lines of mottled, blackened apartment buildings, offices and warehouses.

  And not an animal in sight.

  Bhutan

  Day One Hundred and Three : Gantey

  Having been lulled into lowland warmth and balminess in the Brahmaputra valley, I find myself tonight dressed in several layers of winter clothes, in a candle-lit room, hugging close to a wood-burning stove and gratefully accepting the offer of a hot-water bottle to relieve the icy chill of my bed. I’m a mere 140 miles (225 km) from steamy Guwahati but have forsaken the lazy horizontals of the Brahmaputra for a return to the rugged verticals of the Himalaya, and the bustle of the streets and markets for the silence of one of the most tranquil countries in the world.

  Bhutan is the only independent Buddhist kingdom and one of only two remaining Himalayan kingdoms (Sikkim having gone to India and Tibet to China). It’s a little larger than Switzerland, with a population less than the city of Birmingham, so there is room to swing cats. Add to this a deliberate government-imposed surcharge of $65 a day and you can begin to understand why we flew in to an airport that looked like a mediaeval palace on one of the only two planes that comprise the national fleet.

  Bhutan (the name means the end of ‘Bhot’, the old name for Tibet) is a country of very strong character. The cultural confusion of East and West, of temples and shopping malls, robes and baseball hats, which marks so much of Southeast Asia, doesn’t seem to have done much damage to a country where the official language is Dzongkha, the official currency is the ngultrum and the official policy is Gross National Happiness before Gross National Product.

  Of course, there are telephones and cars and satellite dishes and laptop computers, but they are inside traditional buildings and used by people wearing traditional dress. Bhutan sees no contradiction between its past and its present. Its history is not to be found on display in tourist-friendly heritage parks, but on the street and in the countryside, as a part of everyday life. National costume is worn throughout the country, quite unselfconsciously, and very elegant it is too. The men wear the kho, pronounced ‘go’, an ankle-length robe with prominent white cuffs, pulled up to knee height and tucked into a belt. Women wear the kira, a length of silk or cotton wound around the body, and a short jacket called a togo. The fabrics are locally made and distinctive, varying from plain, utilitarian designs to complex weaves and intricate patterns.

  Concrete has not yet rolled over Bhutan. Thanks to careful husbandry, over two-thirds of the country remains forested and the majority of the houses I’ve seen from the single-track main road that runs east from the airport at Paro are combinations of colourfully decorated wood frames and rammed earth walls, reminding me of alpine chalets and Tudor manor houses.

  The village of Gantey, at which we arrived late in the day, is set in restful landscape in the central part of the country, on a hill overlooking the broad glacial valley of Phobjika. Surrounding and enclosing this peaceful place are the Black Mountains, which rise above 16,000 feet (5000 m).

  As if to confirm this bewilderingly thorough and barely believable change in our circumstances, light snow is falling outside as I take one last look at the ghostly outlines of wide roofs around us and begin the delicate process of inserting myself, and hot-water bottle, which all of us have been thoughtfully provided with by the management, into the narrow neck of my sleeping bag.

  Day One Hundred and Four : Gantey

  Breakfast conversation is dominated by wet bed stories. As the only one whose hot-water bottle didn’t leak, I feel rather left out.

  My Bhutanese host and guide has been up for some time doing crossword puzzles, to which he’s addicted. Dasho Benji (‘call me Benji’) is what one might call a larger than life figure. A colourful character. He’s the King’s cousin, and, over a period of 30 years, has
held positions of power in Bhutan from Home Affairs to Chief Justice to Minister of the Environment. No longer a member of the government, he uses his considerable influence to pursue the environmental causes that are his first love. He also likes to go to Calcutta for golf and horse racing and is generous with his drink. He makes no apologies for enjoying the fast life, but now, at the age of 60, he’s having to move into the middle lane as his body registers the toll of many happily misspent years. His broad, ruddy face is dominated by a pair of deep-set, ever so slightly bloodshot eyes, which seem naturally attuned to merriment and give little indication of the hard times he has known. His father, who was Prime Minister of Bhutan, was assassinated while in office.

  Today, though, he is in impatient mood. He wants to show me something of which he’s intensely proud. A colony of black-necked cranes, one of the world’s rarest birds, winters in this valley.

  The black-necked crane was first identified in 1876, by one of the great explorers of the Tibetan plateau, Count Nikolai Przhewalski of the Imperial Russian Army. Of the 16 species of crane, it was the last to be found.

  Before 1990 the general estimate was that there were only 800 black-necked cranes in the world. Since China opened up and began to share information that estimate has risen to between 3000 and 5000. They fly down from Tibet and Ladakh every winter and gather here, attracted by the marshy wetland of the valley floor. But there is a complication. The Gantey valley recently discovered a potentially lucrative source of income from the raising of seed potatoes. The soil and air here are free of all the most common diseases from which potatoes suffer, so the seeds are much in demand, especially in India. Plans were afoot to drain the valley and build more farms. Benji fought to prevent the destruction of a unique habitat.