Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal - A night in Wan

In Wan, Jennifer Nandi marvels at the great Himalayan night that has no trouble falling, and laments how so many city-dwellers look skyward and never see the stars

The guest house at Wan adjoins a grove of some of the tallest deodars in all of Uttarakhand

The village of Wan is spread widely along the sides of the valley; its fields of spring wheat, potatoes, spinach, and radish envelop the mud-and-stone houses in a seamless web. The village track cuts through a hillside bordered by scrub from which Brownish-flanked Bush warblers sing loud and clear. Groves of newly leafed walnut trees shade every water point. We rest under the splendour of these trees. The men march onwards to Wan but Sunita and I have no inclination to arrive at the Rest House early. We linger around thickets and watch the female of a Slaty-blue Flycatcher. The odious Devidutt goads us on but we ignore him. He can’t wait to reach our destination where he can jettison us and head for the nearest bar. I have just finished thinking the worst of him when we are besieged by children who importune us and it is Devidutt, the scrounge, who sits on his haunches, gathers the little waifs around, and soothes them with pieces of biscuits that he had saved. And I am so ashamed of myself. 


Ahead, a weather-beaten sign tells us we have reached the Forest Rest House of Wan. Old cypress trees clothe the hillside, obscuring our view of tonight’s campsite. Amidst the grove is an ancient tree lying on its side, still smouldering. An act of vandalism? Who knows? More importantly, who cares? While we should be raging against this tragedy, we silently mourn its loss. How quickly one becomes inured to an outrageous wrong.


To enter the compound, one must hoist one’s weary self up and over a four-foot stone-wall! There is no electricity, little water, but we get to sleep in a proper bed tonight even if we must share the room with everybody else. There is neither chowkidar nor cook but our fellow-trekkers are chatting with some very nice-looking young men of foreign origin. In all my twenty-five years of trekking in the Himalaya, I have encountered few Indian trekking enthusiasts; fewer who trek with some knowledge of natural history. 

Glowing fields of spring wheat, patrolled by Grey Bushchats and Brownish-flanked Bush Warblers, invite us to stay in Wan

It’s a sad comment on how little aspects of natural history and the wilderness figure in our lives. For most, an understanding of natural history generally restricts itself to enumerating, describing, categorizing, interpreting and otherwise explaining the elements and workings of the natural world. But it’s more than that. It’s a re-examination of the natural world and humanities’ place within it. It is about the fundamental issues of life. It’s a celebration of wild nature. The study of natural history provides an antidote to solipsism. It requires courage to inquire of a parallel culture, to ponder another order. It requires a thinking mind to intuit how our fellow beings might illuminate some part of our own culture. It requires energy to gain a wholeness of outlook. Laziness of any hue has no place here.


Trekking then assumes a whole new dimension – as a nature enthusiast, one blends extensive field observation and an authentic and penetrating love for the natural world with a sense of independence, humanity, emotion, truth, wit. Only through personal participation in, and thoughtful observation of, wild nature, can one internalise the external. Inculcating a sensitivity to Nature must begin by exploiting one’s senses. It must be followed by developing the ability to see the continuity of nature in all its manifestations. Only then can we inculcate the joy that comes from contributing to her conservation.

A Himalayan Griffon sails over the dark forest

That symbol of how fast a very common species can be made, through ignorance and neglect, to border on extinction, flies in to settle its magnificent vulture body on a nearby stump. Sahastra excitedly runs for his binoculars and urges his new friends to view the Himalayan Griffon – a magnificent bird with a precarious future. It is condemned along with its cousins to live a threatened existence.


Sunita soon sounds the tea bell. She barely functions without her dose of caffeine. We light up the gas and Devidutt supplies us with endless cups of tea. Sahastra, Satish and Bijoy who seem to have recovered mighty fast from the day’s exertions, express a keen desire to talk to their loved ones. They set off for the village, a half hour’s walk downhill, but not before Sahastra leans over to us (as we sit on the stone steps of our lodging, amidst an open bag of rations) and in his affable way tells us to please “ALSO COOK FOR THEM.” The ‘them’ of course, refers to the three young men from Canada. ‘Yeah sure,’ we smile. With our plans of cooking, changing and sleeping stymied, we make the most of our lot for the evening.


We cook two pressure-cooker-full quantities of khichdi, what else? And we make friends with the young men and have ourselves the time of our lives. To their credit, they are so full of the spirit of comity; they are gracious and courteous and interesting, and good-looking to boot, what more could one ask for! 

The evening sun, shying behind the first of the deodars, welcomes us to Wan

The sky still glows in the west. The stars begin to shine. For the first time on this trek the firmament is ablaze with brilliant fire. I am truly excited as I begin to read the crowded constellations. Star gazing possesses an unparalleled power to excite the human imagination. They seem so close, so intimate, yet so infinite; so near yet so unreachably far; the inky-black sky of night is yet so full of light. Once you master the major constellations, you are witness to an incredible display of patterns of order. 


As a child my father had taught me to read Orion and the Ursa Major and how to locate the North Star. In the old days, he would spend months at sea plumbing the ocean depths with lead and line to later represent it cartographically – the charts being used worldwide by merchant shipping. Nowadays, with modern technology, the art of star gazing is no longer a requirement for a mariner. If we think about it, so much of our ability to do rational science is closely bound up with our ancestral experience of the sky. For the rest of the year, unless I make another trip into the mountains, the stars will glow only in recollection.


To cement the inevitability of the night and as testimony to their gratitude for our cooking dinner, our newly-acquired young friends shower us with goodwill and chocolates and bring out a suspicious looking bottle with a fingerful of whisky which we share in teaspoonfuls adding the welcome dram to our coffee. With a housewifely eye I note that the larger pressure-cooker of khichdi has been cleaned out with unembarrassed thoroughness.

Unembarrassed by the previous night's dinner shenanigans, the group smiles for the camera

As the tattered day finally departs, a Yellow-throated Marten makes its appearance. Its eyes burn like red coals. These omnivorous animals have sharp eyes, an acute sense of smell and if this one lives among the rafters of this old house, it has ample opportunities for finding food. 


The evening chill turns to stone the once hot, gooey khichdi. Into the reaches of the night, our men arrive forlorn, with an implausible excuse – a long story of having got lost in the forest! Haven’t we women heard that one before? Sunita still insists they gorged on jalebis and pakoras, Bijoy’s hobbled knee notwithstanding! They seem stunned by the raucous noise of laughter. Without a word they swallow their gummy dinner and head silently for bed! So much for trekking to talk to loved ones. Whereas we, left-behind ladies, float on cloud nine! 


Night has no trouble falling in these mountains – no artificial city lights to push it back. When night is banished in bright lights even midnight is deprived of its share of darkness. How many city-dwellers, I wonder, look skywards and never see the stars?


By Jennifer Nandi
Photographs: Beej and Sandeep Somasekharan


Previously in 'Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal'
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

Next: Shelter from the Storm

Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal: The trail to Wan

Distances in the Himalaya can be tricky, especially when pointed out desultorily by a guide deprived of his liquor. Thus captained, we descended the bleak slopes of Bedni toward the village of Wan. Jennifer Nandi's spellbinding Bedni Bugyal travelogue continues...

The descent from Bedni Bugyal

With our faces turned towards the new day’s maiden blush of pink, we silently bid farewell to our mountain hosts. Then we assemble for a group photograph with an imposing Trishul as a backdrop. Our faces, now bathed in daylight still driving out the dawning sky, are focused on Sahastra. We collect our rations of energy bars from him and listen politely as he tells us yet another fable – that the village of Wan is downhill until we reach a “bump” and then it’s all downhill and gradual again! What he perversely fails to reveal is that the distance to the ‘bump’ is 8 km of rocky, steep descent and that after surmounting the said ‘bump,’ the village track is not less than 4 km to the Forest Rest House at Wan. 

Sunita and I exchange knowing sidelong glances – it’s going to be a long haul.

We walk into the mist scudding over the ridge, across the frozen snarl of Himalayan roots and earth, snagging our footsteps on the charred remnants of once virile rhododendron shrubbery. Pipits and accentors lift off from our feet. We leave the bugyals behind and enter the world of laughingthrushes – a paradise for Rufous-chinned, White-throated and the Variegated. Warblers alert us with their trills. The bell-clear call of one still tantalizes us – unable as we are to identify it.

The four ponies with their caretakers rush past us, three steps to our one. We hang back leaning against soft lichen on stone to peer into an effulgence of wildness. There are Ultramarine and Rufous-gorgeted flycatchers. The undergrowth in this open weathered woodland supports thick bushes, a favoured habitat for Orange-flanked Bush Robins. Warblers abound – Western Crowned, Ashy-throated, Greenish, Large-billed, each beguiling us with its own freshness of phrase.

A spot of sun brings out the diurnal drinkers but our guide is craving his moonshine

"So, were you born and bred in a forest?" asks Satish, partly in facetiousness. The two of us, now separate from the rest of the group, are walking together. Through a curtain of leaves I saw Bijoy in a photographer’s stance and pointed him out to Satish who failed altogether to detect him. And further down the path, I singled out a Plain-backed Thrush with no wing-bars that would differentiate it from the very similar Long-tailed Thrush. Satish shakes his head with awe. My deteriorated eyesight is that of an old woman; but I guess I see well because I feel well, feel in contact with the world, and feel a healthy intoxication with whatever addresses the senses. 

Think of the accumulated wisdom in the millions of years of successful strategies honed for survival. We could learn a lot from a tree.

Satish is a trekker – companionable, and because of his frankness, elicits warmth. Sahastra roped him into the birding fraternity and the neophyte appears to have accepted his present circumstances with cheerful readiness. During each day’s trek he would spend time with us, alternating between Sunita and me, quizzing us on an eclectic range of subjects, in his inimical uncompetitive and reflective style. He has a fetching attitude to learning. Whatever his settled base of knowledge, his mind is not locked tight, impervious to new information. It is pure delight to introduce him to a kaleidoscopic world.

Strewn with leaf litter, the trail to Wan

The leaves of the conifers are greener at the tips of each branch – all ready at the very beginning of spring to photosynthesise just as soon as there is sufficient light. This energy-efficient tree does not spend precious energy each year to build all its leaves afresh. Conifers first appeared on earth some 300 million years ago and have changed little. Think of the accumulated wisdom in the millions of years of successful strategies honed for survival. We could learn a lot from a tree.

This pine, spruce and fir forest of ineffable beauty, accompanies us all the way along the stony path that drops down to meet the Bedni, when it becomes a river of more magnanimous proportions. At the bottom of the valley the river collects enough organic particles from the mountain plants growing between the boulders near its margins to acquire just enough dissolved nutrients to support animal life. Every mountain stream has its share of Plumbeous Water Redstarts and White-capped Water Redstarts making a living at a rushing river’s edge. Both species stake out a patch of water and guard it assiduously against interlopers. 

The trail meanders towards the enigmatic "bump"

A Himalayan Griffon waits for the air to warm

At the bottom of this narrow valley it has warmed sufficiently for us to jettison surplus jackets. Variations in temperature and rainfall are responsible for different ecosystems and we are welcomed by a willowy tunnel of cool shade granted gratis by riverside habitat that now includes Himalayan alder trees and Prunus cornuta. The latter is a medium-sized deciduous tree of the Rose family. Its drooping many-flowered clusters would soon become dark purple-black fruit, at first globular, but often becoming long and horn-like due to infection by insects, hence the plant’s name. But if you look closely, even the flower-clusters have assumed, in preparation perhaps, the shape of a horn.

Children immerse the idol of a deity in a stream

Sunita and I throw ourselves down on the inviting grass of the river bank scaring the Indian Tortoiseshell butterflies into sudden flight. We are tired. The stomach muscles have been working overtime to lift the weight off those stiff knees. But we are sufficiently soothed by flowering trees, birdsong, and the distinct velvet brown scent of river-bank vegetation to accept, with alacrity from Satish, the inevitable ration of ‘sattu’. However, there is an upsurge in our fortunes. He hands us each a slab of chocolate! We drink copious quantities of Electral to replenish our lost electrolytes. Devidutt throws a veil of cigarette smoke around his ration of goodies, strikes his characteristic pose and assumes an attitude of enervation. The men wash and bathe. We watch enviously as they linger in the sun-warmed water. When their clothes have baked dry, we cross the river with the right measure of reverence as one would with an animal frame of mind, mindful of black-lichened rock that could be treacherous. 

A male Plumbeous Water Redstart flirts his tail in a forest stream

At last we begin the climbing of Sahastra’s ’bump’! It begins as a hillside of ruthless depredation – open oak and rhododendron severely lopped. The hillside is hushed but for the jays that shriek their dissonance in the quiet spot. Higher up we encounter tits including the Yellow-browed, easily mistakable for a warbler but for its peaked crown. The rugged hill road flattens out across scrubland and the terraced sides of the mountains bear an emerald green. Paddy is being cultivated but 1400 years ago this was not the case as attested by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, Hiuen Tsang. The pilgrim had visited Garhwal in AD 634 and had described the soil as fertile and favourable to the growth of a poor kind of barley. The Garhwalis, whom he described as ‘a cheerful people, patient of fatigue,’ reared large numbers of sheep and ponies. However, since that time, the unfortunate Garhwalis have had to suffer tyrannical treatment at the hands of the invading Nepalese. From the 18th century onwards, small parties of Gorkhalis from Nepal had periodically plundered the border areas. Many thousand Garhwalis were sold as slaves during the Gorkhali occupation who ruled with a rod of iron. However, there is little sign of ruined agriculture and the lamentable decay that the Garhwali villages must have endured.

By Jennifer Nandi

Photos by Sahastrarashmi, Sandeep Somasekharan and Bijoy Venugopal

Next: A night in Wan

Previously in "Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal"

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal - In another world

In the charming alpine meadow of Bedni Bugyal life goes on as if on another planet, though Jennifer Nandi notes that our inexorable worldliness has preceded our arrival here 

Life's symmetry, reflected in Bedni Kund

Trishul peeks fleetingly behind scudding cloud and the earth is white. I can hear melt- trickles from beneath the snow. Here, at its source, the Bedni Ganga trickles from under an overhang of ice. The upper reaches of this river are clear, rich in oxygen but poor in nutrients. Yet its narrow bed and fast-flowing waters possess considerable erosive abilities – both by chemical weathering of the rocks over which they pass and by the abrasive action of rock particles. 

Nanda Ghunti peeks through a veil of mist

Last night’s hail and snow has buried all irrelevant detail. The bright yellow flowers of a cluster of Marsh Marigold – of the Buttercup family – spring silently by the brook, nestling against a boulder. Such flimsy things they seem, just a step up from the leaves, with no heft. Yet last night’s blast of cold wind has neither withered nor shrivelled it. Frost failed to kill its basal, toothed, shining blades. It sits an easy prey to hail, storm and blizzard, a miracle of growth. What strength in fragility! Some mountain species resist becoming frozen solid because of the sluggish liquid moving in their cells acting like antifreeze. The fragrant, lavender-coloured flowers of Primula atrodentata lift their compact globular head from their icy bed. The whole flower vibrates with the attention it’s getting. The true miracle in the mountains is the manner in which every vestige of decay is seized upon by the roots of plants. 

Marsh marigolds are a burst of vibrant colour against the bleakness of the landscape

The Bedni springs from hidden aquifers under the earth. It will serve us during our brief stay here. I gargle and spit and wash and pollute this spring at its source. I hurry down to the ‘kitchen,’ with visions of hot porridge. Devidutt is warming himself in a blazing fire. There is an unusual amount of light streaming through. I look up – more rafters are missing… I take our entire ration of dalia, cook it with some vermicelli, milk and sugar – the result, a whole load of very appetizing nourishingly sweet porridge. The men arrive and devour the breakfast with great relish. They let us know, much later of course, that they had already swallowed the morning’s quota of energy bars! Sunita and I sit outside, hands cupped around our comfort food, and decide that as wonderful as this is, we are too old to trek with the cooking left to us. Devidutt is a guide with no training, content to lie back like some Old World nawab, one knee cocked, a cigarette (Sunita’s preferably) dangling from his thin lips. His small and subtle artifices to absent himself from volunteering a service exasperated Bijoy. The pony-owners are always ahead of us in one-third or one-fourth the time we take to arrive camp. With a fee I’m sure they could’ve been entrusted to make tea, cook us some breakfast and a meal at the end of the day. 

We turn to look upon the mountain peaks of Trishul and Nanda Ghunti. Thick, irregular and scattered clouds float past the peaks, between us and the sun. The thinner edges of the clouds, more efficient at scattering light forward toward our eyes, shine brightly giving them a silver lining. For this moment of pure magnificence, all is worth it – our hunger, pain, suffering, fatigue, our insecurities and anxieties – all fall away. It is true that the wilderness can revitalize. We fill ourselves with wonder and awaken the genius in us that can infer the vanished past from a hint of rock. 

‘Let’s go birding’, we say, with energy anew.