On hobbled knee across the Nandakini

In the final episode of her Bedni Bugyal travelogue, Jennifer Nandi crosses a bridge and a river into another consciousness, one that holds the tranquility of the Himalaya and perturbation over its future in delicate balance

The snow-clad flanks of the hills reflected in Bedni Kund was a vision that sustained us on that trying and redeeming journey

The day breaks warm with birdsong. Always and every time, new and irresistible distractions wake us early. It is a good thing we are birders since the rooms are saturated with dust and stale odours. So, we escape the fusty accommodation to strain our ears at the muted lisps of birds fussing in the underbrush near the sun-baked mud hut of our host. With permission we approach, and watch her deft use of primitive tools to prepare our meal for the day.


The locals gather around and we learn their hazardous ways. They complain of diminishing reserves of fuel wood for cooking and heating homes, depleted soils, and overgrazed pastures. This surely suggests worsening conditions for life in the mountains. It brings notice to the linkage between alpine deforestation and lowland floods. The degraded forests hold less soil, catch less runoff and stabilize fewer slopes. Rapid weathering renders the soil fragile. Nature at odds with its environment can’t thrive; and when the depredation is ruthless, no seed can survive in such uncongenial ground.

Amid the balmy verdant forests are vast monocultures of blue pine

Water is a fragile commodity – the scarcity of drinking water in the villages is growing. In 2007 there was a high rate of run-off because of the variability of precipitation. The monsoon-like downpours we experienced in early May that year caused higher sediment loads in the rivers which must have surged in floods onto the Ganges plain – washing our future into the sea. The fragility of the biota is compounded by bedrock shifts. The Himalaya are dramatic testimony to the relentless power of drifting continents. In this context, is the Himalaya described as a high-energy environment. 


Yet, the basic life-support systems – soil, water, and biota, the limiting factors in the mountain ecosystems – have failed to restrict this village community of Kanol in their dreams. Half a dozen of its young men have joined the armed forces. However, scarcity and degradation forces them to live frugally. We wander out alongside the terraced hillsides. A little path leads toward the forest. Spring flowers that feed the spirit clutch at the hillsides – wild gerberas, forget-me-nots, geraniums, and daisies like the different colours of the sunlight. Nature surely blunts even the worst excesses of man. It seems our path is strewn with flowers. But our hearts are heavy with the burden of knowledge that we inevitably soil our most precious resource. These sanctuaries of forest and reason on which civilization depends are ultimately made inefficient through degradation.

Water, clear and clean, appears abundant in the Himalaya but we saw enough to learn that its future is uncertain

It is approaching late afternoon. Devidutt is nowhere to be seen. He has consumed a powerful soporific to keep him insensate for the next three hours. We eat without him. His casual camp procedures have overwhelmed us. We neither look in horror as he wipes the skillet with a dirty rag before cooking; nor at his complete disregard for clean plates and cutlery. 

Without our capricious guide Devidutt, seen here making tea in the hollow of an oak to keep the winds from snuffing the fire, our journey would have been wanting for character or anecdote

In failing light we gather for quiet reflection, meditation and thanksgiving. It is our last night together as a trekking team. We rejoiced in the simple thought that we'd had both a challenging and an enjoyable time. We were also safe.


The next day arrives too soon. There is much traffic on the way down. The history of human settlement in the Himalaya is marked by regular mobility for purposes of trade, resources, work, pilgrimage, or social exchanges. Travel has been an ongoing feature of these mountains. The intricate network of walking trails, resting places, and the cultural traditions of inn-keeping and porters, testify to that. 

Wild geraniums poke out of the understorey

Early in 1991 when I had climbed to Kuari Pass, the public bus dropped us by the roadside at Nandaprayag. We then walked to Ghat and upwards to Kuari. Now the newly built roads have opened what had been inaccessible terrain to vehicular traffic and to new economic markets all over the range. Such efforts both materially and symbolically convey to the remote villages the opportunities and risks of the wider world.


The stony, steep descent to the River Nandakini has all but crippled us. Sunita and I lag behind the men. At last, with the river in sight, I walk to sit on the bridge. Sunita finds her way closer to the river. Clearly, she is in no mood to talk. I give her space. 


Soon, we are joined by three German trekkers with their guide. The guide comes up to importune me with questions. After I had explained that we were birders, he asks what ‘equipment’ would one need to engage in bird-watching. 


“Just your eyes,” I say lightly. 
“No, no, one must have binoculars too.” 
“Ok,” I say, “And a field guide.” 
“What else,” he asks. 
“A basic creative principle,” I say facetiously. 
“Where can I buy that?” 
Such simple-mindedness. 
“One has to learn to observe – that’s the key. Birders must notice everything in its full, detailed richness.” 
“Where can I find such people?” he asks. 
“On a hillside, just watching,” I reply. 


He dismisses me with a disbelieving look on his face. What a fortunate breed we are with an endless succession of surprises in life, by just engaging in the challenge of identifying.
It is now my turn to probe with questions. I walk up to this alpine leprechaun to ask why his legs were green. In the torrential rain of yesterday, the colour of his pants ran! 


I turn toward Sunita to share the joke. She has finished smoking and is now inspecting her nails. She needs more time. The joke will have to wait. Now I wait for some signal of her readiness. She upturns her water bottle to her parched lips. That’s my cue, some physical sign of preparedness.

The Nandakini, one of the Ganga's little-known tributaries, is one of the most beautiful of Himalayan rivers though our passage across it, over a quivery single-log bridge, was fraught with apprehension

Devidutt has been haranguing me to hurry up. He beams when we follow him. He is very encouraging. Our trek is nearly at its end. Sitel is in sight. Though it has begun to rain once more, we shelter in a shed while the men negotiate for a taxi. The women pile in with the driver and a couple of his friends. We have no clue what’s going on in the back. Fifteen men with all our luggage and theirs, sacks of village wealth, all pack into the back of the ‘tempo’. We didn’t hear a word of complaint from our fellow-trekkers, not even from the eternal comedian, Bijoy. We shall all miss this superb mimic. And I will always remember Sahastra, whose appreciation of visual delights was not just an indulgence, but rather an ennobling of ordinary need.

Leaving the Himalaya brings on the pangs. What traveler can forget the dark, silent shape of a Plumbeous Water Redstart as it flirts its fiery tail against the stone-grey foam of a rushing river?

While we wait to board the train at Hardwar, pilgrims laden with Ganga-jal jostle for a place to sit. I recollect reading somewhere that we must be “steady in what we do, not blown like feathers at the wind’s discretion, nor think that every water cleanses you.” I shall remember opening my pores to bathe in Nature. I shall remember the flirting tail of a Plumbeous Water Redstart, the Ultramarine Flycatchers confabulating on the quantity of gossamer needed for the nest, the shrill green of the parakeets – their colour as loud as their calls. Design in nature is a concatenation of accidents – chance genetic changes but so culled by natural selection that the result is not just effective but beautiful as well as to seem a miracle of purpose. 


Thoreau once wrote, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” A century later, Wendell Berry proposed this necessary corollary: “In human culture is the preservation of wildness.”

By Jennifer Nandi


Photographs: Sahastrarashmi and Bijoy


Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal, a travelogue in ten parts, is now concluded. Follow these links to read previous episodes:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal - Shelter from the Storm

In the penultimate episode of her Bedni Bugyal travelogue, Jennifer Nandi revisits the Himalayan hamlet of Kanol, tucked into a fold in the vast district of Chamoli and haunted by the ghosts of ancient forests long lost to the logger's axe

Our reception committee at Kanol. Behind them, Satish and Sahastra are already warming their sodden socks by the fire

Pastels of dawn emerge from the easel of the eastern sky. The western sky is still indigo. As we prep for departure, a bird whistles from the tops of trees that gleam with a beam of a yet-unseen sun. A still-black Blue Whistling Thrush readies itself on a rock, full of bright promise, to herald a new day. Only when shafts of light pick out its iridescence and its mantle glistens with spangled blue does it pour out its song. He’s not quite as musical as that accomplished songster, the Malabar Whistling Thrush, but his melody is pleasant, varying up and down the scale. 


After photographs and fond goodbyes we set our sights uphill on the single grandest deodar tree I have yet seen. Amidst cypress and spruce, it is the only tree that flattens its crown against the sky. This morning’s trail traverses through mixed coniferous forest upwards until we reach the pass that will lead to the village of Kanol. The middle Himalaya between 6000 and 9000 ft used to be rolling, well-wooded country. Rivers and streams that dissected the hilly country sought out the clay beds between sandstones. The valleys they eroded were often miniature gorges, flanked by bluffs of sandstone. Main roads tended to follow the ridges, while minor roads dove between banks and hedges in the valleys.

On the outskirts of the village of Kanol in Chamoli district

Old books on Garhwal speak of the gigantic size of the fine alders that lined its rivers and describe miles of noble forest of oak and rhododendron and pine. And growing luxuriantly at an elevation of over 6,000 ft were beautiful tracts of forest of a different character – Oriental Plane, Horse-Chestnut, bamboo and the wild pomegranate.


For the British, the urge to float timber down the rivers, notwithstanding the rocks and rapids, was a compelling one. It would prove to be an exceedingly profitable business. So thickly wooded were the surrounding regions in many places that, according to British foresters of yore, one single square mile would furnish a navy with timber; and the growth of a hill, all the navies in the world. 


Today we comfort ourselves alternating between chasms of charred forest and heights of pure stands. The Western-crowned Warblers engage us with their spirited breeding behaviour, constantly repeating their cheerful, rapid chiwee-chiwee-chiwee-chiwee songs without sacrifice to clarity. Sometimes they would alternate with a spirited chi-chi-chwei-chwei. Each phrase is accompanied by an energetic flicking of one wing then the other, half open. When especially agitated, the tail spreads, fans out, and the wings droop at the sides. The dance is delicately choreographed. 


We walk through forest that still supports coveys of hill partridge. We listen to the mournful drawn-out whistles quickly followed with a series of double whistles. The birds are in one of the ravines of the thick undergrowth in this dense forest of oak and other evergreen broadleaved trees. The Rufous-throated Partridge shares the same habitat and its call is a constantly repeated mournful double whistle wheea-whu on a slightly ascending scale. I marvelled at their judicious employment of rhythm, alliteration and repetition. But of the two birds, we saw neither.

Answering to the endearing local name of Moosi, the Streaked Laughingthrush is ubiquitous and and its welcoming presence is an indication to weary, hailstorm-battered travellers (like us) that habitation is near

A Chestnut-tailed Minla, uncommonly close and at eye level, was an unexpected surprise. Several kinds of Laughing Thrush, reluctant to fly, skulk among the bushes. Halfway up, we tire and rest against a hillside. Out of the corner of my eye I see some ground movement. I suggest to Sahastra to scramble up. I’m in outdoor sandals today; my big toenails are hurt and my arches are fallen, walking in hiking boots is not an option anymore. But when Sahastra returns with news of large Spotted Laughing Thrushes, I ask him to please haul me up the hillside. The going is tough, the gradient steep, we are walking on all fours. At a clearing, with sunlight streaming down, the Spotted Thrushes are simply beautiful – large, like small pheasants. 


But the vibrant icing on the cake is reserved for the Collared Grosbeak. Now the forest is mainly fir and spruce. On the springy mat of pine needles is a small flock, foraging omnivorously for berries, shoots and small invertebrates. It is similar to the Black-and-yellow Grosbeak but its black plumage is strongly glossed and its collar is bright orange-yellow. The female is distinctly different – a grey head with olive-yellow underparts and greyish-olive on its mantle. In awestruck hush we watch.


These forests lie on the uphill route from Wan to the Pass. And for a little beyond that, the trail takes you through some of the more spectacular forest regions of the Chamoli district of Garhwal. 


The weather deteriorates. Mountain settlements are prone to devastating impacts of erosion. Steep slopes easily erode under the torrential monsoon rainfall. The fast-flowing rivers that descend through steep relief assist as a powerful agent of erosion. Worse, naturally dammed mountain lakes may suddenly burst their glacial moraine barriers and flood the downstream valleys. 

The nutcracker, a gaudier cousin of the crow, boasts a voice that can startle a witch off her broom

Black clouds shroud the now-black mountains. We battle against broad walls of heavy rain. We shelter under trees. We bend double against the wind, blowing hard and harsh. A discordant rattling note alerts us. There it is again, this time the distinctly corvid kraaak calls run rapidly together. The birds flash their tails. The white sides to tip and outer tail feathers are almost fluorescent. A caucus of nutcrackers, caught unawares by the severity of the rain, remonstrate. The rain has spoiled their chances of hacking apart the fallen cones to pick out their seeds. 


The skies, now bankrupt of precipitation clear to a warm, late afternoon glow. The strains of a human voice, ringing clear and true from the forest edges, captures our ears. A young shepherd-girl pours her heart out in a ribbon of song. We are mesmerised. But she halts, inhibited by a show of embarrassment. And she breaks our calloused hearts. 


We hesitate to continue - a swathe of forest has been cut to access the rush of a torrent that transects the village of Kanol. Though logs are laid across at intervals, Sunita and I cast our eyes about for easier ways of approach. Soaked to the bone, we patiently await the chowkidar of the Forest Rest House who never arrives. A perky youngster shepherds us to alternate accommodation. Not only does he house us, he also teaches us a life skill. Without a break in his step also this waif of a boy runs downhill and across the precarious logs in a leap of faith. Nothing that he does arises out of insecurity and distrust. Operating out of a mentality that is fearful is opposed to living. Yet another lesson learned.


That evening, Sahastra distributes the photographs that he had taken five years ago of the village children. Each is a snapshot of great beauty. Sahastra’s sensitivity is reflected in each. The girls are truly shy. What a treat for them.


By Jennifer Nandi
Photos by Bijoy Venugopal and Sandeep Somasekharan


Previously in 'Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal'
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Next: On hobbled knee across the Nandakini

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. 

Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal – Slow Deterioration

We arrive at Bedni Bugyal, but only barely. Food, shelter and rest are in pitifully short supply. Add to that the prospect of two long, cold, terrifying nights at 11,000 feet. Continuing Jennifer Nandi's riveting account of an unforgettable trek
An hour later, Bijoy comes up to us to beg a sip of water. I point wordlessly to the guide, perched high on the ridge looking down on us with disdain. Bijoy nods but strangely makes his way further down the slope. I am too fatigued mentally and physically to question him. A half-hour of hard climbing later, Sunita takes the bottle of water from Devidutt and holds it out to Bijoy who ignores us totally. Figuring he’d overcome whatever deficiency he had imagined himself to be suffering from, we continue. Bijoy passes us muttering incoherently. 

Black clouds shroud the mountains. The air is now rich and damp and we breathe it in watermelon-sized slices. Not for the first time is my stomach reminding me that it is now lodged firmly against my backbone. Composted beneath a deep sift of wishful thinking are hot-cooked meals that will greet us in the welcoming structure that will serve as bed and kitchen at Bedni. Silently, we push on. Our tired bodies are working at full throttle. Light withdraws in great silence up the mountains. The sky is now very thick. A cold light drizzle pricks at us.

A thundercloud billows, rising ice crystals collide with falling hailstones. The hail strips electrons from the ice. The top of the cloud becomes predominantly positive and the bottom mostly negative. Now we have a "shadow", or negative charges in the lower cloud that induce a positive region on the earth below. Static electricity builds, and a negative spark is launched from the lower cloud. But we know nothing of this, just yet.


Bijoy is struggling with his backpack heavy with photographic equipment. Satish from afar notices his unsteady step and backtracks to shoulder Bijoy’s load. Bijoy resists, then relents. Satish hands him my bird guide for safe-keeping. My weather-beaten field guide is what Bijoy refers to as the Gutenberg Bible – so full of annotations, observations and descriptions is it. It is also in a sad state of disrepair.

We stop to don rain gear. Regrettably, to save weight, I’d packed two cellophane-thin plastic sheets to serve as rain coats instead of the sturdy impermeable poncho that now sits safe and dry in my cupboard at home. The light-weights will just have to do. Freezing rain plates us in silver. I pass Sahastra instructing Bijoy to keep to the centre, not veer off the edge. Bijoy drifts in a fog of distraction trying to breathe the insubstantial air. Exertion has crimsoned his face and neck. I know he is hobbled by pain in his knee, but then, so are we to a certain extent. We must steer clear of danger. The way to steer clear of danger is not to be constrained by fear. But that’s impossible. There is no congenial company of pines to shade and protect you from the incessant rain and hail. 

A wind picks up, rattling us like withered walnut leaves. The weather is devoid of both humour and dimension. It is a killer of a storm. We are battered by golf-ball-sized hail. Jagged, branched channels of lightning and upward sparks sprout like weeds from the ground. Upward and downward meet spreading in both directions, superheating air and creating shock waves that produce thunder. Devidutt walks hunching his shoulders against the weather’s onslaught. The stupid man hadn’t bargained for this. I hand him one of my plastic rain shields. A rain-drenched guide is no guide at all. 

The sun has long exited the stage, falling behind black curtains of cloud. The sky is dark well before bedtime. Spooky mists emerge, and we walk into banks of fog. Now the whiteness is our darkness. We trip and stumble, unsure. Are we anywhere? Or nowhere? Should we have stayed back home? What is this place, so spare of sights and sounds? Then the fog darkens and fades to black. I’m right behind Bijoy when the book drops. Both Devidutt and I yell at him from barely two feet away. He passes on unconcerned. I pick up my precious book and hand it to Devidutt for safe-keeping. Bijoy is a light-hearted person with a passion for writing and music. Now it seems he is light-headed as well. 

Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal – Didana to Ali Bugyal

Pressed to ascend an indefinite distance to the alpine meadow of Ali Bugyal, Jennifer Nandi's mind fastens to thoughts of self-preservation and meditations on the Zen of climbing

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we set off from Didana the next day on what we’ve been told is roughly an “eight-kilometre easy trek” to Bedni Bugyal. We should be there for a late afternoon lunch. We couldn’t have been further from the truth! 

We walk the flanks of the mountain and descend quickly to a trickling brook. Scrubby bushes and a higher-altitude variety of stinging nettle encroach upon our path, breaking their needles of poison on the edges of our trousers. Stinging nettle thrives in the phosphate-rich soil around human habitation. In most soils and waters, phosphorus is in short supply. Decomposers return phosphorus to the soil as the phosphate ion. A phosphorus atom, unless lodged deep in the earth, is therefore likely to spend much of its time in organisms. 

A shepherd sits under the shade of an old tree, guarding his precious herd of sheep and goats. The shepherds’ goats roam the hillsides devouring their favourite food of slow-growing oak saplings. 

We ascend swiftly through straggly oak and rhododendron. It is difficult to imagine that this was once part of a rich forest that clothed the hillsides from the Indus to Bhutan at an altitude from about 1500 m to 3000 m. Today, scant patches of that ancient green belt are the only reminders of its past glory. The large evergreen “Ban” Oak had once been the best known of the Himalayan oaks. 

There should be many Black-throated and Eurasian Jays wedging acorns into crevices to split the shell with their ice-pick beaks to get at the seeds. But birds are indicative creatures. They know this forest offers little nourishment. Lopping interferes with the regenerative ability of a tree. 

Acorns from adult oaks carry very large stores of food to sustain oak seedlings through their difficult first months. A mature tree may carry as many as 90,000 acorns. Oaks are slow growing. Eventually, they may stand four storeys high to provide boarding and lodging for birds and animals. 

Within the roots live beetle larvae. Concealed in crevices of the bark are tiny moths. They lie dormant during the day and fly around the branches at night. And just beneath the bark, beetles burrow radiating galleries in the wood. Hunting for the beetles are Himalayan Woodpeckers. The birds favour a mixed coniferous and temperate forest and, as we leave Didana far behind, these handsome pile-drivers are everywhere. 

Epiphytes cloak the bare branches of the oak thickly enough to provide a safe haven for nesting Asian Brown Flycatchers, which are just all over the place. So are Green-backed Tits. One tit, with its mouth crammed with food for its young, takes such a detour to approach its nest hole that we had to pause our predestined aptitude for peering, to allow it some privacy. 

Oaks once grew abundantly in association with Rhododendron arboreum and occasionally the Deodar, forming the chief tree of a well-known class of forest. How resplendent the rhododendron must have been with their large compact clusters of red flowers which contrast so strongly with the glossy green leaves. The Rhododendron is either lopped for firewood or its flowers picked to be processed into a kind of sweet drink that is sold by every ‘juice’ shop along Himalayan hill-station roads. 

Plantations of Chir Pine, Pinus roxburghi, were planted in place of the primary forest of mixed conifers. This species of tree does not support undergrowth. In the dry season, the tinder-dry pine needles quickly catch fire and, in the monsoon, with little top soil to protect the earth, the rain washes swathes of mountainside down in ubiquitous landslides. 

The gradient is now steeper than before and we pause every now and then for breath and for an awareness of where we are. A male Kaleej pheasant sporting a long white crest with white barring on its rump, contrasting nicely with the blue-black of its body, gives us a glimpse of its bright red facial skin before scooting off into a deep gully. 

The forest opens. Grey-headed Canary Flycatchers signal their presence with their short interrogative whistles. Tits and tree-creepers are everywhere. But their whistled introductory notes followed by a rapid penetrating accelerating trill, is quite distinct from the high-pitched chi-chi-chi-chi-chiu-chiu-chu trill of what we are more accustomed to. 

This bird is a tree-creeper with a straighter bill and with so much more patterning – dark ear-coverts with a nice creamy breast and belly and it is ever so rufous on its flanks. These Rusty-flanked Tree-creepers chase each other and settle frequently on the barks of trees, creeping up the vertical trunks and along the underside of branches, spiralling upwards in a series of jerks, probing the cracks and crevices in search of insects and spiders. Such lively behaviour – is it indicative of nest-building? 

Why do we climb? We pit our strength against difficulty; we endure hardship, discomfort and danger. It is almost as if we negate outward agencies of any kind – we put aside competition, we deny our otherwise prevalent sense of separateness, we reject the fake. We see the mountain’s magnitude, its immensity, and in doing so we drive out our pettiness. On occasion, we are so fully absorbed that we escape not just from the ugliness of greed, of noise, of noxious fumes, but from our very selves!