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 – 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! 

Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal - Loharjung to Didana

Walking in the Himalaya offers the pleasure of a constant flirtation with epiphany, learns Jennifer Nandi

A stream en route to Didana from Loharjung

A morning of magic greets us. Arrogant blue skies goad us onwards. The rugged hill road from the village leads us past an anarchy of rampant secondary growth that stretches into the valley below. This riot of plant and animal life owes its fecundity to hillsides that once supported lush forests of oak and rhododendron. Sandstone country with its covering of alluvium and glacial clays evidently suited oaks and rhododendron allowing them to grow to glorious maturity. But the oak trees were much harvested to supply the British Naval construction of the 18th century. 

Sporadic secondary growth of oak and rhododendron dot the higher hills and if you closed your eyes you could hear a Blue-capped Rock Thrush pouring out its rather monotonous undulating and fluty song. It is easily identifiable being the only rock thrush with a white patch on the wing. And if you look closely enough you can see the contrasting cobalt-blue throat. The largest of the rock thrushes, the Chestnut-bellied, is common enough, perched high up on tall trees, sometimes slowly jerking its tail up and down and on occasion uttering its softer and more subdued song.

A Blue-capped Rock Thrush showing off the 'mirrors' on its wings

Odyssey to Bedni Bugyal - Part 1

Traipsing in Lord Curzon's footsteps, we embarked for Bedni Bugyal knowing little of what to expect, and least expecting what was in store for us...


Editor's Note: In April-May 2007, six of us made a trek to the Garhwal Himalaya. Sahastrarashmi, Sunita, Jennifer, Satish, Rajeev and Bijoy walked from Loharjung to Bedni Bugyal, then descended to Wan from where we walked to Kunol and then journeyed onward to Nandprayag. For many of us it was the most intimate encounter with the beauty and power, the fury and the sagacity of the elements in the Himalayan microclimate. Jennifer Nandi wrote a penetrating account of that journey shortly afterward and shared it with us. It has been salted away in our inboxes and archives for a long time. We thought it should come out for air. Serialised over the weeks to come, Jennifer's account of the trek to Bedni Bugyal will appear on Saturdays. Make time for weekend reading. Here's part 1:

A great wall of permanently snow-capped mountains rises beyond Bedni Bugyal

Part 1 - Loharjung

Walking down the platform at Old Delhi Railway Station and trying to keep a wary eye out for the coolie burdened with my baggage, I fail to see a gesticulating hand wallop me in the face. The man shields his mouth apologetically and I smile a weak smile and walk on. I can still see, but there’s something amiss. I’m not quite sure -- until my specs fall off my face!

"Well, here’s a blind beginning to a Himalayan trek," I think, while I pull out my prescription dark glasses. On the train, none of my newly met fellow trekkers asks, “What’s with the glares at night?”

It was going to be a very long night to Kathgodam -- a reservation faux pas ensured we had one berth amongst the six of us! Sunita and I had age, gender and shamelessness on our side and so we sequester it for our sleeping space. The unearned penalty of sleeping on the floor and in linen bunkers falls to the four gentlemen! The station rears itself out and we are off. The lodestone of an adventurous attitude deeply planted within me shifts and I know that now there is no looking back.

Wheat fields en route to Loharjung

For the uninitiated, a trip into the Himalaya is merely to enumerate its thousand quirks or to act as a scribe. But the journey is always too full of diversions, digressions and distractions to merit such commonplace attention. Years of excursions into the Himalaya finely hones one’s spirit to search for yet another way of looking at the landscape. 

Where does the beauty of India reside? In the contrasts between its regions. And in the multiplicity of those regions. It was to such multiple contrasts of scenery that six of us -- Sahastra, Satish, Bijoy, Rajeev, Sunita and I -- endeavoured to climb part of the old pilgrimage route known as the Raj Jaat Yatra; the same route that King Yashdhawal’s ill-fated royal entourage with queen and nautch girls undertook over 600 years ago to the glacial shores of mysterious Roop Kund. Victor Banerjee’s award-winning film Roopkund and the Splendour of Garhwal was based on this story. A route known for its bad weather, thunder and lightning, of people perishing in cloudbursts…

Our trail would take us from Mundoli Village, across the Loharjung Pass to Didana, along the ridge of Ali Bugyal to Bedni Bugyal. On our return we would trek down to Wan and then on to Kunol, further downhill to Sitel from where we hoped to secure a vehicle to take us to Ghat and beyond to Nandprayag. We would have to make it in time to catch the train at Haridwar. 

But first, we must undertake a nine-hour gut-wrenching car journey through crowded Himalayan towns of diminished diversity. Here was a monoculture if ever there was one -- brick-and-mortar constructions built intrusively, pushing the uniformity of cement into every corner of the land where there should be rock or stone. How easy it is to obscure the character of our land by simply showing a complete disregard for the past, an ignorance of context. Are we not aware that in the fragility of a high-energy environment such as that of the Himalaya, such constructions have the shelf life of a banana!

The trail to Didana

How many of us travelling in the mountains feel compelled to be aware of the monumental history contained in the rocks? The immutable character of our country is governed by its geology, and determined by the rocks. This is an exciting notion. It means that events that happened hundreds of millions of years ago still control the lie of the land and the plants that grow on it. Those events underpin the natural history of our land – the history of the plants, animals, insects, and birds. This is the hidden landscape. Knowing this can enrich one’s awareness of our extraordinary past.

The first half of our car journey takes us through the Shivaliks; foothills formed as detritus and sediment from the rising Himalaya were deposited in a skirt at the base of the growing chain. These sediments were themselves up thrust in the last major folding event as the Indian plate pushed and ground against the Eurasian continent. This narrow skirt of the Himalaya’s own waste is about 2,000 kilometers long, forming a continuous chain. 

A blooming rhododendron beside the paved road to Wan, from which we descended into a shepherd's trail toward Didana

The now-degraded Shivaliks have an interesting ecological history. Prior to the Anglo-Sikh wars of 1845 and 1849, the hills were covered with thick acacia and pine forests. The lush tangle of undergrowth on the forest floor was home to a variety of pheasant species and deer. Crystal clear streams drained this region. Until recently, in the valley of the Ramganga in Corbett National Park it was still possible to observe species which were once fairly prevalent across the entire Shivalik belt. Thick grasslands clothed the valley floor and verdant Sal forests, the slopes. Goral could be found on the precipitous slopes, tigers in the jungles and the rivers were flush with Mahseer and the occasional Gharial.

Sadly, once the Sardars and Rajahs who owned the hunting land in the Shivaliks were evicted and the forests handed over to the villagers free of any regulatory mechanism, tree-cutting and overgrazing stripped the area. Heavy rains, poaching and a slew of ill-conceived forest policies did the rest. The loosely cemented alluvial soils of clay conglomerates were washed away. Now, under constant threat of erosion and floods, most of the Shivalik regions are a scene of dusty, rolling topography, knife-edged ridges, devoid of vegetative cover.

Northward, the Shivalik Range abuts against a 120 km wide massive mountainous tract, the Lesser Himalaya. Somewhere along the route we leave this seismic tremor and earthquake-prone foothills zone and gradually ascend the greatest concentration of mountains on earth. The topography alters. Persian Lilac and Sal give way to Horse-chestnut in full bloom. Scarlet blossoms adorn pomegranate trees and the apple has found its way here far from its ‘centre of diversity’ in the forests of Kazakhstan.

Leaving Loharjung. The meadow of Bedni Bugyal is tucked into the valley just shy of the farthest visible peak on the horizon

Late in the afternoon the car journey mounts its toll. Our empty stomachs churn and we swallow bile. We are all slightly nauseated but share aloo parathas and look for rainbows in the rain-cleared sky. If only we knew that that was going to be our last meal before we reach Didana, 24 hours later. In the GMVN room that we share in Loharjung, we rearrange luggage, pocket next morning’s ration of two energy bars each, and prepare for the trek. Sahastra, having located some super glue enroute, uses it and Bijoy’s digital dexterity to fix my spectacles for good! 

We hire four ponies to carry our baggage and a reed-thin man implores us to hire him as a guide. He is unwashed, unkempt with his meager belongings tied up in string, attached to his back. He reeks of a combination of beedi and bourbon, a local brew. Sahastra's soft heart hires him in a jiffy. The Brainfever Bird calls all night long living up to its ill-gotten name.

NEXT: Part 2 - Loharjung to Didana

Text by Jennifer Nandi

Photographs: Sahastrarashmi and Beej

At Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, was the leopard watching us?

Off we went, my namesake Arun and I, early Saturday morning on the Diwali weekend. Our destination - Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, a hill in Kanakapura taluk of Bangalore Rural district. At the top of the hill is a temple but, of course, our visit was a pilgrimage of a different kind. We were there for birding and to salvage some peace and quiet, which is impossible in the city during Diwali. 


Due to several unfortunate reasons we reached the foothills quite late. I tried to take the bike on the jeep track but soon gave up as I didn't want it to end up in a garage the next day. Parking it beside the track we continued on foot. The first thing that greeted us was not something from the sky, but from the earth.


Fungi -- pale, thin, strand-like filaments shooting up from the ground.

Curious fungi

Birding soon proved a disappointment that day. We didn't see much except for a couple of unidentified raptors, bulbuls and some macaques on a rock next to some plantations at the top.

Upriver, a monsoon love affair with the Ganga

It's easy to see why Lord Shiva fell in love with the Ganga. Mere mortals can be hopelessly smitten


Bhageeratha watched with terror in his eyes as a miffed Ganga hurtled towards Earth from the heavens. His penance to bring Ganga down to earth to cleanse his ancestors' souls had succeeded; but in the process, did he bring forth the doom of all mankind? For Ganga, it was too much of an insult to be asked to descend from her abode among the gods and flow on earth among the mortals. She would show them her wrath; her immense force would flood the entire earth in the blink of a mortal eye.... But she was bridled, by none other than Mahadev Shiva, who stood in her path and let his matted locks intercept her flow. She entered his locks, and emerged in a placid and smooth flow, tamed. And her soothing touch on his temples even changed Mahadev's life. He fell in love... 


My much-awaited tryst with Ganga started at Haridwar, the gateway to the Himalayas, on our trip to Madmaheshwar. All along our flight from Chennai to Delhi, the skies were choppy, and it was no different in the Himalayas. Under a sky threatening to brim over, I saw her first, flowing with effortless ease, murky and swift under a bridge on the Haridwar-Rishikesh highway. Like a blue-blooded maiden, carrying herself with a dignity that evoked sighs of admiration, but from a respectful distance. The volume of water that flows along the river supports a big percentage of the world’s second largest population, and just a glance was enough to see how… We drove upriver for many kilometers. Past Rishikesh the Shivaliks rose up from the plains. The roads were built as ledges along the mountains, in whose gorges the Ganga flowed, keeping us company all the way. Signs screaming to beware of landslide/rockfall were everywhere along the road. But so captivated were my eyes that the fact that landslides could hold us up, delay us, or even doom our trip didn’t register in my brain. The mists seemed to rise upwards like an inverted curtain from the surface of the river. The skies were overcast and saturated, and a downpour seemed imminent. It seemed as if Mahadev had spread his locks a tad to allow more water to gush towards the Earth, perhaps to cleanse many more souls! The higher we went the river became more turbulent. At Devprayag, the Ganga splits into Bhagirathi and Alaknanda -- rather, the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi merge at Devprayag. From here, we followed the Alaknanda. Landslides littered our way, which was being cleared by bulldozers as we watched. The mud that the mountains shook up was pushed over the ledge, into the hungry river, which looked as if it could swallow entire roads, if not the mountains themselves. A few hours of driving upriver took us to Rudraprayag, where the Mandakini meets the Alaknanda. The waters were still turbid, but looked much more menacing. In the planes the flow was smoother but here the rivers dashed against rocks, around curves, churning and frothing. Here she resembled a young woman, hasty and headstrong, hissing and winding like an angry snake. Part of her vehement aspect, before she entered Mahadev's locks, seemed to have resurfaced.We followed Mandakini, which originates near Kedarnath, towards the Kedarnath/Ukhimath route. However next morning we parted company and met one of it’s most beautiful tributaries – the Madhyamaheshwar Ganga, which originates in the galciers of the massive Chakhamba. Past Ukhimath, Uniana and Ransi villages our drive ended, and we moved upriver of Madhyamaheshwar Ganga, a lovely jade green river, on foot, climbing the steep hills towards Madmaheshwar. Alaknanda never left our side, always flowing with a distinct rushing noise. On days that it didn’t rain, she sounded more like a girlfriend who doesn’t stop chattering, and on the days when it rained cats and dogs, she was a nagging wife. When we would return, the rains would let up in patches, and from the color of the water at the various confluences of streams, we saw where it had rained and where it hadn’t. The water in the streams flowing from areas of higher rainfall (and soil erosion) were a murky brown while others were a rich marble green! And soon we saw where all the water came from. There were numerous waterfalls streaking the landscape, and this in addition to the snowmelt from the extensive glaciers from the Chaukhamba massif. Like a few runaway streams caressing the temples of Mahadev, these streams slid down the ridges of the mountains... We drank from waterfalls far from habitation during our treks to Madmaheshwar and back, crossed rivulets flowing over the road (letting water and an occasional leech into our shoes), and lost count of the waterfalls which joined Madhyamaheshwar ganga. Some gushed, some giggled and some roared as we walked past them. Maybe due to the therapeutic powers of the waters, not once did any of us fall ill or face a bout of indigestion. The sun, when it chose to make an appearance, presented us with amazing spectacles -- causing rainbows in the spray that rose from the rocks, pounded by the the streams that would later join the Madhyamaheshwar ganga and then Mandakini, Alaknanda and finally the Ganga itself. And here, she looked like an innocent girl with rainbows and stars in her eyes. By the end of the trip, I could see why Lord Shiva supposedly made Ganga his wife. It was hard not to fall in love with her.

Valley of Potpourri - Autumn in the Valley of Flowers

In late September last year, I joined Sahastra and a group of four friends on a trek to the Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand. When we reached there we were told that the season for flowers had slipped behind us by two weeks. We prepared for disappointment but instead discovered to our happy surprise that the Valley in September was fall's magical fairyland, ready to be tucked in for a long winter nap. This piece was published as the cover story in India Abroad Magazine, August 27, 2010.  

Autumn burnishes the Valley of Flowers with ochre, gold and fawn

WHEN I ARRIVED in the Valley of Flowers, Uttarakhand, I expected to experience the vistas I had gleaned from brochures and travelogues: Lush expanses of verdure embroidered with bright floral spangles. But the valley that greeted me was a picture of desiccation. The waist-high flowerbeds sported an autumnal burnish of ochre, gold and fawn as they braced for the inevitability of the Himalayan winter. 

The peak of Nar Parvat as seen from Ghangharia, 3 km from the Valley of Flowers. The cliff walls on either side of the valley rise thousands of feet.

A hypnotic hush lingered, tempered only by the muted roar of distant waterfalls, feeble bird calls and the wheezy whisper of the wind among the drying stalks. I also felt an overwhelming sense of isolation — ours was the only group traversing the white gravel path that snaked through the flowerbeds.

The last of the flower enthusiasts, who had braved the monsoon rains and the profusion of leeches, had departed weeks ago. The blossom-studded meadows that had charmed visitors from June to August were a distant memory. Gone were the much photographed Brahma Kamals (Rheum nobile) and cobra lilies. The violet primulas and buttery-yellow marsh marigolds had disappeared. The edelweiss had turned into ashen stars. The celebrated Himalayan Blue Poppies, which bloomed during the monsoon and held an inexplicable fascination for Japanese flower-seekers, had turned into membranous cups rattling with seeds. Pale pink balsams with translucent stems were still in flower though some already bristled with seed pods. Only the geraniums, hemmed in by natural hedgerows of lilac asters and mustard inulas, thrust out their cheery pink and white blooms to greet the sun.

The Valley as seen from the trail.
The heart of the Valley is a good hour's walk from this point.

In the monsoon of 1931 the English mountaineer Frank Sydney Smythe and his botanist colleague R L Holdsworth, who were descending after their pioneering conquest of Mount Kamet, accidentally entered the Bhyundar Valley. Through veils of mist they spied expansive carpets of blue primula, irises, wild roses, violets and anemones. ‘It was impossible to take a step without crushing a flower,’ Smythe wrote in a subsequent memoir.

A consummate mountaineer, writer and photographer venerated by many of his contemporaries, Smythe had climbed extensively in the Himalayas as well as in the Alps and the Canadian Rockies. He had attempted Mount Everest three times — twice with Hugh Ruttledge and once as a member of Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman’s 1938 expedition. Smythe wrote more than 27 books and travelogues before he died at 49 of complications induced by malaria.

Bursts of remnant colour light up a tawny field

Returning to London after his unexpected discovery, Smythe devoted himself to gardening, a hobby inspired by his serendipitous descent into the Bhyundar Valley. But the ‘Valley of Flowers’, as he had christened it, haunted him constantly. In 1937, he returned to explore the region and wrote of it in his book, The Valley of Flowers (Hodder, London, 1938).

Near its end is a chapter titled ‘Autumn in the Valley of Flowers’, which served as my lodestone, as I wandered in Smythe’s footsteps barely a week before the tourist season ended.