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 – 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 - A Day at Didana

To derive joy from the simple act of birdwatching, all you need to do is wait, watch and listen. Jennifer Nandi reveals the Birding 101 in the third episode of her travelogue on Bedni Bugyal

A Blue Whistling Thrush, ever the skulker, trails us as we walk its wooded paths

Lots of little surprises greet us the next morning. The Pied Thrush and his companion are in full view; so are the rock thrushes, the blackbirds and the Mistle Thrushes. A new visitor to the campsite is the Variegated Laughing Thrush. A very secretive bird; keeping close to the shrubbery, it hops in and out of sight to forage on the ground. We pursue it and it flies off with a rapid squeaking ‘qweek-qweek-qweek’ -- out of sight and reach of the binoculars. 

The ubiquitous Red-vented Bulbul against a Himalayan valley

Sahastra, our group leader, has scheduled an ‘all-day birding day’ today. We walk towards the village and select a little plateau of grass overlooking fallow fields and shrubbery. It is a simple morning; but we concoct magic from it by waiting, watching and listening. There are a whole kaleidoscope of reasons to invest in an activity as simple and as magical as birdwatching. Tiny details vie for attention – is the hind-collar of the Whiskered Yuhina pale yellow or a more buttery yellow? Is the bright orange-yellow on the forehead of the warbler a field characteristic or a matter of circumstance – it could’ve stuck its head into a pollen-bearing Rhododendron blossom! On the warbler, over there - one and a half wing bars or two? Any coronal stripes? Is that harsh ‘churr’ an alarm call? It’s a warning -- a bird of prey perhaps? Or unmindful birders? In John Hay’s words, “A bird is not valued because it is ‘beautiful’. It delights by the way it exemplifies the universe working so well, so coherently, and with such endless individuality.” 

I looked at our group of men with an IT background, from Bangalore and Chennai with an urge to watch birds. I imagine that the atmosphere in their workplaces can be highly manipulative, perversely efficient. It was laudable that their concerns about wilderness were not just about making personal risk and physical exertion the hallmarks of a wilderness experience, but about falling into resonance with a system of unmanaged, non-anthropocentric relationships that can be as fulfilling as rappelling down a steep face of rock.

Didana, less than a one-mule town, was deserted as everyone was attending a wedding in the valley 

There is no denying that wilderness travel can be extremely taxing and dangerous. You can fall into a crevasse, lose your way, become hypothermic, de-hydrate, run out of food, or walk in a delirium as Bijoy will shortly so eminently demonstrate! However, the common experience of those who travel in the wild are far less violent events. They encounter the most essential attribute of wilderness – that wild lands preserve complex biological relationships that represent a gene pool vital for the resiliency of plants and animals. Surely we have an ethical obligation to provide animals with a place where they are free from being impinged upon by civilization. Moreover, we have a historical responsibility to preserve these kind of landscapes from which modern man emerged. 

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

Encounter: Chestnut-tailed Minla

Perhaps I had a karmic debt to pay the Chestnut-tailed Minla 

Battered by my first ascent of the Garhwal Himalaya, I was listening to the lament of my creaking knees en route to Kunol from Wan when Sahastra, whose knees had served him well, and Jennifer, who imbibed superpowers from yoga, decided to adventurously explore the forest in search of white-throated laughingthrushes. While I beat about the bush aimlessly, they returned triumphant. There is nothing more psychologically demolishing than being physically downbeat as your birding compadres tick away lifers. But then, I was too numbed to even bleed to Jennifer's unkind cut. 

“Did you see that?” she asked, pointing to a blur of colour in a bush that disappeared instantly. 

I shook my head. Did anyone here care about my knees? 

“It used to be called the Bar-throated Siva,” she explained as we continued walking. “Such an apt name it was. Now they've gone and renamed it.” 

Did I care? Oh, my knees! 

“What do they call it now?” asked Sahastra, whose recent sighting of the laughingthrushes had placed him in a higher league and sharpened his curiosity in the natural world. 

“Chestnut-tailed Minla,” said Jennifer, and ranted, “And no one even notices the colour of the tail.” 

Somewhere in my pain-fogged brain that name triggered a flicker of memory. But nothing came of it except a sore spot at having missed another lifer. Sahastra and Jennifer exchanged notes on the renaming and reclassification of birds, a discussion that culminated with them dousing Pam Rasmussen with buckets of vitriol. I returned to listening to the creaking of my knees. 

On my next trip to Garhwal in 2009, Sahastra and I rounded the bend beyond the hamlet of Chopta and were gazing upon the layered vista of valleys that unfolded before us from the serpentine road to Gopeshwar. Far above us, wreathed in mist, the spires of Tungnath peeped out into the sky. 

We had almost been soaked by a sudden thunderstorm the previous evening and wanted to return to our lodgings before another similar predicament befell us. Suddenly, we were stopped dead in our tracks by an enormous mixed hunting party of grey-hooded warblers, black-throated, spot-winged and green-backed tits, along with variegated laughingthrushes. Among them, one oddball bird stood out. It was nothing like any I'd ever seen. Its throat was barred, it was colourful overall and I noticed nothing of the tail except that it was long. Sahastra, too, had trouble thumbing through his mental log to identify it instantly. 

“This is that guy,” he said helpfully, “the one you missed.” 

That hit a raw nerve instantly. “I know,” I hissed, overcome by elation. A birder doesn't forget a missed encounter easily. He goes back and pores over the page listing his forgone quarry and memorises its image until it shimmers in his mind's eye with envy and desire. 

Perhaps it was the law of attraction, but the Chestnut-tailed Minla (Minla strigula) and I had finally met at the feet of Siva. What ironic coincidence!

Note: This picture was taken by Sandy on his trip with Sahastra. I couldn't join them then. Clearly, the Minla had no karmic accounts to settle with them and revealed itself happily.

Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan

Encounter: Crimson Sunbird

A chance meeting with this charming sunbird kept our spirits high through the unpredictable Himalayan weather

In September 2010, on our way to the shrine of Madhyamaheshwar, we spent a night at the beautifully situated GMVN guest house at Ukhimath. It had been a year of catastrophic rains – an extremely heavy and extended monsoon had wreaked havoc on the roads and the landslides continued to pile up as more rain was forecast.

As we stood contemplating the ominous news that we had just received -- a part of the road leading to the starting point of our trek at the village of Uniana had been washed off -- we picked up a sunbird-like call from a bottle-brush tree beside the bungalow. 

Could it be the Green-tailed Sunbird? I had seen it at Chopta (2,900m) but this (at 1,130 m) seemed a tad low for either the Green-tailed or the Fire-tailed Sunbird. But it was also high for the ubiquitous Purple Sunbird that is so common in the plains. As we stepped out to scan the tree, we spied the unmistakable scarlet breast that glowed as if on fire in the rays of the morning sun. It was the Crimson Sunbird (Aethopyga siparaja).

Though this sunbird is fairly common (it is found in the Western Himalayas, Sahyadris, and a race occurs in the Nicobar Islands), this was my first sighting. The bird was quite restless and kept flitting from the bottle brush tree to a large dense-canopied tree nearby. It made these sorties while vocalizing all the time. 

The bird has a crimson patch on the mantle and a yellow spot just above the rump but from the view that we had, the scarlet breast and throat merged into a rather drab grey-olive belly. The tail is greenish and much longer than that of the Small Sunbird or Crimson-backed sunbird (Nectarinia minima) which also has a much less curved beak. The Crimson Sunbird is supposed to have a preference for red flowers which may have been the reason for its multiple sorties to the bottlebrush, a plant introduced from Australia. It’s also a favorite of the Purple Sunbird (Nectarinia asiatica).

Pretty soon the staff of the guest house got interested and took turns gazing at the beauty – which was present at Ukhimath year-round but which they had probably never looked at so closely. Beaming with pride at our joy of a lifer, they said: “Uttarakhand mein aapko bahut sundar pakshi dikhenge” (you will see very beautiful birds in Uttarakhand). We knew they were right and in the days ahead their lighthearted quip kept our hopes high as we we negotiated blocked roads, incessant rains and imminent landslides to bird persistently in the Himalaya.

The Crimson Sunbird is the unofficial national bird of Singapore.

Text: Sahastrarashmi

Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan

Encounter: Kashmir Rock Agama

At 6,000 feet oxygen isn't as easy to aspire as I'd like. My lungs labour to adapt subcontinental lethargy to the punishing demands of altitude, and for a while I am oblivious to the spectacular Himalayan scenery drifting by in a sweat-soaked blur only furlongs away from my fumbling feet. As I acclimate, I feel the gentle breeze cool the sweat upon my skin, which tans slowly in the ultraviolet ray-laden sunlight.

Male (front) and female Kashmir Agamas soak up the sun

As the miasma clears, I am alerted to rustles in the grass that only reptiles can make. I hope for herpetologist's luck to chance upon Himalayan Pit Vipers, but none come my way. Sahastra and I begin our slow ascent towards Deoriya Tal from the roadhead at Sari (a village mostly uncharted except by distributors of gutkha, bottled water and kurkure) in Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand. Minutes into our climb, we notice great fat lizards basking on the rough walls of gneiss. 


It is past nine on a warm day by Himalayan standards. But perhaps no other creature enjoys the sunshine more flamboyantly than the Kashmir Rock Agama (Laudakia tuberculata). As the rocks warm up and heat waves distort the horizon, they arrive like tourists to a beach, falling over each other as they squabble for the best spot to soak up the sun. Like all reptiles, they are "cold-blooded", in that they have limited physiological resources to maintain a constant body temperature essential for metabolism. Therefore, they depend on external sources for warmth, and the sun (now available abundantly after a protracted and wayward monsoon) is the best source of it.  

A large male at the end of the breeding season shows only the bright blue limbs

Despite not being morning persons as such, their sluggishness evaporates as they bask. Drunk on sun, they grow perky and dart energetically among the stones. Their slate-grey bodies, which offer a fitting camouflage among the blue-green chips of rock, liven up with activated pigments. When young both sexes are stippled with bright blue spots, which are replaced with patches of pigmented skin as they age. The males' forelimbs and hind-limbs darken from pale blue-gray to brilliant azure and breeding males can acquire vibrant shades of purple, yellow and orange on the flanks and throat patches. The markings on the smaller females also become accentuated during the breeding season, which lasts typically from May to August. 

Juvenile Kashmir Rock Agamas have spotted skin 

The Kashmir Rock Agama occurs commonly at lower elevations in the Western Himalayas, which includes mountainous regions in northern Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Kashmir. Outside of India, they occur in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 


We were lucky to catch the lizards as they trooped out in large numbers from their hiding places in rock crevices to welcome the day. Some of them breakfasted on ants and small winged insects. Now and then an agama would choose a young bud or flower of the introduced Morning Glory, and make a quick meal of it. Some degree of vegetarianism has been widely documented in many agamid lizards, which are known to be omnivorous throughout the year. Breeding occurs in summer, when protein-rich insect food is widely available.

An adult makes a meal of a flower bud

As we ascended to the cool oak forest that skirts the beautiful lake of Deoriya Tal, we no longer saw the lizards. For the next two weeks our trek would take us to higher altitudes that were inhospitable for reptiles in late autumn. On our way through the foothills after our sojourn in the mountains, the Kashmir Rock Agamas were there to welcome us back. 


Text and photos by Beej

Encounter - Royle's Pika

The Royle's Pika has to be the cutest inhabitant of the Himalayas

In May 2007, I had my first brush with the ills of altitude. Being the youngest (and I imagined vainly, the fittest) of our group of six, I took my physical prowess too seriously as I climbed enthusiastically (and too fast) from Loharjung Pass to the village of Didana. This was the first leg of our trek, which would eventually see us to the alpine meadow of Bedni Bugyal at about 12,000 feet above mean sea level. From Bedni, the source of the Bedni Ganga, most climbers proceed to Roopkund, the famous "skeleton lake" that Bill Aitken described in The Nanda Devi Affair. We, however, would trek downhill to Wan.


Before we reached Bedni, a hailstorm fell upon us. Drained by a fever I had caught the night before and addled by painkillers for my creaky knees, I was in no condition to welcome this terrifying act of god. For all its fierceness the storm was enchanting. Pearls of ice scattered around us and lay shimmering in the grass like gelid balls of dew. The temperature dropped and perhaps, so did the atmospheric oxygen levels as we climbed from the magical Ali Bugyal towards the valley that separated it from Bedni Bugyal. I started to hallucinate and frequently wandered to the edge of the trail. My friends had many stories to tell me about myself when I finally came to.

The stone hut at Bedni where I first encountered the Royle's Pika

A stone hut with a disintegrating roof accorded us shelter from the storm. Here, our guide Devidutt had stoked a fire. As I sat beside it thawing out my feet, my senses returned. The meadow was glazed with ice and a shaft of cold white light entered the doorway. It was then that I heard a squeak and saw a shape scuttle out of the hut. I pulled myself up to my aching knees and stepped outside to see what it was.


At first I saw nothing. But presently, a curious face emerged from under the slate slabs. Whiskers a-quiver, it was a tiny creature that was mouse-like and rabbit-like at once. It regarded me with beady eyes and then nonchalantly proceeded to chomp on a husk. I stirred only slightly to shift my weight to the other leg, and the little guy was gone in a flash.


I had just encountered the Royle's Pika (Ochotona roylei), a tiny lagomorph (the order Lagomorpha includes hares and rabbits) that inhabits the meadows of Himalayas. Over the next two days, I would see more of it and grow to love it. Pikas scurry about the hillsides like tiny stuffed toys. Two or more individuals sometimes chase each other in low-key skirmishes but most of the time they are content to sit down and do some energetic chewing. Blades of grass, flowers and seeds are consumed rapidly and with total concentration.


Battered by the elements at Bedni and dying to go home, I was consoled only by this little furball of hope. Animated, cheery and full of life as it scurried about the ruins of the shrine to Nanda Devi at Bedni, the pika brought me back to high spirits just as stuffed toys cheer up convalescing patients.


The Royle's Pika is one of 30 extant species found in the world (27 of these are found in Asia including seven in the Indian Himalayas). The name 'pika' is onomatopoeic and can be traced to the language of the Evenks, the indigenous people of Siberia, who mimicked the animals' soft piping call. Because pikas live in landscapes where food is scarce, they are known to consume their own faeces at night to extract maximum nourishment. This revolting aspect of the animal's character is compensated for by its very adorable looks.

Royle's Pikas can be seen basking on the rocks
and chewing meditatively on grass and seeds

I found the Royle's Pika to be quite abundant in Bedni Bugyal, which is a good 600 to 1,000 feet above the tree line. Surprisingly, our group also encountered a lone individual once in an oak-and-deodar forest a good 4,000 vertical feet below Bedni. I pointed to the animal and asked Devidutt what they called it in their language. He considered it sleepily for a minute and then informed me with a tone of authority that it was a chooha (the Hindi word for rat).


In 2009, I found pikas aplenty in the boulder-strewn meadows around Chopta and also all the way up to the temple precincts at Tungnath. We also found some individuals in the oak forest skirting the road to Gopeshwar, which circumvents the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand. Pikas usually scoot when you approach them, though they emerge after a while to study you through the corners of their eyes, a behaviour I found very amusing. On one occasion, we saw two Yellow-throated Martens trying to flush the pikas out of their hiding places (unfortunately, they vanished before I could pull out the camera).


The individual in the main picture appeared near my left shoe as Sahastra and I leaned against a rock outcrop for shelter from a sudden thunder-shower. It was so close to me that I shot it at 3x zoom. I've never been so close to a pika before -- or since.

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.

Encounter: Russet Sparrow

Like thousands of coins jingling in hundreds of fists, the chirruping of sparrows heralds dusk. Trees quiver as roosting flocks fuss like train passengers arguing over berths. The din dies down with the fading light and all is quiet again. Until the morning, when breakfast squabbles are made public and flocks prepare to go about their business foraging around homesteads, fields and forest clearings. Few people give sparrows a second look, but the first glance itself evokes tender smiles because nearly everybody has observed the disappearance of House Sparrows from cities. However, they are still up and about in villages where old-fashioned houses offer them the shelter of eaves and awnings and their pastoral environs an ample supply of food. In the Himalaya, though, it may serve us well to keep our eyes peeled for the Russet Sparrow (Passer rutilans cinnamomeus). Its call is similar to the House Sparrow's, but males in breeding plumage are easy to tell by their rich cinnamon crowns and backs. For this reason, it was earlier called the Cinnamon Sparrow (a much more evocative name, in my humble but effete opinion). This male (in winter plumage) was photographed at the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam guest house in Ukhimath, Uttarakhand among a flock of House Sparrows (Passer domesticus). The House Sparrows, of course, were busy making their tribe increase. Which raised the following questions: a) Do the two species interbreed where their ranges overlap? b) Do House Sparrows breed year round while Russet Sparrows have a fixed breeding season? Someone in the know might be able to tell me. Photographs © Bijoy Venugopal. All rights reserved.

Encounter - The Himalayan Monal

Even a peacock must bow to this unchallenged monarch of Himalayan fowls
 
In May 2007, on my first visit to the Uttarakhand Himalaya, the Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus) proved utterly elusive. Fighting altitude sickness in the foggy heights of Bedni Bugyal, I was offered a tachistoscopic glimpse of a metallic blue streak with a white rump and an orange tail. That's about all. Out of reluctant pride, I ticked my checklist. But all along, I felt guilty that my sighting was of such low quality that it hardly merited an entry. Payback time arrived two years later. 


In the third week of September 2009, my friend Sahastra and I trekked through the alpine forests and grasslands of Chopta and Tungnath. Tungnath, at 12,073 feet, is the third of the five Kedars (where Shiva's dismembered body is believed to have fallen on earth) and the highest Shiva shrine in India. It is believed to have been built a thousand years ago.

At 12,073 ft, Tungnath is the highest Shiva shrine in India, and possibly in the world

The grey stone temple blends well into its backdrop: plunging cliffs watered by a trickle of sweet springs and rock faces slathered with alpine vegetation -- grasses, daisies, primula, gentian, marsh marigolds, docks, and arrangements of ferns, lichens and mosses that would chasten even the most sylvan of landscape artists. A few hundred feet below, the grassland (or bugyal, as it is known locally) is broken by shrubs like juniper and a dense undergrowth of dwarf rhododendron. Here, rufous-bellied tits and orange-flanked bush robins dart inconspicuously along with Hume's warblers and grey bushchats. Lower down, the grassland meets the first trees of the forest -- stands of fern-girded oak and the relatively inviolate deodars.

Mist cloaked the forest, making birding impossible

But it was not here that we spotted our first Monal. On a misty afternoon in Chopta, 4 km downhill at the base of the Tungnath trail, we took a walk along the road hoping to spot something. Two days ago, we had been gifted with the lucky sighting of three (first, one for sorrow and then two for joy) Yellow-throated Martens, whom I dubbed Marten, Luther and King. But this afternoon's pursuit appeared to be fruitless. The dense fog made photography impossible and walking dangerous. We kept to the road to avoid toppling off a cliff. Halting abruptly at a bend, where a shepherd's trail branched off into the forest, Sahastra hissed: "Pheasant!" 


Sadly, the human eye does not come equipped with fog-lamps. We could tell the shape of a large brown bird, not quite peahen-sized, with a mottled back and a prominent white ring where its folded wings met the base of its tail. We froze to avoid flushing it but it ambled into the thicket and into the cover that the fog offered. That evening, a look at the pages of Grimskipp told us that it was indeed a female Monal. Not quite the appetiser we craved, but enough for a tick on the checklist. But that first morning at Tungnath was where the Himalayan Monal revealed itself to us. We saw two males foraging unconcernedly on the verge of the forest. And then we flushed two hens, which whirred up in the air like partridges, arced and descended into the oblivion of the rhododendron shrubbery. Thus encouraged, we descended into the shrubbery and were rewarded with the sight of three more male birds. We heard them call -- a loud, not unmusical bugling -- and saw them flash their white rumps in flight. We were quite overwhelmed by the glut of good fortune. 


We returned to Tungnath again two days later, riding mules at the crack of dawn to get to the summit of Chandrashila (13,386 feet above MSL) in time to catch a glimpse of the snow-capped peaks of Trishul and Chaukhamba before the rising mists blotched them out. At a tea stop, a beautiful red fox slunk past us, its coat rich russet and slightly grizzled with a creamy white tip to the tail. Further up, we glimpsed a magnificent male Monal, and then another with two hens. We flushed another bird off a cliff edge, and its brilliant metallic blue plumage glimmered as it caught the sun. We felt so accomplished that we wanted to take the rest of the day off and laze. But like diligent birders, we put indolence aside and got down to work. Through the day, more Monals showed themselves to us. This was indeed a happy hunting ground for the state bird of Uttarakhand (and the national bird of Nepal). 


That evening, we heard the Monal call as dusk darkened the Himalayan sky. On our second descent of Chandrashila, we saw more than three or four birds foraging late into the twilight. Early next morning, as we left Tungnath for Chopta, we came upon a Monal cock foraging at eye-popping proximity near a cliff edge. It seemed unperturbed by our presence and took a few unhurried steps as we approached. The sun was not yet up and the dawn light was very tricky. Sahastra called out metering instructions to me as I battled vertigo in my attempt to photograph the bird. As I struggled with the exposure, a hen walked into the frame. And for the next five minutes we had the time of our life as the cliffside became dotted with Monals -- at least three males and four females. Finally, my encounter with the Monal had been fulfilling. It was hard to leave the hills without a pang gnawing at my heart.

The interzone between forest and alpine grassland is the typical habitat of the Himalayan Monal

While foraging, Monals seek the shelter and obscurity of the dwarf rhododendron thickets

From behind a rock ledge, a helmeted head peeks

Suddenly, the hillside was alive with Monals

Not to be outdone, a queen joins her king

Stately enough to dent a peacock's pride

ALSO SEE: My Facebook photo album 'Himalaya: The Monsoon's Last Breath' 




 Sahastra's video of the Monal:


Monal at Dawn from Sahastra Rashmi on Vimeo.
Photographs © Bijoy Venugopal