Echoes of the Himalaya

I sit in a hotel in Delhi. Freshly showered, wrapped in a dupatta (kind of like a big Indian style scarf) because the A/C is almost a shock to this body accustomed to the Indian blanket of heat, sweat, and grime. The extremes of Mother India tug in a fluctuating raucous at your heartstrings and soul chords. I am not sure where to begin to describe my journey these past few weeks, from the sweeping, overcrowded plains into the dynamic Himalayas. I shall provide an overview of my travels in this entry and continue to update with random scribbles from the very moments themselves. 

For context, I will reiterate that I was doing a study abroad with the University of Montana, researching sustainable development and ecotourism in the Garwhal region of the Himalayas. We were a group of 16 students, 4 instructors, and countless Mountain Shepherds, an NGO owned and operated solely by locals whose website and eco-tourist organization is worth looking into. 

World-renowned climber John Rosskelly and his lovely daughter, Jordan, joined our team as well. John climbed Nanda Devi in 1976 and this was his first time back into the region since the climb. It was beautiful to see his connection with some of the porters from his previous expedition--now men grown wrinkled with laughs and frustrations who never forgot that tragic adventure, nor thought they'd shake John's hand again. If interested, I suggest you look into one of John's many books, especially Nanda Devi, the Tragic Expedition. 

'Expedition-style' trekking, as our intense instructors labeled it, was a kind of traveling I have never experienced. I recognized how being in a group magnifies certain traits in the self--ones that you can usually control with a bit of solo release. From squirmy intros at the airport to discussing daily bowel movements before chai, I think we all grew a bit more into ourselves during such an intense, yet short amount of time. 

------We started in Delhi, shuttled into a swanky hotel called the Blueberry around 1am after an exhilarating introduction to Indian taxi-style driving. Smiling politely to our assigned roommates for the evening, we partitioned ourselves all questioning what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. 

Breakfast was served promptly at 6:30am, pori, curd, bananas, and channa dal. Then straight to the bus for the 8 hour drive to Rishikesh. Everyone was glued to their window seats, soaking in the streets of India. I assure you no HD entertainment can surpass the chaotic spiritual energy one plugs into during a long drive through Indian cities--cart-drawing camels upon which legless men sell mangoes stall at the light next to you; shoeless children antagonize those lucky enough to don a uniform while attending to their stand filled with Lays chips and Limca; rickshaws overflowing with bangled limbs jet into narrow crevices between janglin' 'All India' buses whose rear reads, 'horn please.' And your senses are flooded with all of life's stimuli, the spectrum of grit and beauty coagulates into a cyclical waltz--death with life, full with empty, poor with rich, this is a country of extremes. And I was transfixed, also, to witness the faces of my comrades while India washed over them like beads of sweat rolling down their foreheads. Of course, India is never something you 'get used to,' but in a sense that first-time awe I felt last time I was here faded into an enchanted, comfortable flow as opposed to an overwhelmed trance. 

on the way up from Rishikesh

After a night in Rishikesh, we began to make our way into the middle mountain range of the Himalaya. We packed into tempo-buses and bounced our way up switchback after switchback of a one-lane highway hugging shadows of recent landslides off cliffs, hundreds of  feet into the headwaters of the Ganges. India's road rules are a system of organized chaos-- I throw the word 'organized' in there to make myself feel better about the true unlegit nature of these drives. Dramamine and cheesy bollywood music must do wonders for anxiety seeing as no one had a full-on melt down, or at least we all had on good poker faces. Perhaps we were all simply transfixed with the mountains arising out of the polluted haze.

They were like stout granite trolls whose jagged skin was traced by veins, contours of eroded wealth. Below, at the base, a sediment filled Ganga lapped at these Dev's feet, Dev meaning God in Hindi. They rose with such ferocity towards the heavens, covered in forests that dinosaurs could call home--pines and palms intertwine on such steep faces, their perseverance towards growth was awe inspiring. Evoking even more awe was the extent to which humans made their mark on the Himalayas.  At unimaginable heights, the mountain takes on a new pattern--like Shiva took a rake to the steep hillsides, carefully carving thousands upon thousands of neatly terraced gardens, above which he stacked neon cement boxes on stilts, coalescing themselves into the landscape like a mirror for the fields. Below these magical villages lied networks of trails, like birthmarks of civilization leading down to the great Ganga, upon which florescent dots hint at women commuting and chattering. Life goes on the same up there. And with every winding turn, every new valley, I was amazed at the raw human exuberance one encounters in India, unlike anywhere in the world. 

at Lata winter village

At nightfall we finally made our way to Devi Darshan, in Auli outside of Joshimath. This was our home base, and that of the Moutnain Shepherds Initiative. After settling in, we had class and realized the extent of academic nature of this course. As if India itself isn't taxing on the mind and the body; we greeted our assignments begrudgingly but were rewarded with watery Indian beer and gulab jamun, which is basically fried doughnut holes swimming in a vat of corn syrup---the dankness. 

At the end of the course, we read over 600 pages, wrote 9 essays, gave oral presentations on a research topic of our choice. We are still are tasked with a final research paper, which I have no idea when I will have time to write, but you know, life finds a way. The trip did have a sense of time-tabled pressure. There was always a task at hand, a looming deadline or meeting time. This micromanagement juxtaposed poorly with the cultural vibe of India, where time does not run the slaveship. There were benefits to the structure; we got to trek through areas and stay in villages hardly anyone comes through. I definitely had to breath through moment of exasperation with the academic ass-kissing though, where I felt like our assignments were all word vomits on some other author's ideas from the mid-90's.

giggles all day

We did find time to frolic and revel at the landscape amidst the studies. After two days at Devi Darshan we began our first trek to some high alpine meadows for acclimation. We were all eager to get legs moving and packs on our backs, however frustrating it was to follow our lead instructor at a snails pace for her concern with altitude fatigue. Granted, none of us did get sick from altitude, but we also sweated more from annoyance than from physical exertion--a difficult accomplishment given the location. 

sleepin in at Ghamsali

At Gaurson meadows we realized that we truly were in Dev Bhoomi, Gods' Country. Our camping spot was perched amidst rolling green pastures where herds of sheep and goats grazed. With a 360 swivel our eyes were inundated with peaks all over 20,000 feet. And it was nourishing for the soul, to be humbled in the face of Earth's protruding vertebrae. The immense scale of this region checks one's soul perspective--you encounter terror and comfort in your mere physical insignificance in comparison to these geological wonders. 

Balsinghji

We made our way back down from the meadows and readied ourselves for the long trek, 12 days or so. We set off for Lata's winter village after a day of recovery and were greeted with a succession of drums and chai in village leader, Dhan Singh Rana's courtyard. We settled in this quaint village for our first homestay. The Bhotiya people of this region still practice transhumance, where they have two difference settlements between which they migrate seasonally. Traditionally, this movement enabled the Bhotiya to sustainably take advantage of the wealth in  these diverse mountain ecosystems while not stressing the environment because their impact was diffused. Shepherds could take their herds up into the high alpine meadows during the summer, while women could collect medicinal herbs, fodder, fungi and other non-timber forest products. In the winter, the village moved to lower elevations to wait out the freeze. In its hayday, Lata and surrounding villages were rich from Indo-Tibetan trade routes; woolen handicrafts and unique medicinal herbs made their way across the border on the backs of ungulates. 

The border was closed in 1962 after the war with China, immediately terminating the flow of capital for virtually all villages in the area. They scaled down, most livestock was sold, but they sought livelihoods in a booming influx of mountaineers during the 70's. Lata village in particular benefited from mountaineering expeditions because it is the last village on the way to Nanda Devi base camp, the second highest mountain in India and one sought after by climbers almost as much as Everest in its golden days. In 1976, due to environmental degradation from the missions, Nanda Devi was closed to mountaineering. Lata was crushed, but they still thrived off traditional livelihood activities ever sustainable in the face of modern booms and busts. But, after the creation of the Biosphere Reserve in 1982, the area was declared a World Heritage site by the United Nations; the people of Lata are no longer allowed to access their traditional grazing grounds or forests and have had to seek alternative livelihoods. Many youngsters are migrating to the plains as traditional life in the village is usurped by government policies which don't take into account the Bhotiyas' deep connection with their land. The preservation of biodiversity and cultural diversity are synonymous and without access to their land to cultivate that connection, indigenous lifestyles of the Garwhal, maintained by people who have inhabited this area for thousands of years, will merge into globalized hegemony. 

We trekked from Lata on the trail to Nanda Devi basecamp, up to Kanook, and then to Lati Kharak, a forest department cabin above the clouds around 12,500ft. We then made our way over a 14,000ft pass, circumventing the core zone of the biosphere and then dropped 6,000ft down to Tolma village, knees screamin from the incessant smack of body and gear on uneven forest floor. We spent two nights in Tolma, a village with the biggest spiders I have ever seen in my life, literally the size of my palm-- with eyes that glow back from the flick of a headlamp. We then made our way up further to Ghamsali, a once-robust trading stop 5km from the border on the Tibetan plateau, nestled in a wide glacial valley floor amidst huge boulders, surrounded by 2,000ft cliff faces. Village life trickles slow. We passed the time with Phase10 tourneys or philosophical talks over bidi-smokes, always gazing at the vast mountain landscape surrounding us, forever pinching each other like, "holy shit dude....look where we ARE! Life is fucking beautiful!" (bidis are like a village-style cigarette--mostly tobacco, we hope, rolled in a dried leaf and tied with string)

From there on out we were heading downstream. Back to Devi Darshan for final presentations and our last glimpses of the Great Himalaya, and then back into Jeeps for another sketchy, sweaty journey back to the plains. It was a rough transition, from being at the top of the world, high with altitude and deep-belly group giggles, to the crowded pits of Delhi. Looking back, it is hard to believe I was still in India while we were in the mountains, but I suppose this is a great metaphor for the vastness of The country. 

Tomorrow, I fly down south to Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu on the east coast. I hear it is like a completely different country--surprise. I am ready to start my internships and this next leg of the journey. Salud!

Emile and Melissa chillin with our landlady, Tolma village

after the rug bazaar

Hiking down from Lata 

Tolma village

Balsinghji and Jordan

Devi Temple, Lata

Lata village

Getting into Lata winter village

Nanda Devi temple in Lata

snuggled up at Lati Kharak

I apologize for the erratic succession of pictures, usually I would place them in more aesthetically pleasing orders, but since I am operating solely on an ipad I dont have the same ability to control the organization of my posts. These photos were taken by Jocelyn Patterson, John Rosskelly, and Mitch Hockett.