No story of the trek can ever be
complete without a discussion on the local people, their life styles, benefits
and challenges of living in the mountains, their culture and overall progress
of the local societies. The interaction with the locals really rounds out the
trek experiences and truly enriches your journey. There is so much to talk
about the Uttarakhand we experienced and I am so excited to talk about it; that
I may run short of blog space and possibly your mind share as well. So, I will
stick to the simple formula of listing those aspects down that have left a
lasting impression on me; made me introspect and think hard about life itself.
Every anecdote I have jotted down below has somewhere touched my heart and I am
sure it will touch your as well.
Interiors and remote interiors of Uttarakhand
The very first thing that strikes
you when you set on the bus journey, from say Rishikesh like we did, towards
your trekking base destination is that you are driving through ghats (road
through the mountains) that never seem to end, even when you drive for say
10-12 hours. It does not take much to realize that the slopes are really far
bigger than you are generally used to seeing; the peaks climb very high on you
even when you are driving at heights and the rivers run really deep below
making for a gorgeous panorama that you could easily lose yourself into.
The roads on the two ranges of
the mountains, one that you are on and the one opposite you never seem to meet
each other and they probably never do, except for when you see small bridges
low in the valley crossing the rivers, albeit rarely.
The second noticeable aspect is
the interplay of the shades of the sky blue, the grey white clouds, the sun
rays, the mountain greens, the blue rivers and the grey white rocks that
surrounds you as you wind up or down the slopes of various ranges. And mind you
the ranges are also never ending, one behind the other keeps rising up becoming
visible to you as you gain heights.
I have lived in the Sahyadri
ghats of western Maharashtra. So seeing the heights to which these ranges rise
and the number of such high ranges behind each other for several hundreds of kilometers my first exclamation was that the Himalayas are the big brother of
the Sahyadri. Only when we reached the snow peaks and snow filled ranges did I
realize how different and how very unique the Himalayas are.
Habitats on the slopes
On the very first day of our trek
from Ghat to Ghunni, a steep 1100 meters climb, we came across several little
alleys of houses. Interestingly, the village of Ghunni is kind of spread over
across the whole mountain and you get to see these alleys at various heights
along the climb. Every time there is a small flat landmass, you will see a
village, firstly because it is easier to build houses on flat land as opposed
to a sloping mountain and secondly you can grow crop and vegetable in the
fields. An interesting feature of these houses is that you typically enter the
house from the top floor and then go on down to the lower floors built on the
descending slope below the street.
You see thus pattern all along
the trek, though Ghunni was probably the last big village (when I say big, I
mean about 500 houses and a total population of about 2000) that you see till
you hit the end of the trek in Auli and Joshimath. Rest of the villages are
small hamlets of about 20-50 houses, typically. Most of these small villages
neither have electricity nor the mobile network, so all activity stops around
6:00 pm every day. Interestingly as Nikhil mentioned, Uttarakhand has so much
water flowing down the valleys at such speed; if it is all harnessed properly
by the NHPC, we could light up the entire country of India. But alas, these
houses remain in dark thanks to no action on the power front.
Enthusiastic and happy kids
The most striking aspect of these
villages is the happy kids who greet you with a Namaste every time you cross
them. They were really blissful and full of hope, curiosity and enthusiasm;
which was really heartening for us to see.
On this day we were climbing our
7 km climb from the base of the mountain, a government appointed doctor was
visiting the school in the highest parts of the mountain, since it was
approachable via roads. He was visiting to consult with children on how to
manage viral fever and check them up. Just for this purpose, these little 100
odd 5-8 year old climbed up 3-4 km of the mountain. We all wondered why the
doctor could not descend the mountain half way to make it convenient for the
kids. Never the less, these little angels did not seem to care and were running
up the hills beating us at the climb. I shudder to think that some of them may
even have the viral fever and even then they were climbing up.
Means of existence
We wondered why the parents were
not involved in this consultation with the doctor that I talked about. After
talking to our support team we realized that in these villages, the men of the
house are away trying to earn some money in larger towns and the fields and
houses were mostly manned by the women folk. We learnt that even when 4-5 folk
of the family work in the field for the maximum possible of 6-8 months of the
year, they will grow crop/vegetable that would last them for only about a
month. Hence, the men had to find other means of earnings for the family. This
is driving many a men out to towns in search of jobs.
One must not forget that the
village folk did not seem very ambitious. They were really content with what
they had and just wanted to ensure that they make enough to live happily the lives
they have been living for ages. For example, our guide was telling us that for
2-3 months of winter, the link with the rest of the world is broken and no work
is possible for that period; so everyone just tries to ensure that they have
just about enough to get through those 2-3 months. Every one owned some piece
of land, where they had their own house and fields. They seemed to take care of
the elderly and the young ones. Interestingly, as the land gets split through
the generations, the crop provisions reduce and this accelerates the search of
work in towns for the young adults. They did not seem to have bank accounts or
any other concept of saving money for future.
Accessibility
Most villages we passed on the
trek were accessible only on foot, just like we approached them. It was
apparent at multiple locations that the government was planning to put in
drivable roads to connect these towns. For example, the Ghat to Ramni section
of the trek is now built in for 7 kms, so we only needed to climb up 7 odd kms
as opposed to 14 kms as the earlier trekkers would have done. We could clearly
see that the Ramni and Pana villages were being connected with a drivable road.
We also came across several JCBs making the road. All this effort should
certainly help create better accessibility to the towns as well as create jobs
and earnings for the local village folk by improving the tourism for
Uttarakhand.
One of the side effects of this,
as we saw, is that the roads bring in more external traffic affecting the pure
and clean environment. So one has to be careful in ensuring the beauty and
sanctity of the place is not damaged in any way. For example, the action of
drivable road creation had clearly created some more landslides and the
trekking trail was lost or became treacherous at places. As we also see in the
places of pilgrimage, which by the way have the road access, the electricity
and the mobile network; cleanliness and lack of care from the tourists becomes
a big issue to manage.
Health care
All along our trails through the
villages, children would walk to us; with their blissful smiles say a sweet
Namaste and then ask for chocolates and medicines. I could understand the
former, but the latter was what took me by surprise. When we asked, they would
say that their mother has fever and they have no fever medicine. What we
realized was that they literally had little access to life critical medicine;
not even pain killers or fever reducers, let alone the antacids and common cold
medicines. We did not see any doctors in town; and of course there were no
hospitals as well. Given that there are no approach roads to these towns, I
could not imagine how a sick or wounded would get the medical attention and urgent
care that they would need.
Granted that these village folks are stronger
by nature and it was easily visible to use as we saw our support staff making
the distance of the day in half our time running with the horses trying to man
them on the treacherous slopes. Also agree that these folks don’t have any
chronic lifestyle related illnesses; but how would they survive an accident or
a viral attack? The next time we go on a trek, we will surely carry lots of
medicine to distribute. Our guide mentioned to us that they mostly tend to have
teeth/gum issues and skin problems thanks to the lack of personal care
resulting from extreme cold weather.
Education
Something that stood out amongst
all this though was the newly found keen interest in educating their young
ones. There seem to be many government run schools from kindergarten right up
to intermediate (12th standard) in some village within the 10-15 km
radius from anywhere. Pretty much each village had a primary school. The
typical teachers had achieved a degree of B Ed. In fact, our helper Dhiraj, who
was putting up tents, bringing water and also manning the horses had a B. Ed
degree, had taught in schools for about an year and was preparing for his M.A.
exams.
We learnt that in the recent
past, there had been a growing awareness about the need to educate the girl
child and almost every girl in every village we passed was studying in school.
The government actually is running these schools and also several good schemes
to encourage girl education. For example, if there is a lady in the village who
as passed the inter exam, she would automatically qualify for the job of
primary school teacher with a government stipend of Rs. 10,000/-. I would like
to recount an interesting interaction with a little girl. When I asked her in Hindi
if she goes to school and which grade, she replied in English saying she is
studying in 7th standard.
Culture, progress and government contributions
Uttarakhand presents itself with
a great of balance of respect for tradition and aspiration for progress. On one
hand we see a very religious, self-righteous, respectful for elders and
trusting good natured village folk; while on the other hand we see the entire
family contributing to the needs of the home with the ladies working in the
fields, an aspiration to educate their children – especially the girl children
and taking up teaching and social welfare jobs.
Interestingly, it was also very
apparent that every one of support staff was politically and administratively
engaged. Mahinderji was an active BJP follower with significant contributions
to the party cause locally, while Nr, Umed is a Congress affiliate with many
connections with high end leaders who can make things happen. The local
Panchayats have significant powers in terms of how the villages receive welfare
funds from the government and how they utilize the same. The state government
on the other hand has introduced several schemes to help job creation and
accessibility for the folks. All the folks that we talked to understood what is
good for them and were able to purposefully express the same to us. We heard
several comments from the local Uttarakhand folks that the formation of the
separate state has helped Uttarakhand get of the shadows of the big brother UP
and get more visibility for funds and welfare schemes at the central government
level. Our trek was within the Chamoli district, which is primarily lagging in
terms of progress due to its remote interior geography but the citizens are
hopeful of brighter future ahead.
Here are a few more glimpses of the Uttarakhand...
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| The peaks are high and the valleys deep |
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My valley is still green, fields lush and crops springing colors In the high sloping remote mountains we do find plains for habitation |
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