Sunday, February 15, 2004

TRAVEL
Call of the mountains
P.M. Das

Ghori Parbat in the Garhwal Himalayas.

DURING the course of a mountaineering expedition, more so after the successful culmination of a hard climb, a climber sometimes land up with what is called a "time cushion". Some utilise this day to stay in camp and rest. Others who have the vitality go for a high walk, keeping below the snowline and savouring every moment of a cloudless day. Some may choose to stalk high-altitude wildlife with a camera or merely spend hours identifying the alpine flowers and the bright colours on a high pasture.

On one occasion during the ascent of Lampak-I,an unclimbed peak on the northern fringe of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, I was marching from the Dhauli Ganga to the Base Camp which was set up at 15,000 feet on the Kalle Bank Glacier. While approching the high village of Garpag, located at 10,020 feet, I carried with me my ruck-sack bearing a 15-kg load. Out of the blue, an elderly man with a wrinkled, weather-beaten face appeared. He was a porter on our expedition and belonged to the village of Garpag. He was carrying a pay-load almost double that of mine. Soon he regaled me with myths and folktales of the hills and lifted my spirits as we walked together for nearly two hours, first through a grove of walnut and chestnut trees and then a pine forest. We crossed the rich forest and reached a gorge. Suddenly, my companion grabbed my elbow and pointed to the far side of the gorge. A wild mountain goat at least three feet tall stood grazing atop a precipice.

As I watched, it raised its finely formed head to survey the surroundings before returning to its gastronomic task. It had narrow erect ears, horns at least a foot in length and a body covered with tangled masses of coarse reddish brownflowing hair. It was a picture of grace as it moved its graceful limbs from crag to crag. I spent almost an hour watching this Himalayan Tahr as he sprang from rock to rock. Eventually, he was disturbed by the movement of our porters ascending the valley and bounded over the Kalla Khal out of our view. If only we could have dumped our loads and followed him over the same pass and with the same agility!

On another occasion, on the way down from the Black Peak (20, 956 ft) in Garhwal, I spent two days camping beside a mountain lake. A verbatim reproduction of an entry in my journal reads thus: ‘Sir Leslie Stephen in The Play-ground of Europe (1870) wrote that it was a must to be left alone in a region described by him as: "Between the forests and the snows lies the most poetical of the mountain regions. There, when climbing upwards you first feel the bundle of earthly care rolls of your shoulders and that you have finally cleared the slough of despond (quoted from Bunyan). There in the early months, you walk knee-deep in flowers, every one of which is a bit of embodied poetry".

I spent time all by myself at Ruinsara Tal, a heavenly lake, after the ascent of the Black Peak, amidst the acres of white, violet and yellow anemones. There are other flowers here too that include the Myorotis alpestus (alpine forget-me-not), Allium humib (spring onion), geranium, cotton easter, thymus, Buttercup ranuculus, Lilium nanum, Black pea, Himalayan peony-Paeneia emodi (violet and white) and so on. This riot of colour was enlivened further with the Beethoven music flowing from my walkman.

— Photos by the writer