Gangotri-Gaumukh-Tapovan Trek

Rasik Shah was born in the Indian diaspora in colonial apartheid type society of Kenya in the early forties. Having grown up in a multi-ligual, multi-racial society, he studied law in the London of the early sixties and went back to Kenya, practising as a criminal lawyer. He migrated with his young family to Canada in 1974 and practised law in Vancouver till 1995. He has been conducting trekking tours to the Garwhal region of India in the last few years and is now retired from law, writing full time. He has published a couple of short stories at the following sites:

1. "The Ngong Hills" at www.dorsai.org/~tjhubsc/ngong.htm
2. "At the Dentist's" at www.es.co.nz/~treeves/rasik.htm

He has written a novel set in Kenya and is trying to get it published.
The Gangotri trek is one of his favourite treks and he plans to lead a group to Gaumukh again in September, 2000. Please address any queries to him at: rshah132@home.com

Dehra Dun

From the Dehra Dun station the next morning, we take a taxi to the Bengal Sweet Shop by the Clock Tower, there being two shops with the same name in town. We are seated on plastic chairs around a small table in one corner and Neelu, our trek leader, is sent for. The system of communication never fails to amaze me in India. Over the most difficult terrain, on remote trekking routes and villages, messages will regularly pass, getting across news of the whereabouts of straggling members of the trekking party, arranging necessary pickups by vehicle at the trail-end, catering to all logistical needs.

a Hotel at Moussoorie Neelu soon arrives and after a snack of pakoras and chai, we are on our way to Mussoorie, a lovely drive up the sal forest to an altitude of 6,300 feet. We have a day to rest and enjoy the first glimpses of the snow peaks of the Great Himalayas range. We check in at Kasmanda Lodge, up a steep climb in the Lodge's jeep from the main road cutting across the town.

Mussoorie is a town that has grown on us over several visits. My favourite walk is the Camel's Back Road, a long, perhaps three-mile band, curving along the northern cliff all the way at the back of the main drag from the Library end to Sisters Bazaar. It is a lovely walk, with superb views of the Greater Himalayan range encompassing several peaks at more than 20,000 feet. Beautiful road for a walk At one of the viewpoints, near the edge of a little park with benches, safely fenced off from the cliff-end, is a huge board with a painting of the range of mountains one is facing, the major peaks named and altitudes marked. I try and locate the part of the range we will be trekking on but fail to spot Shivlingji amongst the several named peaks. I love the bright, light-coloured pink and violet flowers that grow along the fence, flowers that abound in this region that we will encounter in abundance at our first luxury camp at Dharali.

We are lucky with the weather in Mussoorie over the next few days of our stay. There are a few relatively dry days, the rain choosing to pour in the afternoons or at night. We get into a routine of waking up at about seven in the morning to the cup of chai delivered to our rooms, peeping through the large bay windows looking out over the stretch of Doon Valley bathed in the early morning mist, bright bands of sun rays intermingling with the mist and clouds in a constantly changing pattern. We take the short walk to Jeets Restaurant at Gandhi Chowk at the Library end, ready for the morning chole bhatura in preference to the routine breakfast we get served in the hotel dining room. I like eating about two or three bhatura puris with my spicey chole, washed down with the hot masala chai. I sit at a glass covered table that has a detailed map showing hiking trails in the nearby mountain areas with names that spell magic vistas - Tapovan, Kedar Tal, Nandaban, Chandrashil Lake, Tungnath, Kedarnath, Hanuman Chatti, Yamunotri, Darwa Pass, Dodi Tal, Hemkund.

After breakfast every morning usually at Jeets, we go in groups of three or four for a hike, usually along the Camel's Back Road, passing the various houses and estates, many with nostalgic Raj names like Windsor, Roselynn, Walnut Grove. Others group together for a shopping expedition to Sisters Bazaar or a more strenuous hike up Lal Tibba or, even more ambitiously, up the Gun Hill, which is normally reached by the mechanized cable car on the Ropeway. Usually, Melinda and I end up at the Tibetan Café near the Picture Palace movie house by late morning or the early afternoon for, perhaps a snack of pakoras and chai, or the vegetarian momos and Tibetan butter tea. I like the Tibetan presence in this town, smiling faces of a hardy people surviving in exile, thriving as a community, having built their lovely colony in Happy Valley, where they have a charming Buddhist temple and their own school. One morning we go to Happy Valley and witness the thangkas that young art students have been producing and I purchase a water-colour of the Buddhist world picture, depicting the coexistence of all forms of life and the human sojourn in the world.

After a short siesta in the afternoon, we have tea at the lodge in one of its dining rooms, and then, at about six, we wander off in the direction of the Library end for an exhausting climb up the steep hill to the Savoy. We usually get there about six-thirty. If Ruskin and Ganesh are not there already, they soon will be, we know. Once Ganesh gets going after the first order of spicy fried peanuts and a second round of Kingfisher beer or Indian rum and coke, conversation picks up and gets more jazzy; we get a graphic description of, for example, Rushdie's error by an analogy with a fantasy story about Hanuman, say, having a gay affair with Rama. Ganesh does not mince his words, graphically stating in Hindi slang the anatomical reality of what who is doing to whom in his hypothetical example, proving the point that such a story would be calculated to hurt religious sensibilities. This was the first hilarious and possibly convincing argument I ever heard in favour of the proposition that Rushdie knew what he was doing. My writer's liberal self is still defensive of Rushdie and I stick to my guns about the right of free speech. At the end of a haranguing evening, we sometimes have one member of our party from somewhere out in the Kooteneys, in the Canadian north, recite the ballad of Sam McGhee by Robert Service, set appropriately enough, in the Arctic north; something that Michael Huntley was particularly good at, having practised his art at campfires along horse trails or dog sled races in the vast spaces and snowfields of the Canadian Cariboo over the years. Ruskin, one of whose favourite poets is Robert Service, is very appreciative of this rare occurrence in modern-day Mussoorie.

Days pass quickly and we are getting close to the morning of our departure for the long land route to Ladakh and everyone makes sure they have the right clothes and equipment. I buy a thick, colourful cardigan from the Tibetan market against the anticipated cold of Ladakh.

Swamiji On the day before we begin the journey to Ladakh, we get the news that Swami Jnananda is in town and will be available for an audience. We hastily make plans for our group to visit him that afternoon and get driven to Barlowganj. The vehicle stops at the edge of a forest and we walk down into a valley path leading to the small kutti of the swami, who emerges to greet us. The swami, in his long, silver hair,flowing beard and saffron robe, appears in good health in spite of his age (we reckon he is well into his seventies). A young-looking healthy pink face with no wrinkles beams a welcoming smile and we are all seated cross-legged around the floor of the kutti, the swami sitting cross-legged on his mattress, slightly elevated above on a ledge in one corner. The swami has no difficulty recognizing those of us he has met before. In fact, he mentions the occasion on which I met him two years before, in Simla. The swami soon gets the small portable gas stove going and gets one of us to put in some water in a pan for boiling for the tea. He is in a jovial mood and promises to make 'Horlicks' tea for us, as he calls it, saying he will explain the mystery later. He soon launches into telling us a story in his Indian-accented English. He speaks Hindi, of course, as well as any one else, having by now spent a few decades in India from the time he walked into India from Austria when he was eighteen. His story is legendary and all of us know it. It was a case of receiving a call, destiny, whatever. He left his home and country as a young lad of eighteen, knowing that he had to go to India and follow a vocation. He walked all the way (I would love to get details of that one day) and ended up as a chellah of a guru in Calcutta, whom he served as an apprentice for many years and emerged well-versed in religious knowledge and duties, eventually graduating to a life of a swami himself. I knew that he has a sizable following of his own now. Two years ago I had witnessed, in Simla, a handsome well-off middle class Indian housewife sit at his feet and serve him, having given up her own family life in the cause of serving her new guru. The Swiss swami had truly acquired the trappings of a local sage, I realized, whatever the strange destiny that had brought him to this land.

The swami is now telling us an entertaining story. It was about a young lad who lived in the mountains and had been fishing in a Himalayan river. Having caught three or four fish, he was contented and resting when an American development expert walked by and talked to him. The American asked him why he had stopped fishing. The lad said he had enough of a catch for his food for the next two or three days and he did not need any more. The American then lectured him on the merits of industry and said that if he caught more fish he could market the excess catch and save some money. The lad asked why he should do that. The American then pointed out that he could perhaps start a business of his own with some money in hand and expand into a bigger business in time. That he would then save lots of money and have more leisure. Why should he do that, the lad asked. The American then said he could rest once he had made lots of money. "But I am resting now!" said the lad, turning away from the American. A round of laughter and applause greeted the end of the story.

The swami now hands out tea in assorted mugs, cups and aluminium bowls, laughing about the Horlicks tea that he had discovered recently. We taste the tea, and like the unusual taste, a lingering sweet after-taste following the aroma and whiff of the ginger masala chai. The swami now tells us about his discovery of Horlicks tea a few days ago, when some visitor brought a gift of Nilgiri tea from South India packed in an empty Horlicks container. The lingering essence of Horlicks had permeated into the tea leaves and the end product had turned out very good, he had been enormously pleased with it. All of us agreed that it was very good tea. The whole ambience of jollity, the words and stories of wisdom, the tea prepared by the swami, the aura of a man totally at ease and peace, all perhaps released the energies of suggestion that made for a happy feeling; perhaps the idea of simplicity, the good feeling that great men like Gandhi exuded was no more than this - an ability to put people at ease, in mutual trust and lack of suspicion

"Rasik Shah is leading a trek to the source of the Ganges and Tapovan this year in September. The two week journey will start from Delhi on 15th September, 2000. There will be other journeys such as an overland jeep safari of Ladakh in the summer of 2001. See future issues of Sawf Magazine for Rasik Shah's articles on Ladakh and other treks and tours.

For further details or inquiries please e-mail him at: rshah132@home.com "

Credits

Editing : Reeta Sinha
Photographs : Judi Hopkins