The Best of Ruskin Bond

by Bond, Ruskin

  Wilson’s life is fit subject for a romance; but even if one were never written, his legend would live on, as it has done for over a hundred years. There has never been any attempt to commemorate him, but people in the valley still speak of him in awe and admiration, as though he had lived only yesterday. Some men leave a trail of legend behind them, because they give their spirit to the place where they have lived, and remain forever a part of the rocks and mountain streams.

  In the old days, only the staunchest of pilgrims visited the shrines of Gangotri and Jamnotri. The roads were rocky and dangerous, winding along in some places, ascending and descending the faces of deep precipices and ravines, at times leading along banks of loose earth where landslides had swept the original path away. There are still no large towns above Uttarkashi, and this absence of large centres of population may be one reason why the forests are better preserved than, say, those in the Alaknanda valley, or further downstream.

  Gangotri is situated at just a little over 10,300 feet and on the right bank of the river is the Gangotri temple. It is a small neat building without too much ornamentation, built by Amar Singh Thapa, a Nepali general, early in the Nineteenth Century. It was renovated by the Maharaja of Jaipur in the 1920’s. The rock on which it stands is called Bhagirath Shila and is said to be the place where Prince Bhagirath did penance in order that Ganga be brought down from her abode of eternal snow.

  Here the rocks are carved and polished by ice and water, so smooth that in places they look like rolls of silk. The fast-flowing waters of this mountain torrent look very different from the huge sluggish river that finally empties its waters into the Bay of Bengal 1,500 miles away.

  The river emerges from beneath a great glacier, thickly studded with enormous loose rocks and earth. The glacier is about a mile in width and extends upwards for many miles. The chasm in the glacier, through which the stream rushes into the light of day, is named Gaumukh, the cow’s mouth, and is held in deepest reverence by Hindus. The regions of eternal frost in the vicinity were the scenes of many of their most sacred mysteries.

  The Ganga enters the world no puny stream, but bursts from its icy womb a river thirty or forty yards in breadth. At Gauri Kund (below the Gangotri temple) it falls over a rock of considerable height, and continues tumbling over a succession of small cascades until it enters the Bhaironghati gorge.

  A night spent beside the river, within sound of the fall, is an eerie experience. After some time it begins to sound, not like one fall but a hundred, and this sound permeates both one’s dreams and walking hours. Rising early to greet the dawn proved rather pointless at Gangotri, for the surrounding peaks did not let the sun in till after 9 a.m. Everyone rushes about to keep warm, exclaiming delightedly at what they call gulabi thand,—literally, rosy cold. Guaranteed to turn the cheeks a rosy pink! A charming expression, but I prefer a rosy sunburn—and remained beneath a heavy quilt until the sun came up to throw its golden shafts across the river.

  This is mid-October, and after Diwali the shrine and the small township will close for the winter, the pandits retreating to the relative warmth of Mukhba. Soon snow will cover everything, and even the hardy purple-plumaged whistling thrushes, lovers of deep shade, will move further down the valley. And down below the forest-line, the Garhwali farmers go about harvesting their ripening paddy, as they have done for centuries; their terraced fields form patterns of yellow, green and gold above the deep green of the river.

  Yes, the Bhagirathi is a green river. Although deep and swift, it does not lose its serenity. At no place does it look hurried or confused—unlike the turbulent Alaknanda, fretting and frothing as it goes crashing down its boulder-strewn bed. The Alaknanda gives one a feeling of being trapped, because the river itself is trapped . The Bhagirathi is free-flowing, easy. At all times and places it seems to find its true level.

  Uttarkashi, though a large and growing town, is as yet uncrowded. The seediness of over-populated towns like Rishikesh and Dehradun is not yet evident here. One can take a leisurely walk through its long (and well-supplied) bazaar, without being jostled by crowds or knocked over by three-wheelers. Here, too, the river is always with you, and you must live in harmony with its sound, as it goes rushing and humming along its shingly bed.

  Uttarkashi is not without its own religious and historical importance, although all traces of its ancient capital called Barahat appear to have vanished. There are four important temples here, and on the occasion of Makar Sankranti, early in January, a week long fair is held, when thousands from the surrounding areas throng the roads to the town. To the beating of drums and blowing of trumpets, the Gods and Goddesses are brought to the fair in gaily decorated palanquins. The surrounding villages wear a deserted look that day as everyone flocks to the temples and bathing-ghats and to the entertainment of the fair itself.

  We have to move far downstream to reach another large centre of population, the town of Tehri, and this is a very different place from Uttarkashi. Tehri has all the characteristics of a small town in the plains—crowds, noise, traffic congestion, dust and refuse, scrufty dhabas—with this difference, that here it is all ephemeral, for Tehri is destined to be submerged by the waters of the Bhagirathi when the Tehri dam is finally completed.

  The rulers of Garhwal were often changing their capitals, and when, after the Gurkha Wars (1811-15) the former capital of Shrinagar became part of British Garhwal, Raja Sundershan Shah established his new capital at Tehri. It is said that when he reached this spot, his horse refused to go any further. This was enough for the king, it seems; or so the story goes.

  Perhaps Prince Bhagirath’s chariot will come to a halt here too, when the dam is built. The 246-metre high earthen dam, with forty-two square miles of reservoir capacity, will submerge the town and about thirty villages.

  As we leave the town and cross the narrow bridge over the river, a mighty blast from above sends rocks hurtling down the defile, just to remind us that work is in progress.

  Unlike the Raja’s horse, I have no wish to be stopped in my tracks at Tehri. There are livelier places upstream.

  Beautiful Mandakini

  To see a river for the first time at its confluence with another great river is, for me, a special moment in time. And so it was with the Mandakini at Rudraprayag, where its waters were joined with the waters of the Alaknanda, the one having come from the glacial snows above Kedarnath, the other from the Himalayan heights beyond Badrinath. Both sacred rivers, both destined to become the holy Ganga further downstream.

  I fell in love with the Mandakini at first sight. Or was it the valley that I fell in love with? I am not sure, and it doesn’t really matter. The valley is the river.

  While the Alaknanda valley, especially in its higher reaches, is a deep and narrow gorge where precipitous outcrops of rock hang threateningly over the traveller, the Mandakini valley is broader, gentler, the terraced fields wider, the banks of the river a green sward in many places.

  Rudraprayag is hot. It is probably a pleasant spot in winter, but at the end of June it is decidedly hot. Perhaps its chief claim to fame is that it gave its name to the dreaded man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag who, in the course of seven years (1918-25), accounted for more than 300 victims. It was finally shot by the fifty-one-year-old Jim Corbett, who recounted the saga of his long hunt for the killer in his fine book, The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag.

  The place at which the leopard was shot was the village of Gulabrai, two miles south of Rudraprayag. Under a large mango tree stands a memorial raised to Jim Corbett by officers and men of the Border Roads Organisation. It is a happy gesture to one who loved Garhwal and India. Unfortunately several buffaloes are gathered close by, and one has to wade through slush and buffalo-dung to get to the memorial-stone. A board tacked on to the mango tree attracts the attention of motorists who might pass without noticing the memorial, which is off to one side.

  The killer-leopard was noted for its direct method of attack on humans; and, in spite of being poi
soned, trapped in a cave, and shot at innumerable times, it did not lose its contempt for man. Two English sportsmen covering both ends of the old suspension bridge over the Alaknanda fired several times at the man-eater but to little effect.

  It was not long before the leopard acquired a reputation among the hill folk for being an evil spirit. A sadhu was suspected of turning into the leopard by night, and was only saved from being lynched by the ingenuity of Philip Mason, then Deputy Commissioner of Garhwal. Mason kept the sadhu in custody until the leopard made his next attack, thus proving the man innocent. Years later, when Mason turned novelist and (using the pen-name Philip Woodruff) wrote The Wild Sweet Witch, he had as his main character a beautiful young woman who turns into a man-eating leopard by night.

  Corbett’s host at Gulabrai was one of the few who survived an encounter with the leopard. It left him with a hole in his throat.

  Apart from being a superb story-teller, Corbett displayed great compassion for people from all walks of life and is still a legend in Garhwal and Kumaon amongst people who have never read his books.

  *

  In June, one does not linger long in the steamy heat of Rudraprayag. But as one travels up the river, making a gradual ascent of the Mandakini valley, there is a cool breeze coming down from the snows, and the smell of rain is in the air.

  The thriving little township of Agastmuni spreads itself along the wide riverbanks, and further upstream, near a little place called Chanderpuri, we cannot resist breaking our journey to sprawl on the tender green grass that slopes gently down to the swiftly flowing river. A small rest-house is in the making. Around it, banana fronds sway and poplar leaves dance in the breeze.

  This is no sluggish river of the plains, but a fast moving current, tumbling over rocks, turning and twisting in its efforts to discover the easiest way for its frothy snowfed waters to escape the mountains. Escape is the word! For the constant plaint of many a Garhwali is that, while his hills abound in rivers the water runs down and away, and little if any reaches the fields and villages above it. Cultivation must depend on the rain and not on the river.

  The road climbs gradually, still keeping to the river. Just outside Guptkashi my attention is drawn to a clump of huge trees sheltering a small but ancient temple. We stop here and enter the shade of the trees.

  The temple is deserted. It is a temple dedicated to Shiva, and in the courtyard are several river-rounded stone lingams on which leaves and blossoms have fallen. No one seems to come here, which is strange, since it is on the pilgrim route. Two boys from a neighbouring field leave their yoked bullocks to come and talk to me, but they cannot tell me much about the temple except to confirm that it is seldom visited. ‘The buses do not stop here.’ That seems explanation enough. For where the buses go, the pilgrims go, and where the pilgrims go, other pilgrims will follow. Thus far and no further.

  The trees seem to be magnolias, judging by the scent and shape of the flowers, and the boys call them Champa, Hindi for magnolia blossom. But I have never seen magnolia trees grow to such huge proportions. Perhaps they are something else. Never mind; let them remain a sweet-scented mystery.

  Guptkashi in the evening is all a bustle. A coach-load of pilgrims (headed for Kedarnath) has just arrived, and the tea-shops near the bus-stand are doing brisk business. Then the ‘local’ bus—from Okhimath, across the river—arrives, and many of the passengers head for a tea-shop famed for its samosas. The local bus is called the bhook-hartal—the ‘hunger strike’ bus.

  ‘How did it get that name?’ I ask one of the samosa-eaters.

  ‘Well, it’s an interesting story. For a long time we had been asking the authorities to provide a bus service for the local people and for the villagers who live off the roads. All the buses came from Srinagar or Rishikesh, and were taken up by pilgrims. The locals couldn’t find room in them. But our pleas went unheard until the whole town—or most of it, anyway—decided to go on hunger-strike. That worked. And so the bus is named after our successful hunger-strike.’

  ‘They nearly put me out of business too,’ said the tea-shop owner cheerfully. ‘Nobody ate any samosas for two days!’

  There is no cinema or public place of entertainment at Guptkashi, and the town goes to sleep early. And wakes early.

  At six, the hillside, green from recent rain, sparkles in the morning sunshine. Snow-capped Chaukhamba (23,400 ft.) is dazzling. The air is clear, no smoke or dust up here. The climate, I am told, is mild all the year round, Okhimath, on the other side of the river, lies in the shadow. It gets the sun at nine. In winter it must wait till afternoon. And yet it seems a bigger place, and by tradition the temple priest from Kedarnath passes winter there when the snows cover that distant shrine.

  Guptkashi has not yet been rendered ugly by the barrack-type architecture that has come up in some growing hill towns. The old double-storeyed houses are built of stone, with grey slate roofs. They blend well with the hillside. Cobbled paths meander through the old bazaar.

  One of these takes us to the famed Guptkashi temple, tucked away above the old part of the town. Here, as in Benares, Shiva is worshipped as Vishwanath, and two underground streams representing the sacred Yamuna and Bhagirathi rivers feed the pool sacred to the god. This temple gives the town its name—Guptkashi, the ‘Invisible Benares,’ just as Uttarkashi on the Bhagirathi is ‘Upper Benares.’

  Guptkashi and its environs have so many lingams that the saying jitne kankar itne Sankar—’As many stones, so many Shivas’—has become a proverb to describe its holiness.

  From Guptkashi, pilgrims proceed north to Kedarnath, and the last stage of their journey—about a day’s march—must be covered on foot or horseback. The temple of Kedarnath, situated at a height of 11,753 feet, is encircled by snowcapped peaks, and Atkinson has conjectured that ‘the symbol of the linga may have arisen from the pointed peaks around his (God Shiva’s) original home.’

  The temple is dedicated to Sadashiva, the subterranean form of the god, who, ‘fleeing from the Pandavas took refuge here in the form of a he-buffalo.’

  We leave the Mandakini to visit Tungnath on the Chandrashila range. But I will return to this river. It has captured my mind and heart.

  The Magic Of Tungnath

  The mountains and valleys of Garhwal never fail to spring surprises on the traveller in search of the picturesque. It is impossible to know every corner of the Himalayas, which means that there are always new corners to discover; forest or meadow, mountain stream or wayside shrine.

  The temple of Tungnath, at a little over 12,000 feet, is the highest shrine on the inner Himalayan range. It lies just below the Chandrashila peak. Some way off the main pilgrim routes, it is less frequented than Kedarnath or Badrinath, although it forms a part of the Kedar temple establishment. The priest here is a local man, a Brahmin from the village of Maku; the other Kedar temples have South Indian priests, a tradition begun by Sankaracharya, the eighth-century Hindu reformer and revivalist.

  Tungnath’s lonely eminence gives it a magic of its own. To get there (or beyond it), one passes through some of the most delightful temperate forest in the Garhwal Himalayas. Pilgrim or trekker, or just plain rambler like myself, one comes away a better man, forest refreshed and more aware of what the world was really like before mankind began to strip it bare.

  Duiri Tal, a small lake, lies cradled on the hill above Okhimath at a height of 8,000 feet. It was a favourite spot of one of Garhwal’s earliest British Commissioners, J.H. Batten, whose administration continued for twenty years (1836-56). He wrote:

  The day I reached there it was snowing and young trees were laid prostrate under the weight of snow, the lake was frozen over to a depth of about two inches. There was no human habitation and the place looked a veritable wilderness. The next morning when the sun appeared, the Chaukhamba and many other peaks extending as far as Kedarnath seemed covered with a new quilt of snow as if close at hand. The whole scene was so exquisite that one could not tire of gazing at it for hours. I thi
nk a person who has a subdued settled despair in his mind would all of a sudden feel a kind of bounding and exalting cheerfulness which will be imparted to his frame by the atmosphere of Duiri Tal.

  This feeling of uplift can be experienced almost anywhere along the Tungnath range. Duiri Tal is still some way off the beaten track and anyone wishing to spend the night there should carry a tent. But further along this range, the road ascends to Dugalbeta (at about 9,000 feet) where a PWD rest-house, gaily painted, has come up like some exotic orchid in the midst of a lush meadow topped by excelsia pines and pencil cedars. Many an official who has stayed here has rhapsodized on the charms of Dugalbeta; and if you are unofficial (and therefore not entitled to stay in the bungalow), you can move on to Chopta, lusher still, where there is accommodation of a sort for pilgrims and other hardy souls. Two or three little tea-shops provide mattresses and quilts. The Garhwal Mandal is putting up a rest-house. These tourist rest-houses scattered over the length and breadth of Garhwal, are a great boon to the traveller; but during the pilgrim season (May-June) they are filled to overflowing and if you turn up unexpectedly you might have to take your pick of tea-shop or dharamshala, of a lucky dip, since they vary a good deal in comfort and cleanliness.

  The trek from Chopta to Tungnath is only three and a half miles, but in that distance one ascends about 3,000 feet, and the pilgrim may be forgiven for feeling that at places he is on a perpendicular path. Like a ladder to heaven, I couldn’t help thinking.