travel, travails and heck

My Travel Writing Scholarship 2011 entry - Responsible Travel

parth — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:30:57 GMT

We all travel for different reasons – some known, some perennially strung together towards the unknown. I travel for periodic ruminations, to escape the urban couth that is much too suffocating at times. The mountains are a frequent choice.

The area in question is Rajaji National Park. The entry tucked in between Haridwar and Rishikesh and an area of about 800 sq kms, bounded on one side by the 1200 sq kms of Corbett National Park, the area is known for its tuskers, the leopard and the elusive tiger.

The typical Himalayan foothill vegetation comprising of Sal, mixed forests and dry scrubland. The avifauna consists of the notable ferocious like the Crested Serpent Eagle and The Great Pied Hornbill. The website (www.rajajinationalpark.in), though a bit on the shabbier side, features a good list of the flora and fauna.

The range of activities we indulged in included a cycling trip in the buffer zone of the park, passing through Sal forests and along the Upper Ganga Canal. The evenings can be spent hiking along dry streambeds, there is a local temple called Bindwasini dedicated to the local goddess, where the trickling stream lulls in daylight to a close.

The mornings are best spent spotting the avifauna, a good time for a lot of water birds. The afternoon is filled in with a safari in the Chilla range (the park comprises of three: Chilla, Motichur and Rajaji). We could not catch a glimpse of the elusive cats, but did manage a few spotted deer, sambhar, muntjac and peacocks, not to forget the universal ape, of course.

The area around the Chilla range comprises of two major villages, namely, Kaudiya and Ganga Bhogpur, fed by the Ganga Canal for their agrarian needs. I was shown a very interesting concept while hiking up to Bindwasini. The stream side near the base of the temple hill has a neat little hydro mill, grinding wheat to domestic flour harnessing just the power of the moving stream. Villagers bring in their wheat and as payment, hand over a part of the flour to the mill owner. Something that can be big step towards building self-sufficient rural economies.

The other side of the canal features an orphanage-cum-school-cum-hospital run by Divya Prem Sewa Mission (http://www.divyaprem.org/). The complex about a couple of hundred boys across age groups of four to seventeen, primarily children of leprosy affected masses. The primary school is housed in the complex, while boys graduating to higher secondary go to nearby village school. Some food for the soul while roaming about in the open.

Two days of solace wandering through the wilderness, and time slips back into the familiar drone of city madness, until the next escape looms near.

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

parth — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:05:00 GMT

Situated in the serene Kumaon Himalayas of Uttarakhand at 1800 mts, Ranikhet is a quiet hamlet, still not over the hangover of colonial rule but too steeped in its own folklore to have any signs of western culture. The vegetation is alpine, the fauna vivid, and the scape is embalming, sandwiched between antique bungalows and thatch roof huts. Ranikhet, which means Queen's meadow in Hindi, gets its name from a local legend, which states that it was here, that Raja Sudhardev won the heart of his queen, Rani Padmini, who subsequently chose the area for her residence, giving it the name, Ranikhet, though no palace exists in the area. In 1869, the British established the headquarters of the Kumaon Regiment here and used the station as a retreat from the heat of the Indian summer. At one time during British Raj, it was also proposed as the summer headquarters of Government of India, in lieu of Shimla. The photos here try to capture what Ranikhet abounds in, pine canopy glazing over bungalows, some occupied, some withering away, the never ending ensemble of beetles - the joy of a school kid during the rains, and the lush green vine that takes ones breath away. My interest in photography emancipates from a need to inspire, me and others, to go out and wander, see what lies out there, for the enjoyment nature, in a sense, is the first step towards a sustainable lifestyle, as a wizened old gentleman (from Ranikhet) once remarked - I’ll take a sunset over a sitcom any day.

les Diaries 1

parth — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:25:00 GMT

26 Dec 09
Goshaini, Kullu, HP

Silence, sometimes we can be led to believe, is an overpowering force. Rising from the first step we holler off the tarmac, stretched across the dust, the barrenness of altitude and a stream cut valley gloating below. If eyes could talk, this would be a parliamentary session on women rights in full blow.

The valley of Goshaini is somewhat like that overbearing force. It hits you with the humility of its virginity, lying nonchalant yet hustling up, dusting its backside the moment you set a bedazzled foot upon its naked green soil.

We took an unassuming hill for the acclimatization, the mule trail a slap upon the anti- skid neon streetlights. The flat bare rock face trying to void off the brown glass blades punctuating its breast.

The way up has always been a pedestrian's folklore. The panting march up, the soft breeze caressing the melody of a mellowed stream, the lone shepherd ruminating on his trademark bidi atop a panoramic rock, the sheep scattered across the beauty in feeding, and the village womenfolk with fodder and wood spewing forth what technology resists.

The portrait of centuries robed in its scrubbed off colours yet reveling in its royalty on grayscale, the kid ordering along its cows in his worsted blue blazer, replete with a bow and arrow that actually works; the lone dog that gives you the silent company for a mile or two downhill, and the glistening snowtop bathing in twilight upon faraway hills.

The greased out rickety iron cage taking you across the greedy stream, and the pine cottage embracing in its scented womb.

To you, to me, and to the one house village atop that barren hill.

27 Dec 09
Goshaini- Sojha- Jailori Pass

In flora, of fauna are whatever riches mountains possess. Some take the dark alpine richness and stay put at the bottom of the valley. Some climb up and fritter away the pine needles for the darker, moot oak and rhododendron. The ones on the top are the sages, indifferent to this wealth and satiated with whatever crumb of grass happens to chance and camp across its path.

Sojha falls somewhere in the middle class of this segmentation. Steeped in pines and cloaked by deodar staring stoned at the chilling stream, it just spares a glance for the rickety steel cage on six wheels called a bus around these parts, and settles back into drinking whatever little of the solar flares it gets; hoping the vehicles succeed in the treacherous strive to the top.

With Jailori Pass the battle is won, the valley overcome by a three sixty panorama of the valleys- Shimla on one and Kullu on the other; half of which is blessed by a frontal (full) sight of the Dhauladhar, drunk and overburdened with the white sereneness of snow at this time of the year.

The battle, carried forward on foot f0r another couple of miles, leads us to a wide upaat, or a high altitude grassland, with patches of snow vying for a glance or two away from the Dhauladhar into its own humble abode; a slate temple looking furtively at a dried patch of small dug (partners in loneliness), watering hole for the cattle in the summers; being all monitored by Raigarh, once a hunting shelter for the British, now licking its own bullet wounds, not game enough for a tale, but to a limerick or two they might relent.

To snow, the glistening white crunchy powder of peace.

28 Dec 09
Goshaini- Great Himalayan National Park

This one is a favourite. Small boards indicating single digit distances that promise a feast for the cornea, the dust overpowered by leaves dropped by trees tired of lugging all that weight through the autumn, the Tirthan growing fiercer as one climbs up- the water frothing angrily over boulders that refuse to give it the right of way.

For company we three mortals have a party of five canines, from one year old restless spirit to a twenty year old maid, cursing its decision to tag along as she pants her way up and down the trail.

We cross the two mile motorable and three six house villages to the five miles of trekker's haven- a narrow trail with rickety wooden bridges, at each turn a waterfall, each one fiercer than the last, punctuating the oak leaves pattering beneath our soles and the roughed out barren hill across the river.

Three and a half miles further up leads us to the official entry of the park, the check post huts deserted for the clod and left to the mercy of any gust of wind strong enough to win over the rusted iron, hanging for life structures which would otherwise have been fondly called padlocks in their prime; the entry preceded by a decently big waterfall termed as Emily's, overlooked by a frail but wise deity, now retired in a twelve inch shrine.

As the water starts sounding real mean and the bridges get longer, the canines no longer lead us prefer to glance across their back after every dozen steps or so, the maid preferring to the sweep right after the first mile of the trek.

A mile or two further up and we chance upon an odd meadow here or there, we come to the first bunch of camping huts, desolate since the last summer.

We lunch exploring the graffiti now bound for the oblivion and ruminate for the magnitudeof abuses to be hurled upon the ever so graaious donors of chocolate and cookie wrappers, and settle down for a half hour nap in the the arms of silent bliss. The rest behind us, we retreat towards an equally beautiful reversal.

To the human- cum- canine spirit.