To the River beyond the Mountains

The river

          I cannot express how resolutely you treasure your keep, yet share willingly with those who seek it. That time I walked by your shore, the fish casting shadows in the clear waters flowing over a broad valley, a warm breeze brushed my face, and I smiled. Heaving my rucksack up on my shoulders again, I looked back to the mountain we emerged from, and I imagined that time I looked down from the mountain slope at the white waters bend around two mountain folds. My knees screeched with every step downhill, but the view from between the thick canopy, the feeling of a falling altitude, kept me at it. That mountain, covered in green of every shade, and dark, looked unscalable, unescapable, unconquerable – that is how you keep your secrets, I thought as I smiled walking over polished boulders.

How do I begin to unravel what you taught me, you who are a time-bender, soul-mender, mind-wrapper, life-giver; you who speak through so many voices, appear in so many colours, fly in so many scents. Before I confess to the world that you made me doubt, for the first time in my life, my surefootedness I once prided in, let me begin with the warmest welcome by the pastor.

Sipping tea huddled around a fire pit of the pastor’s house one cold morning, I was unsure if I had packed enough. Just then, the pastor, who would become my constant support, making sure I was warm in his cosy wooden house, brought out his rucksack and set to fill it with foodstuffs we would eat along the way, tightly wrapped in a Zingiber leaf by his wife, and stacked firmly into the bag along with onions, garlic, and chilli chutney. His home stood along a river that would meet you beyond the mountains. The basti – a small settlement a little farther from the main village – where his house was situated, was bustling with activity so early in the morning, the market was full of bamboo shoots and fresh and dried vegetables and meats on sale. Buses plying overnight along this mountain highway stopped here for refreshments – chai, momos, parathas. We sipped another cup and headed to the groceries store. To see them open so early in the morning – at seven o’clock – was a pleasant surprise. We stuffed our bags with more food items, including bottled water, coke, juice, rice, and chicken, to be consumed at the camp. I would learn only after a steep climb how refuelling a cold drink is, no matter how unhealthy.

The will-path

That first part of any climb, through paths passing through sleepy villages, woodsmoke gathering in the banana and betelnut and vegetable gardens, streams gurgling down along paths created by people and Mithun and wildlife alike as they move farther away from the village, has to have a name. A desire path is something created by animals based on their desire – a food source, a water source; I think I will call it the will-path: a desire to move away into nature out of one’s will. I would learn later that my will-path led to you.

The gradual climb up any mountain fills me up with an overwhelming enthusiasm. The air, the colours, the birdsong rejuvenate me. Every step up this mountain sent a burst of energy up my limbs, waking up the sleeping emotions I felt when I trekked those many years ago. I was young then. I did not contemplate before stepping across pebbles to cross a stream or take baby steps across a fallen log over a cascade. I do now. Scenarios flash before my eyes before I make the next step. I think it’s just what aging does.

The people I walked with – most around my age – know these paths, they’ve made them. Every expedition is like gliding through the mountain forests for them. The captain, who led the expedition like a true leader – always having my back –, once nudged me when I spent too much time taking the next step over a river boulder. For him, time was the biggest expense. The pastor, who always led ahead, carried the bulk of provisions and kept my morale up. The pathmaker walked first, swift on his feet and with his dow, clearing away wherever the spiny rattan vine reclaimed the path, and last walked the strider, silently looking for telltale signs of hunters and wildlife and foraging. They put me in the middle, probably to make sure I don’t walk too slow.

The pastor

The path suddenly trailed upwards, cutting through tall trees I had never seen before, up the steep mountain that left no berth to catch breath on. I held on to my sense of being a trekker once, the captain teasing me that I walked on first and second gear while they rode on fourth on such a climb. It was an embarrassment my already-spent legs were ready to take. There was no chance to return and the mountain ahead offered no relief. Suddenly, we came upon a vast clearing on the steep mountain slope. 

The jhum

Every tree had been hacked down, every giant fallen. I could not guesstimate the area or the number of trees fallen, but the machine chainsaw marks revealed that it was swift work. There was no option but to go through this tangle of fallen logs, branches and leaves. This was perhaps the most difficult part of the climb. It suddenly felt extremely hot, and my going considerably slowed down. As we reached the upper edge of this clearing, we saw two Mithuns heading up our way, eating the drying leaves and looking at us curiously. This was a freshly cut jhum cultivation site. It would be set alight in the summer, and hill rice and vegetables grown as monsoon commenced. Excepting the work of the chainsaw, it was as much a part of this landscape as the Mithun – the people of this region had been practicing jhum for thousands of years. It was my eyes that were seeing it for the first time. Many more such sites were slashed and burned over generations, and they were all covered in a uniform green dotted by tall trees. While it did shatter my image of a primary evergreen forest, it reinstated my belief that human mark on nature is nature. I thought back to the bewar – the Central Indian word for jhum – of the highlands that were set to fire one last time a century ago, as we were engulfed by the forest again. I wish I could narrate its story to you.

The fruits

The forest closed in. A hundred shades of green engulfed us. I held most fruits I could find on the way, taking their photo but failing to register their names. Everything was elusive – bird and bug and leaf – that I would have to spend a lifetime getting to know them. I know you offer it on a plate, but it was hard to reach. To remember. Half way up the climb, my limbs were rather spent, and I sought the solace of our first cold drink break. The fizzy sugar-loaded water was an elixir. We took a short break to unwrap leaves and eat the sweet rice cake that I call mountain lembas, with spicy jolokia, my legs slowly coming back to life. Up we went. It’s not that no one walked up here – the locals, men and women alike, came here to harvest bamboo shoots, a staple of the region. The way, as much as it felt far away from any village, was regularly visited for foraging and harvesting.

The gachi (tree)

While we found no people on the way, the signs were everywhere – plastic bottles of cold drinks lay strewn at rest spots, spoiling the essence of the expedition for me. Forging our way upwards still, I asked to be photographed with every gigantic rainforest emergent tree we passed by, and pressed my hand to imagine how tall the tree grew and how deep its roots dug. About half-way up the mountain the forest changed its form. Bamboo – tall, slender, and tangled – reigned. In certain stretches it got so dark that I developed a cold sweat. Here is a place that’s perpetually in darkness, maybe a shard of light pierced at noon, but it would be a cold light whose warmth was extinguished by the dampness before it hit the forest floor.

The bamboo trail

A meshwork of bamboo is impossible to walk, and yet here they were: giant, oval, round-toed footprints in the ground. Bamboo twisted and torn and bent. A well-kept secret. The elephants used this path, their crater-like prints filled in with teardrops of dew. The pathmaker led much farther ahead on his nimble feet, but the pastor, who was equally quick-footed, walked just a few yards ahead of me. In a few minutes the path pressed through a bowl-shaped depression, not made by elephants. The way passed through the bamboo grove that went up the mountain like a well-cut road. The captain informed me that we had joined an ancient mountain route, the Yadodih. Long before motorable roads were made, he narrated, the people used the mountain paths such as this, walking hours on an end, from one town to another. It is said that this part of the mountain always rains, as the water-filled elephant footprints showed, hence the name.

The ridge

That this water is absorbed by the mountain, channelled by the ancient roots, percolated down by the action of gravity, towards you who pull it without intent, was a realising that dawned on me at Pohu, a small bamboo camp on the shoulder. Once we crossed the dark bamboo grove, we traversed along the ridge of the mountain, a fair stroll with clouds on both sides. The ridge was broad, treed by the largest one I could imagine, and draped by a passing cloud. Shafts of sunlight dappled the forest path. In that instance, the weight on my legs was lifted, and I felt like I was gliding too – past the fluorescent moss, a knotwork of roots, old man’s beard hanging from olden boughs, trunks built to withstand storms. That ridge then cut off across the slope of the mountain again, and the weight returned and I yearned to glide again.

We arrived at Pohu unexpectedly. It sat at the highest point on the mountain, but offered the littlest view because of the tall trees. A small spring in a depression held the only source of water for miles in any direction, found muddled by trampling elephants who had had a drink the night before. It was the source of Dera River. It was a satisfying revelation to me. At an elevation of 2,000 m, elephants routinely wandered through the paths I could barely tread. Despite a cool breeze, I wiped the sweat off my brow, and we moved on by rationing water till the next camp.

Pohu

Pohu was a way for humans to know of your secrets. From here on our path descended, and how it did, is worth every tear I imagined racing down my eyes. The pastor caught up on my difficulty the moment the descend began. In a light-hearted note, as my face displayed the displeasure of this next lap, the captain who led ahead disappeared down the mountain with as much ease as he glided up. For me who felt old in my knees, a climb is nothing compared to a descend. Once upon a time, I remembered as my knees locked upon themselves, and my shins could barely take the load, I glided downhill too. The sun was in the third quadrant of the skies, the rays weakening with every descent. After many uncounted steps, we came upon a giant tree with a suru – a tree hole – about ten feet up. The captain walked up to the tree, his tall frame shrinking as he went closer, and knocked on the trunk. In that fading light, two creatures climbed out and glided down the mountain to another tree one after the other, the Particolored flying squirrel – a small, timid, social squirrel that is range-restricted in this part of the Eastern Himalaya. It would have escaped my notice had it not been for the captain and the pastor who helped me with in revealing your secrets. I have no pictures to attest to this story, but those who walk these paths know it all too well.

The Margoh Lwephw

The shadows raced down our backs as my descend slowed. About a third of our way down, it became steep, forcing me to crawl down. It led through large rocks and emerged through the Margoh Lwephw – the place where an elephant hundreds of years ago became stuck between two rocks and died, his trumpeting heard for miles around. The hunters of yore, on hearing the wailing, came upon this point only to see the dead elephant. That was the last of the sun we saw that day. It would have taken my companions three hours to run down the mountain to Dera. I doubled it by three.

Secrets

In the embalmed darkness of this rainforest now. The mountain slope closer to the end of the valley is wetter and denser. Thorny cane becomes invisible, putting a hand on the ground that potentially crawled with scorpions, centipedes, spiders and what not, worried me, but what stung the most was spiny oak, the spiked fruits of Castanopsis indica. And the little openings that offered a view of the twilight sky are claimed by the stinging nettle. Tears came out as curses as we walked on. The pathmaker and the strider decided to race ahead and prepare food. I thanked them immensely. The captain hesitated and cursed under his breath too, for this is where the elephants had come, too. During evening, the forest trails close for the diurnals like humans. These paths turn and twist and end in a thicket, but every time I looked up, the skies twinkled over the darkest canopy I had ever experienced.

A rainforest night

In the night forest, a torchlight is equally useless, making the captain and the pastor, both now ahead of me, rely on their memory and skill. A gunshot indicated that we were close but heading in the wrong direction, and out of the impenetrable green we came upon the camp, a small wooden hut lined with tin sheets sitting on stilts, dull LED solar lights lighting up the place.

The sound of the Dera River, a small, heavily wooded stream, deep in a valley surrounded by dark trees from all sides, under a starry sky and not far from the elephants who retired for the day like me, rekindled all the memories of being in nature in the yesteryears. After a hearty meal of roasted chicken, fish boiled with aquatic plants, and rice, we slept as my legs continued to descend some imaginary mountain they couldn’t get off.

A rainforest morning

Emerald light gleamed in through the open door when I woke up, my eyes absorbing the soothing glow as good as therapy. The pastor had brought me a flat sitting stool to lay my head on when he saw I couldn’t sleep on the wooden planks – much to my embarrassment – but I was honoured and indebted by his gesture, and slept peacefully in the warm, dark camp in the cold depth of the valley. I needed no sah nor coffee. After freshening up, I sat alone by the Dera River, a gurgling hill river, bouldery and small, flowing with a force but not deep. Behind me stood a grove of banana – the tallest herb I had ever seen – and in front a stand of giant ferns – as tall as a palm – and in this quiet river alcove a kingfisher and a forktail flew by, never to be seen again.

The strider

After a hearty meal of steamed rice and boiled fish, we decided to explore the elephant’s playground. That meant climbing a few meters up the way we came the night before. I grunted and unintentionally vocally expressed my intention to avoid it, but I was soon to be in debt of the pastor again, for, I decided to follow in his steps up the steep climb, a ladder made of giant ficus tree, and to a plain where the elephants had twisted and broken vines and branches and danced around a bit. It appeared to be a small family unit, two females, a young calf, and I was told of a tusker roaming this valley year-round.

Dera

Excepting their fresh dung, the biting presence of dumdum flies (Simulid flies) there was no sign of them. Not that I sought them. That secret was best revealed in the hints left behind. The captain was quite enthusiastic to see the elephants. He had seen them on one occasion and taken their photographs, the only one and the only photos of elephants from these parts of the mountains taken by a person. I had no legs to watch and then retreat if an elephant charged at me, taking pleasure in the pile of dung they had left behind. This was enough, I said to myself, and looked for insects who sought it like me.

The Rufous-necked Hornbill

The pastor heard a loud, distinct call far up in the trees, alerting me to listen and follow. We walked up the most gradual climb up to the base of the mountain’s face, and on the tree sat two large hornbills, one a sun-burned orange and the other an ink-splashed black, feeding on the fruits of Beilschmiedia assamica, a rainforest emergent, the Rufous-necked Hornbill. Seeing them took my pain away. I discovered, in seeking you, that the pain was psychological, that my legs could bear this pain and pleasure for a lot longer than I thought I could.

The Rufous-necked Hornbill, female

The hornbill couple, oblivious to our presence, seemed to have had eaten enough, and flew off to another taller tree, and then disappear behind the canopy. It is not that they are rare in these parts of the mountains that makes them special, it is that they appeared after a gruelling expedition, speaking of myself.

The Rufous-necked Hornbill, male

The hornbills were always on my mind from then on. The way to Dellang required crossing over a series of hills, bringing us closer to you. These foothills were smaller, but the path carved into them as precipitous as walking on a log over a valley of thorny cane. My surefootedness that I felt uprooted found its footing here, for the climb and the descend was gentle and less unpleasant. ‘How much more?’ played on my tongue after every climb, only to descend and climb another. ‘A little further’ became captain’s response, to his utter annoyance.

The river trail

Seeing the river now made me realise what a foothill really means. No less than a mountain, it stands at the edge of a plain or a river, the ‘foot’ is of any size. I found myself in another world – orchids without leaves, fruits I couldn’t remember the names of, and lilies that grew way up on trees that I thought were orchids at first. Growing precariously in higher canopy, these Hedychium lilies stood tall and proud, as if to be discovered by a passing company, but really, for the pollinators who would buzz in when no humans could see them. I imagined sunbirds and spiderhunters and flowerpeckers. But I saw none, and the ones I saw I could barely name. 

The arboreal lily

The pastor heard what I think was a tragopan when we were out looking at the hornbills, and his mimicking call – to call it closer – seemed to be like that of the Blyth’s Tragopan, but we saw none. In fact, I was in no physical state to see one, a secret best revealed to me by its own will.

The banana grove

That view of the white waters, distant though it was, was the limit of the elephants. A grove of tall banana stands, fallen over and trampled over to munch on the soft undersides, was the last stretch of the mountain path the elephants would take. This is the farthest they came, captain told me. Captain theorises that elephants started making up the mountain we scaled only once a path was made through it by the people. Until then, they restricted themselves to the valleys and the foothills – in Dera and Dallang, and across the wooded valleys you have carved. This revelation fascinated me, for if the theory is correct, in one sense, the elephants were also once adventurers, like I am one now, making my way towards your banks.

The river

Dallang stood on the vast toe of the mountain, from where I finally caught a glimpse of you flowing in from the north and turning west. Our way finally merged with yours, and you greeted us with a warm breeze, your waters cold and refreshing. How I wish you could feel my knees, but an undammed river has no the need to understand this pain, pray you never have to. It was almost noon, and the macaques I was hoping to find digging for tubers were back in the forest.

The giant fern

Long after our paths parted, as I reclined in the vehicle that came to pick us up and scratched that first itch of a tick bite – one of the many –, I tried to remember all that you revealed. As the road wound around another mountain, now motorable, I heard stories of how my companions treaded by you in sun and rain, and fished and relished in your offerings that are always free but offered only to those who sought it. And as we reached the highway, I found that you were always with us, in the eyes and ears and feet and heart of the captain, the pastor, the pathmaker, the strider. And now that I have experienced your resoluteness, in mine.