31- 5-81

Sach Pass

Chamba bus to Gowary 5hours to cover 64kms.

Walk down valley across a wooden bridge and up the other side.

Stopped half-way for our last king mango.

Along the road to Trella rock blasting - yellow bulldozers.

Pretty stunted oak-like trees.

We kept pace with an old man who sweated a lot and carried more than both of us put together.

All the people out on their roofs in Barrogah.

Flat mud roof tops, square houses built into the rock of the hillside, roof top conversations.

Rest house - clean, well built with pretty coloured railings and a grassy forecourt.

Hazy blue mountains - two pictures in oil pastel.

Took small warm walks to keep loose.

Lots of flies, had to stop painting as I couldn't see for them.

Engineer's Assistant's wife and sister leading an idle life - because of their servants, they did nothing all day whilst their husbands were out working.

The Chalkida fed us beans and hung around where we ate, speaking simple messages in many fluent words. I got the runs right in the middle of the second meal, unfortunate for the following journey.

1st cup of salted tea asked for us by the resident Engineer (numkin chai).

31-5-81 Barragah

 

Pretty route - level road all the way up to Satrundi  20km

Many redwoods and pretty birds and steep drops.

Invited in for chapatti, butter and Lassie by a handsome Muslim cattle family. In a square flat roofed mud caked building with an L shaped mud floor for the cattle. But still much space in the corner, they slept in for ALL the family. And a bar to stop the cattle from entering resting on two wooden forks, with the cooking fire in the middle of the floor. Babies asleep on fir matting (from the trees). They took no money, we said farewell and on to Satrundi.

Passing giggling road gangs with whom we could not compete. Reaching, just in time for the afternoon rains up a very tiring steep slope. passing beautiful pink and yellow flowers like wild English spring woodland stars.

 

2-6-81 Satrundi

In this area, everything looks like English vegetation, but on closer inspection is not, but all the same seems to perform the same functions.

To the Rest house behind the rock (one wall).

"Chalkida away, so, no room and no fetch," we were told by smiling, misunderstanding kids and who felt a touch of our tired, hot wrath.

Giving up we decided to crash in one of the more ethnic spots - on to a tent with stone walls, leaking roof and areas at the ends to see the sky through. Run by a tough, local but Nepalese woman who didn't mind showing her affections to her passing friends and may may well have slept with one of them over (that) night. Had three cups of tea, they were delicious and then spread out a bit on the fir bedding carpet. Had a look at the steep, clean wall of the pass surrounded by yellow daisies.

The tracks of the men going up: zigzagged and those of men coming down: straight. But there was no-one moving at that late hour of 5pm as the snow was melted and highly dangerous.

Still finding places to relieve myself of the runs.

The chalkidar discovered us and hey presto! we have a small room with some plank beds, with a little fire which was duly lit.

 

A small procession of people in white turbans and woolly coats: turbans that end up wound round and round the waist, and white, cloth pangi hats with weathered faces - rope shoes, canvas boots. Some with baggy pyjamas, some loose round the bum, tight round the ankle - striped jockey britches.

[There are so many different standard of clothing. Who can judge your looks, you may come from just down the road - and round the corner.]

The tent: the brown centre of much passing activity. Where the coolies sat in two circles round the cooking fire eating or waiting for chana. And potatoes, dal, rice and chapatis.

In the chai tent with Narayan Singh the local lad who worked in a bank in "Shimla" - returning once a year to his homeland in the mountains, but possibly becoming more distant with each passing year. But this year,home for his brother's wedding.

And a toughened oldish man from the council of elders at Kilar (Pangi) - The Panchaiat. Simply wise, honest and trustworthy - I suppose you trust them immediately, or you don't. Who forced as much local liquor (country) made from sugar cane - as oppose to barley on the other side of the pass - as he could. Nudging my arm and pointing at the glass - I laughed each time. A very agreeable man with a proverbial ox's stamina, whom we gave chapatis and aloo subgee to.

Another woolly dressed hardened man was there who acted loudly, just like black Mike from the Old Arcade. Giving people heart attacks, poking, demanding, accusing, insulting, giving everyone the strength of defence. Making fun of "us tourists". We were too tired to mind, we'd settled in o.k. and they had fixed one of the triangle holes in the end of the end of the tent earlier.

So to bed and the smokey fire, tops and tails on a single plastic woven charpoy.

BANG BANG, and enters the loudmouth from the tent - wants to crash on the floor. A. fiens neo-hysteria and he leaves - - - - -

 

 

3rd June 81.

Going up from Satrundi.

The tracks from the coolies.

The giant bowl which housed the flowers beneath the snow line.

Then awake at 4 in the morning - an earlier sunrise than we had imagined.
Back to the tent where all the porters shouldered their immense loads. Some of them make the pass 20 - 30 times a year, they are only legally allowed to carry 40kg ----  they all laughed and pointed at my Chamba chappels with plastic bags over my socks.
Only chai this early in the morning.
Down to over the broken stream and over the rocks covered with the pretty flowers. The mountain tops formed an amphitheatre for the assent - all triangles and arrow heads.What a climb! the string of porters all out behind and in front, dizziness from the lack of oxygen. All happily urging each other on "Shabash!" they shouted, some with axes, all with sticks, I wished mine had been a bit bigger,
Often rests, slow grinding upward footsteps. I decided to move off the path to a rock to sit. I decided to sit, started to slide and my stick was not too strong. I was hauled off though and saved from a few broken bones. After a tough stretch we triumphed by sitting on a rock whilst a family dragged a cow along, it slipped just by us. A cow across 15km of glacier! Incidentally, I would have gotten boots if I had known it was that distance. So we walked to the sky, reached the pass and everyone passed around sweets and reeked of comradery. Bowed to the Siva shrine everyone was given red or blue "torn off" rag to show they'd been. On down to the chai shop at the pass, where the runs forbade me to eat much rice and dry dal.

 

3-6-81 Sach Pass to Bindrabani.

The run through the pass started here and curved round (slowly to the left) in a great banked bowl of mountains and chopped off spurs, but mainly glacier.

When we walked to the top of a ridge, there was always another ridge - the same spurs to walk round. Walking down the glacier there was always another hump, another flatter stretch. As the morning went on the ice warmed up and became more slippery and footholds were washed away.

At the apex of the bowl, we stopped to look both ways - what mountains and vastness and strange weathering of rocks? the nearer the end of the glacier, the dirtier the snow and ice and the less the track marks. Navigation became pretty difficult and we often had to retrace our steps and often got wet pants. The afternoon clouds began to puff and emerge, life and light took on a bleaker aspect, but a broken path above the glacier slowly took us to the other side of the river to Dunai.

In the cliffs were the stone rest houses and another, but better made chai tent with better stone walls within it's sides, one whole wall of solid rock and chai. It all nestled in a cleft stuck right on a fissure in the middle of the rock face - probably away from the weather.

It was a tiring walk down to the river bed, across the rickety bridge and up the other side. I stood outside the tent for 2-3 minutes in order to get the breath to speak, but it was good to sit in the warmth with hot tea, watching the porters/coolies come down with their square sack packs held onto their heads and shoulders with rope.

-As we turned the corner from Dunai we came across the sign which proved all our previous Tourist Lodge calculations miscalculated. The path went up and down a bit and ten glaciers had to be crossed on the route, we experienced fear because in some places to slip was death and the ice was getting slipperier all day. After a few kilometres we saw a group of coolies trailing across the broken glacier down below - not for us - far too dangerous.

The plants were amazing, on the other side were feint primrose coloured spear headed flowers in large clumps in great profusion around the crags and snow waterfalls.

Tiredness weighed up down and we lost each other for half an hour.

But eventually Bindrabani appeared around a corner and down below - a cluster of mud huts, tents and one or two important buildings. We reached the guest house where they simply sat us down and stared at us. We escaped to the nearest chai tent and returned to find the best room designated to the local travelling engineer. We have a dampish, large, cold room because the fire doesn't work, a weird chalkida, and people that try to visit during the night and it's cold.

 

5-6-81 Kilar

6-6-81 Keruni

 

8-6-81 Kilar

Phil x Hilary Gray

8th June, We had to leave Karuni, my runs weren't getting any better and it's hard to live in a large family surrounded all the time with no toilet. Mind, the amount learnt made most uncomforts worthwhile.

They seemed to live fairly long lives although the cleanliness of the system was very dubious. They kept the cows inside the house during the winter to keep them warm and fed them in the day. There were always piles of dung to wade into in the dim light, but mainly during the day they attracted flies, millions of them, sometimes, you could hardly see for them.

And so, the village elders would come up to see the foreigners - too often!, sometimes to have a rest. But they certainly weren't difficult to communicate with and Narian Singh, our host spoke pretty good English, even if he did drink too much of his father's home made liquor. Some of the folks would simply start the day on it, I know because where we shared the double straw matting with Narian at the foot of the storeroom and we would be awoken by loud shameless alcoholics or loud shameless sheep waiting for their breakfast at sunrise. The little urchins would stand and shoo them away from our door and we would wait for our very weak tea ( a commodity you have to buy and therefore very scarce). Always happy, but because they were up, you had to be up - no strings or phsychology attached to it. So- out in the fields for my first "runs" of the day and wipe me bum with lavender - such luxury! And back for lassie and baked potatoes and some of the nicest dark fudge cake I have ever eaten in my life - curd and ghee and barley and honey from the bee's nest kept in one of the upper rooms. Turn down first offer of country liquor of the day. Go for a walk past all the muddled flat topped family houses who all come out to stare at the "abnormalities" crossing their boundaries, but friendly. And into the fields of wheat and flour mills and different wild bushes. The straight bushes, they let stand till three years old, then lop the top off to coppice for firewood. The recent ten year old apple trees and the huge snow capped mountains just across the way.

Shabash!

 

Mum and dad. 8th June

So, get me a copper kettle had nothing on this - more like a circular bath tub with a glowing (soaked) ruby red wooden fire underneath with "that" cauldron bubbling away on top and people from the village keeping it going. Young and old, in turn, they probably distilled from dawn to dusk in the warm weather. On top, a pottery washer (three feet across) with a lip and a spout over hanging  another, smaller round earthenware container. Very thick to keep the temperature consistent. And on top, the copper tray. The whole unit is situated by a spring, one pipe goes to feed the tray and one to take the hot water away, all on suction. During the winter, when they sleep with their cattle and huge family, all in the downstairs room, I believe they drink it all the time. These people know how to live without privacy, in fact, I wonder if they have a word for it. Some of them are also quite content to have a morning mug of "arrack" rather than tea - tea costs money. So - up with the sun, down your bowl of grog and out into the fields or out to your particular turn at whatever communal job that needs doing.

Its an amazing sight to see all the villagers (pop 500) cattle and sheep being herded together round the mountain, by whoever's turn it is. All the scruffy village kids wait for their families cows, they all know them by sight and somehow separate them, and get them into their ground floor "garages". Seeing one of the houses being built was quite an experience. They are simply communal labyrinths. We managed to survive the lack of privacy for two nights, but found ourselves becoming pretty tired. And it is pretty much base level existence - John Seymore should take a visit, his country tweed clothes and walrus moustache wouldn't last too long though.

 

Mike and Sue Greenshaw. 8th June

They could have been red Indians , with their weather worn faces, jewellery shawls and all in the shadows lit up by a bowl of burning splinters and singing, chanting unison and separate. Cheerleaders and chorus-mongers on and on, whilst they made the wedding bread (plain crepes) on the big flat black stone heated by a long fire underneath. Grandma was there and she certainly acted the wisest, enforcing her prerogative with the greatest of ease. Her job was to keep the light going and she managed that on different levels. Lines cut into her face and more earrings pierced into around her ears than I could immediately count. And twinkling, sparkling, alive eyes. The two girls crouched by the black stone, thumbing out the wet flour into thin circles and scooping up the remaining clayey ball from the centre of the bread, slapping it back into the batter container and wetting their hands again they playfully did most of the singing and would laugh deep, pleasant laughs about anything although they could be painful at times. The dead ram lay six yards away with a cloth over its eyes to keep the flies off - maturing, (just by the pile of straw). And we drunk the country liquor out of more copper than brass bowls and danced like upended twirling aeroplanes stomping the mud-on-boards floor. The brother, due to be married held my hand and helped me along the dark corridor through the middle of the house to the outside where I took a "short walk" as they did not have "one" inside. He was there waiting for me when I returned. Quiet but thoughtful and always skewiff with cloth pangi hat and -scruffy- I cannot be called this again, not even if I take to wearing odd shoes. I mean, its too bloody cold to wash and the dirt keeps you warm. The heifers and sheep they feed in the middle corridor at sunrise tend your clothes up anyway and soap is far too expensive to buy to wash things so they get beaten and remain neutral dirty. Who cares anyway, he does his work and never fights and doesn't drink because he cant control it, and although he is the middle brother, he will inherit the farming household, whilst his two fortunate brothers go to work in a bank many kilometres away over the pass. They will come home one month every year and the people in the village will not understand one thing about the new life tales they have to tell and why should they? they are wise at what they know and always have been. What will happen when the lazy, incompetent engineers get a road through and jeeps can supply them with what they need?

 

9-6-81 Dharwas

10-6-81 Ishtari

11-6-81 Atholi

12-6-81 Shashu

13-6-81 Gulhar - Kishtwar