Saturday, January 26, 2008

Touring as Something Other than Hell, Part 2: Himalayan Vistas, River Worship, and a Thrilling Roar

Following the trauma of Delhi and Agra, the hills and fields and rivers of Uttaranchal, a state carved from Uttar Pradesh in 2000, seemed a proper antidote to the sclerotic and suffocating city. With our base in the comparatively drowsy and diminutive capital of Dehra Dun (which we explored on our first day in the state), my mom, dad, brother, and I made day trips to Mussoorie and Haridwar, before departing for our final stop outside of Ramnagar and Corbett Tiger Reserve.


Mussoorie: Located approximately two kilometers above sea level (6561 feet), Mussoorie, the “Queen of Hill Stations,” is a flock of buildings—including an inordinate number of hotels—flung across a heavily wooded ridge in the Himalayan foothills. The only road to Mussoorie from Dehra Dun (Elev: 2296 feet) is tortuous and steep, and though only about 30 kilometers separate the cities, it takes well over an hour to traverse the distance between the two. Although it aspires to offer a great deal to tourists, Mussoorie is little more than a grand view—two views, in fact, each dramatic in its own fashion. To the south, in the direction of Dehra Dun, a panorama of the Doon Valley unfolds, green and riven by the fingers of the foothills, which point towards Delhi. To the north, peeking just above a muscular ridge, are the distant snow-packed heads of the Himalaya. Too bad, then, that the day was swimming in haze; the southern exposure in particular was blurred and indistinct. It hardly mattered, though: the city had postcard poise (see above) and even from afar the Himalaya announced themselves with a fluent grandiosity.

Haridwar: Wiith my dad was sidelined by intestinal distress, the next day my mom, brother, and I departed for Haridwar alone—alone, that is, save for our driver Samuel and his four-year-old munchkin son, Lucky. As a result of its propinquity to the source of the Ganges River (Ganga in Hindi), Haridwar is one of the four holiest cities in all of Hindu; it’s also believed that Lord Vishnu spilled nectar here and in doing so left his footprint behind. The city stretches for several kilometers along the river and occupies a narrow swath of land between the Ganga and a steep, scrubby ridge. No doubt owing to the nearness of its source, the Ganga was a pale and milky green (shades of the non-St. Paddy's Day Chicago River) and looked nearly clean enough to drink from.


Haridwar has two famous hill-top temples, Mansa Devi and Chandi Devi, both most enjoyably accessed by cable car—or ropeline, as it’s known in India; in fact, the ropeline to Chandi Devi is the second longest in the country. The views from the temples, Chandi Devi in particular, were commanding, or rather would have been if not for the unshakable haze. The temples themselves are uninspiring—dispiriting is a better word, given that their primary function seems to be the extraction of rupees from visitors’ pocketbooks (a subject which certainly merits its own post, although it’s likely I’ll never get around to writing it)—and the temple monkeys (above with pilfered ice cream cone) are even better shake-down artists than the pandits. In accordance with the American way, the Gaffs tried to take more than they gave, and we made out handsomely: tikkas for our foreheads, bracelets for our wrists, consecrated money for our wallets, consecrated sweets for our bellies, and marigold garlands for all! My mom’s garland was the heaviest and gaudiest, hanging below her waist, while my brother’s was small and understated. Mine was just right.

After looting Mansa Devi, we secured a spot along the Ganga at the Har-Ki-Pairi (The Footstep of God) ghat, where the daily Ganga aarti ceremony is held, and spent the ninety minutes before sunset watching inspired bathers and waders shiver in the current and monkeys scramble across roofs, trees, and walls on the opposite bank. As there is not a single square inch of India where the pursuit of money is thought profane and properly barred, we were also forced to fend off a steady and miscellaneous stream of vendors, beggars, and children demanding ten rupees for a tikka. One fellow with broken eyeglass lenses and ragged clothes importuned me to convey his plaints to the President of the United States and the U.N.—the tribals and lower castes of Uttaranchal were being brutally suppressed, he told me. He spoke fluent, stilted English and didn’t ask for money.


At dusk the Ganga aarti began. I don’t know much of the ceremony’s history or the significance of its forms and rituals; it is simple veneration of the river—the Great Mother—and aarti is a particular variety of worship involving the lighting of lamps. At 5:45, bells began to clang in that joyful, rhythmless temple style and five men came to the river’s edge bearing large lamps. As ponderous music piped over loudspeakers, the lamps were ignited and held aloft. Some of the assembled (and there were likely a few thousand) sang along to the music in call-and-response style; the calling was done by a shrill and nasal soprano voice whose style typified what, until relatively recently, was considered the truest, most beautiful expression of the female singing voice in India (it used to grate on me terribly; now it’s as much a part of the unregistered ambient tapestry of this country as the honking of car horns). At indecipherable intervals, the men slowly and gently swooped the lamps in an arc below their knees. The lamps burned with some high-octane fuel—their shivering flames rose several feet into the gloom (see above), projecting solid stripes of orange light onto the river’s surface. Darkness settled, and glowing offerings—sturdy vessels constructed of large tree leaves and brimming with the blossoms and petals of flowers arrayed around a central candle—were released into the current. I had hoped that the entire river might be choked and glittering with their light; alas, the scintillating armada of my imagination was, in reality, no more than a twinkling flotilla.

Corbett Tiger Reserve: It all comes back to tigers. For the trip’s grand finale, we entered the forests of the night in search of that singular, ferocious, and most fearsome of predators in a nation overflowing with hot-blooded hunters (not the least of which are the omnipresent vendors, hawkers, and beggars--it all comes back to them too). We arrived at the entrance of the Reserve shortly after 6, the first jeep of many to roll up in the pre-dawn gloom, waiting for the gates to admit us at 6:30. It would be nearly 5 when we departed, dusty, dead-eyed, and deprived of a tiger sighting—that is not to say, however, that we left disappointed.

Corbett National Park is enormous, more than 1300 square kilometers, and its Tiger Reserve, though smaller (around 500 square km), is nonetheless significant. And while only 15% of the total area of Ranthambore Park is accessible to tourists, it would seem that nearly all of Corbett can be reached by jeep—in the afternoon we spent hours traversing muddy tracks deep in the forest, combing the remote bowels of the Reserve for the striped menace of legend. Corbett is even more beautiful than Ranthambore, greener and more thickly forested, full of rills and broad, stony riverbeds, deep ravines, bluffs, gently sloping hills, and stands of tall, yellowing grass perfect for concealing tigers. It abounds in deer (three species) and monkeys (two species), and we also observed a wild boar, several varieties of birds, and a sizable herd of pillaging elephants.


On our second venture past the elephants, in the course of making our way back to the Reserve’s “campus” for lunch, we stopped so that our guide, who moonlighted as a wildlife photographer and seemed dismayed by our frugal snapping, could amuse himself with my camera. After several minutes of shooting, one of the elephants took exception to our presence and made an abortive charge toward our jeep, stopping perhaps thirty yards short and releasing a minatory trumpet. We were suitably shaken and urged our driver to get moving; however, shortly thereafter, a guttural bark somewhere in the forest off to our left caused him to throw the jeep into reverse and rapidly retrace our tracks. The bark, we quickly learned, was the distress call of the langur monkey; it suggested that a tiger was in the vicinity.

We waited attentively for perhaps ten minutes while the barks continued intermittently, occasionally drifting back in the direction of the elephants (who continued their pillaging unperturbed in the distance), occasionally backtracking further in the opposite direction. It had been several minutes since the last bark when two elephants behind us suddenly made a right turn toward the road; we heard a brief bellow from close by. “Tiger roar!” our guide whispered excitedly (it wasn’t a proper roar—tigers are capable of dozens of vocalizations), but instead of backing up in the direction of the sound, we remained rooted in place and waited, every fiber of our being focused on the forest behind us. And waited.

We never saw the tiger; it never emerged from the thick undergrowth, at least within eyeshot. Nevertheless, the experience was thrilling—in many ways more thrilling than spotting the Lady of the Lake in Ranthambore. It was the thrill of pursuit and the thrill of fear that quickened the pulse—the fear that the thing you were pursuing, a beast so terrible it turned aside creatures more than ten times its own size, might decide, on a whim, to turn on you. And the thrill didn’t soon subside.

5 comments:

The Riot said...

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