India's natural high
Shimmering Moghul palaces and Himalayan beauty delight Derek Fanning
SHIMMERING BEAUTY: The Taj Mahal is an inspiring sight, but the Himalayas exercise an equal draw on visitors to India
A COUPLE of months ago, I turned a corner and saw one of the most beautiful sights upon this earth. It has been incredibly hyped, but it managed to live up to it all. I was in the central Indian city of Agra with a friend of many years standing, and we walked along a passageway lined on either side by impressive red sandstone walls, which brought us to a large open green space; to our right was a sandstone archway.
Beyond it, we saw a white shimmering, as if beckoning us to walk forward into paradise, or into the world of dreams, where all our longings and aspirations would be met. This white shimmering was marble stones and the stones were part of the famed Taj Mahal, a building erected as a mausoleum to house the wife of a Moghul emperor. He loved her greatly, grieved immensely at her passing, and built one of Planet Earth's most extraordinary buildings.
The previous day, feeling jetlagged and groggy, we wandered through the nearby Agra Fort. The heat was sweltering as we walked in this Moghul fort, which was also an evocative building, arousing different responses in the tourist's mind. In one section of the fort there is a marble seat within a shadowy recess and before this recess is a covered pavilion containing many giant pillars, and beyond this lies a large open square with enough room to contain thousands of people -- within this recess upon the marble seat the Islamic Moghul emperor would sit in state. The recess exudes power; waves of power fan out from the area towards the viewer. In short then, Agra Fort for me represented power in its various aspects, whether benevolent or malevolent.
While India is a fascinating and beguiling country to travel in, it is also, of course, a land beset by enormous problems, for instance poverty on a massive scale. In Mumbai there are the malaria-stricken slums and in Delhi the traveller sees many people sleeping rough. On arriving one evening in Delhi train station we were met with a wall of heat, not a breath of air, and a chaos of people and vehicles. Beggars rapped on our taxi windows pleading with us for money while we waited for half-an-hour in a traffic jam to get out of the station.
Travelling by road in India is hazardous, and India accounts for about 10 per cent of road accident fatalities worldwide. A few days after first arriving in the country we took a train into the foothills of the Himalayas, to the famous town of Rishikesh. The Beatles came here in the late Sixties and spent a few months practising transcendental meditation with Maharishi Yogi.
The town is beautifully situated on the wide and strongly-flowing River Ganges, the banks of which are dotted with ashrams (Hindu monasteries). One evening, at sunset, we went down to the riverside and listened to a sung and chanted Hindu service, which was deeply moving. A group of boys no more than 10 years of age, in their saffron robes, swayed and sang to the religious music overlooked by a giant statue of a Hindu God.
From Rishikesh we drove into the beautiful Himalayan province of Garhwal, once a popular stamping ground for British mountaineers during the Twenties and Thirties. We drove for 12 hours to the village of Lohjung where our nine-day trek was to begin. The road was winding, often poorly maintained and we witnessed two car crashes during the trip. For a while a jeep heavily laden with passengers drove in front of us. There were 10 people crammed into this jeep which would only fit five comfortably. Two men stood at the rear of the vehicle holding a cross bar and their feet perched on the indicator lights. The indicator lights didn't look secure at all.
When we arrived at our lodge in Lohjung it was dark, and raining heavily. Our basic room was filled with moths and one of these moths was camouflaged as a green leaf.
The following morning, we began our trek through this unfrequented and gorgeous region. We would not see another trekker for six days. In the distance, we could see the great snowbound peaks. The weather was cloudless and warm, and there was a strong sense of contentment in this lovely valley.
One afternoon, we descended a steep slope and entered the remote village of Gingee. Lammergeier falcons flew close to us, surfing the air currents. These impressive birds swooped before a giant green hill of 3,700 metres, and beyond rose the mighty white and grey facade of the peak called Nanda Ghunti; at the same moment the clouds cleared from Trishul and revealed this mountain in its magnificence and glory. The scene was like an epiphany, a coalescing between the divinity within and the divinity without.
A few days later, we reached the top of the famous Kuari Pass after just an hour's climb from our camp, which was good going. From the top of the pass the view of the Badrinath peaks was stupendous, as if one had stepped into heaven. To our right was the 5,000-metre peak of Pangerchuli, which my guidebook recommended as a climb. It doesn't need crampons or ice axe, and is a walk, but sadly, we didn't have time. From the pass, we could also see the 7,000-metre peak called Kamet which a friend of mine tried to climb a few years ago. Having seen no other trekkers, bar those at Bednibugyal, on the descent from the Pass we saw 30 or 40 people, including a school group which was not a happy outing: These teenagers (of 15 or 16 years of age) were clearly not enjoying their experience. That evening, we were in our eighth and final camp, which was a delightful location in the forest. Through the trees one could see the mighty peak of Nanda Devi (7,816 metres), first climbed by Bill Tilman in 1936.
That evening I read a fine passage from Robert Macfarlane's book Mountains of the Mind. Climbing upwards came to represent -- as it still does -- the search for an entirely new way of being. Experience was unpredictable, more immediate and more authentic in the mountains.
The upper world was an environment which affected both the mind and the body in ways the cities or plains never did -- in the mountains you were a different you.
- Derek Fanning
