Prakash Per­sad

Part 1

Moun­tains have al­ways been a source of won­der­ment, fas­ci­na­tion and in­spi­ra­tion to mankind. The Hi­malayas, hous­ing the high­est peaks in the world, hold a spe­cial place in the hearts of the brave and the com­mit­ted. The ad­her­ents of moun­taineer­ing have a kind of deep fer­vour for their sport that can be likened to that which peo­ple have for their re­li­gion, which en­ables them, with faith and self-be­lief, to face the gravest of dan­gers and suc­cess­ful­ly over­come them.

Nes­tled deep in the Hi­malayas are al­so many of the most im­por­tant and holy places of pil­grim­age for Hin­dus. Here lie the source of the Gan­ga (Ganges) and Ya­mu­na Rivers, Badri­nath and Kedar­nath Tem­ples, an­cient and sa­cred tem­ples ded­i­cat­ed to Lord Vish­nu and Lord Shi­va, re­spec­tive­ly, and al­so HemKund, a sa­cred site for the Sikhs. The routes that lead to these sites gen­er­al­ly fol­low the up­per lev­el trib­u­taries of the Gan­ga. In Ju­ly 1986, I made my first vis­it to the foothills of the Hi­malayas, to Harid­war and Rishikesh, both very an­cient holy cities. On this vis­it, stand­ing on a sus­pen­sion bridge span­ning two ver­dant hills, fac­ing the mag­nif­i­cent Gan­ga rac­ing be­low as she emerged from the Hi­malayas, I ex­pe­ri­enced a sense of de­ja-vu, jux­ta­posed with a pro­found sense of long­ing, bright­ened by a soar­ing ex­hil­a­ra­tion, tem­pered with a still­ing of my mind.

This is where I be­long, my very be­ing cried out; this is my earth­ly home, my spir­i­tu­al heav­en, the font of qui­etude, the door­way to life's spir­i­tu­al jour­ney. My in­ner yearn­ing to fol­low the an­cient and time-ho­n­oured jour­ney of my fore­bears in­to the Hi­malayas grew deep­er with the pass­ing of time. Sev­er­al trips to In­dia and 25 years af­ter, I de­cid­ed that, come hell or high wa­ter, this was the year. So, with my wife as my earth­ly com­pan­ion and with God as my spir­i­tu­al one, I set off de­spite the warn­ing and ad­vice of my tour op­er­a­tor that the mon­soons in the moun­tains were ear­li­er and heav­ier and the jour­ney, nev­er easy, was much worse than nor­mal. Thus with a lit­tle trep­i­da­tion and much faith, we pro­ceed­ed.

The road up, a nar­row two-lane paved road at the best of times, wind­ed up and down the deep val­leys that fol­lowed the trib­u­taries of the Gan­ga up­wards. On one side of the road were the al­most ver­ti­cal moun­tains, on the oth­er side a deep ver­tig­i­nous drop of many hun­dreds of feet to the rush­ing riv­er be­low. To make mat­ters more in­ter­est­ing, rail­ings to im­pede or pre­vent falling over were no way in ad­e­quate sup­ply. Signs how­ev­er were co­pi­ous, im­plor­ing the dri­vers to dri­ve slow­ly. These were large­ly ig­nored. Dri­ving in In­dia is a high art mas­tered on­ly by In­di­an dri­vers, for whom I have the great­est of re­spect and ad­mi­ra­tion. On this high-al­ti­tude road, roar­ing along were huge lo­cal non-air-con­di­tioned tourist bus­es for lo­cals, slight­ly small­er air-con­di­tioned tourist bus­es, jeeps, SU­Vs, cars, both small and large, and what can on­ly be de­scribed as mo­tor­cy­cle brigades.

In­ter­spersed with these mo­torised means of trans­port were the sad­hus and oth­er spir­i­tu­al as­pi­rants walk­ing their way up. Leav­ing Rishikesh at 7 am on the first leg of the jour­ney, we en­coun­tered a huge land­slide as rocks, of the blue met­al type, had come tum­bling down. The en­tire road­way was blocked. While an ex­ca­va­tor was slow­ly clear­ing the road, yaa­tris (pil­grims) formed a hu­man chain and were as­sist­ing the clear­ing process by throw­ing in­di­vid­ual rocks down the hill­side. Af­ter sev­er­al hours, a nar­row clear­ing was made and ve­hi­cles pro­ceed­ed to dri­ve over a pre­vi­ous­ly flat­tened land­slide through the nar­row clear­ing.

What should have been an eight to nine-hour jour­ney stretched in­to a 15-hour one. What was sup­posed to be a day­time jour­ney be­came a night­time one. An evening-time ar­rival at the in­ter­me­di­ate stop for the night mor­phed in­to a night­time stop with the at­ten­dant hours of dri­ving on this nar­row-curv­ing with many hair­pin turns-road with no street light­ing and rail­ings with the ever present pre­cip­i­tous drop to the riv­er. Night­time dri­ving nat­u­ral­ly was faster as there were few­er ve­hi­cles on the road. A lit­tle af­ter 10 pm, we ar­rived at the in­ter­me­di­ate stop, the town of Joshi­math.

• Prakash Per­sad is the di­rec­tor of Swa­ha Inc