Story and Photo: Louise Lefebvre
In March, the four began their journey, with Arvind as their guide, in a jeep-taxi that took them down toward Dharamsala, then up the Chamba Valley. Louise had packed some snacks, her camera, tripod and bottles of mineral water. As they traveled through cultivated valleys of rice fields and farms toward the distant mountain ranges, Louise felt the stress roll off her back. Pines, palms and rhododendrons stood erect on the banks of the dried riverbeds, where time and water had transformed boulders into glittering marbles. During the monsoon these rivers were extremely dangerous, but in March, farmers brought their cattle to drink and construction crews gathered pebbled gravel. After several hours, the pavement became a dirt road maze of potholes, fallen rocks and branches.
The road suddenly ended at a grouping of three buildings; a general store with its display of food and products, a chai tea daba with two tables and mismatched chairs, and a boarded-up structure where mules, laden with goods, waited. As they got out of the car, Louise spotted a shimmering light reflecting off of roofs, high on a plateau in the distance just below the snow line.
"Is that Kareri?" she asked Arvind, pointing toward the mountain.
"No. We will be going through that village but Kareri is much higher still."
Her heart skipped a beat. What had she committed herself to doing? She knew too well how her legs suffered from chronic pain and how her lungs had been scarred a few years ago from a difficult bout of pneumonia. But trekking into the mountains had been a lifelong dream for her, and if not now, when? Slow. Go slow, she reassured herself. Do not panic.
Arvind turned toward a dapper man in his early twenties, with eyes black as coal, dressed in a traditional black Gaddi woolen jacket, coming down the path.
"Hey everyone, this is Wipin. We will stay in his mother's house this evening and he will guide us through the mountains."
They all introduced themselves. He immediately began telling his story.
"We are goat herders who cherish our isolation. Our language is unique and quite different than Hindi. Kareri is the highest village in this mountain range," Wipin spoke proudly. "Welcome, let us begin our journey."
They descended toward the river, cautiously crossing over a swaying suspension bridge, missing several planks. The morning was divine and along the path, Louise found her eyes danced from one thing to another — clay-bricked houses with bright laundry strung between trees, goats tugging at thick brush, a farmer throwing grain to a flurry of hens and a woman sweeping dust clouds with her straw broom.
Winded, she stopped often, fighting nausea. Eva taught her to breathe deeply through her abdomen, sending the energy back into Mother Earth. This helped momentarily and gave her the courage to carry on. Sometimes the ground moved below her feet as pebbles tumbled along the path. Her chest was tight with pain. She fought the urge to give up, apologizing often for her tardiness but everyone was very supportive and patient.
"No one is in a hurry," said Rob. "It's about the journey, not the destination. It gives us a chance to appreciate."
When the group stopped to give her heart a rest, Arvind named the birds that flew around them — magpie, blue jay, vulture and thrust. He explained how his people cultivated mountainous land through terracing. Along the path, they passed a man with his water buffalo, a child playing in the long grass, goats wandering, a woman cutting branches as feed for her animals and hay staked in trees for drying. It was exhilarating.
As Louise climbed, she was slowly relieved of her things. Wipin took her backpack and Arvind her camera case and tripod. It became easier to concentrate and she set benchmarks for herself — another 20 steps, just to the top of the next hill, stop for one minute, walk for five.
Arvind was gracious and in the steepest parts, he waited with her.
"Just go on without me, I'll catch up," she said, but the group wouldn't hear of it.
They traversed the plateau on which stood the village they had seen from the road and there they got relief from the constant uphill. They stopped to wash their faces in the river and to eat. It recharged their bodies. Next, the group entered a Ponderosa pine forest, oddly reminiscent of southern British Columbia.
The last kilometre of the climb was excruciating and precipitous. Steps cut into the rock were too high to climb like stairs and they had to put two feet on each and push to the next one. Her knees trembled with exertion. On either side of the steps, the cliffs plunged deep into valleys. It was as if they were climbing on the spine of a giant: spectacular, but scary as hell.
Her heart pumped almost out of her chest cavity. She had incredible respect for the people from Kareri who made this trip often, to go to the general store or to meet a vehicle to travel south.
After five hours of climbing, as they approached the peak, they heard drumming echoing off the cliffs.
"There is a wedding taking place in Kareri this weekend," explained Wipin. "I too will be married this summer to a bride my father picked for me when I was seven."
They stepped through a wooden gate on the pathway and entered the village. As they zig-zagged through backyards, along penned animal enclosures and pathways between the houses, the people waved and the children ran after them, hiding behind trees when they looked at them.
Wipin's home was at the far end of the village, on the edge of a mustard field, facing the mountains. His neighbour, sitting on his stoop receiving a razor haircut from another man, called to his child. Chickens and kids, of both the four-legged and two-legged varieties, ran around in the same yard.
Wipin's teenage sisters, barefoot and wearing Gaddi suits, a type of dress over pants, greeted them, shaking their hands enthusiastically. They learned that having visitors to Kareri was a new form of tourism for this village and a much-needed source of income.
The group was invited to remove their shoes and to come into the kitchen for chai. Relieved to finally take off her hiking boots, Louise stepped in and looked around while her eyes adjusted to the darkened light within the room. The kitchen's forest-green cement floor was dominated by a fire burning in a pit. Water boiled in a pot on a grill above it and next to it, on a floor mat, sat Wipin's mother, knitting. Wipin kissed her forehead and invited them to join her, handing them straw mats. Louise noticed she too was barefoot, wearing a light gauze sari, in strong contrast to her own many layers of pants and tops. At a low-lying tiled sink in the far corner of the kitchen, one of the sisters, squatting, washed cups.
The mother spoke in her Gaddi language and Wipin translated. "My mother welcomes you."
Louise's knees ached in the crossed position on the floor so she lifted herself up to a ledge by the door. It was now late afternoon and she was starving, feeling faint. The chai, thick and greasy, went down like a clump of butter.
Arvind suggested they look around the village while the evening meal was prepared. Louise took her tripod and camera and started up the path that appeared to circumvent the village. She took numerous pictures of the setting sun casting a golden hue on the buildings, the dried haystacks like sleeping sentinels and the mustard flowered fields. A group of uniformed school children came running down the path, their teacher behind them. She convinced them to pose for a class picture, with the distant glacier as the backdrop. The students were amused but the teacher remained steadfast, annoyed by this frivolity.
Continuing along, she spotted women washing clothes in the stream, their children playing nearby. Hiding behind the bushes, she snapped some shots but her camera shutter alerted them to her. They looked in her direction, she waved and the children came running. To her delight they were camera hams. They posed, flexing muscles, making faces, pushing each other out of the way to be the center of attention. Shy ones hid behind older siblings. The mothers forgot their washing, picked up lambs, and made their way to Louise. They took turns standing with a lamb in their arms, surrounded by their children. She zoomed in. One woman, veiled in a turquoise blue cloth, had particularly stunning ebony eyes. Her camera captured a boy's red toque pulled down over his eyebrows, a schoolgirl's string loop piercing her nose and a baby's crusty lips of food and dirt. She collected her own herd of children, mothers and lambs.
Wipin arrived, amused by the crowd that had gathered around her. She promised the mothers that she would send a copy of the photos back to them through Arvind. Wipin translated this to them and they were ecstatic. Just then, they heard the supper bell and left.
The meal, made up of big helpings of rice, dal and naan bread, was a gourmet feast for the tastebuds. Cross-legged once again on the floor with their plates on their knees, they ate with their hands. They watched as the mother demonstrated how to scoop the food and use the thumb to push it into the mouth. They all tried it. Lots of rice landed on Louise's lap but no one seemed to notice.
Here they sat — 10 adults in front of a cooking fire, enjoying tasty homemade food. The translators were kept busy with their stories told with exuberance for life. Here Louise sat on top of the world — 50 years old, with bad legs, bad lungs and a tired heart, experiencing wonder. The last remaining light filtered through the slate roof tiles and shone on the strands of marigold heads sewn together, hanging above the door. "Housebees," known to Louise as common flies, swarmed in circles around their heads and they laughed together. No one was concerned with the differences in their ages, their nationalities or their religions. They were just people, enjoying people.
After supper, Wipin built a bonfire in front of the house. They brought handmade stools over to the fire. Louise was surprised to see him burning oak.
"Just an English wood," he explained. "Not supposed to be in India."
The night sky darkened, displaying stars by the million above their heads. Louise remembered as a child at her grandparents' farm in Quebec, watching for shooting stars in a similar night sky.
Suddenly, she found herself surrounded by children, fascinated by her mittens, which exposed the tips of her fingers. They each took turns trying them on. As the fire got hotter, they moved a little further back and Louise suggested they sing songs. The children clapped their hands in approval. Louise sang her all-time favourite song, "You Are My Sunshine." It echoed through the night and rose like a prayer to the stars. The music and the moment engulfed her.
The children decided to sing a delightful Gaddi school song. And so began an enchanting evening of singing. One of the younger girls sat on her lap and she hugged her, putting her mittens over her cold hands. It was an evening Louise will remember for the rest of her life.
Once the children had left for the night, Arvind asked, "Would anyone like one last chai?" Louise welcomed the thought of this warm, sweet liquid. They all replied, "Yes." He went into the wooden shed next to the house where a water buffalo and her calf were bedded for the night. He piled cornhusk leaves in front of the cow and proceeded to milk her. Fresh steaming milk was then brought into the house to make their tea. She marveled at this straightforward life. You wanted milk, you milked the cow.
At bedtime, they were taken to the attic of the house above the sisters' room, where mattresses made by Wipin's mother had been laid out. Next to the wooden floor, they were welcomed rectangular cushions of comfort. Through the slate tiled attic roof, like the one in the kitchen, she saw directly out to the night sky where the slates had shifted.
The room was cold enough to see her breath, but she had fortunately received two knitted blankets and slept with all her clothing on. Throughout the night she slept restlessly, constantly shifting and aware of the high-pitched Indian wedding music blaring in the village.
The next morning, while they waited for breakfast, the mother and her daughters asked Louise to photograph them in their traditional Gaddi dress. She obliged them but they insisted on dressing her first. They took turns putting on the long green skirt and cotton top, the black coil belt and the veil, necklace and silver dangly jewelry.
They had breakfast, thanked their hosts and decided to return via a shorter but steeper route. Their descent was along a rocky path that ran parallel to a dry riverbed. A rudimentary water pipeline, the main water system for the villages, crisscrossed the path, and in many places leaked out in a fine spray. They descended a stairway of very high, manmade steps. Because she had to watch where she was going, Louise's neck became sore. By the time they got to the swinging bridge they had traversed at the beginning of their adventure, her toes ached and her calves were knotted. She was so tired that she walked as if in a trance. Just before reaching the bridge, her footing slipped and she fell down. Most of the scrapes were to her hands, but the injury was to her pride. The bridge was wobblier than she remembered, and for a moment she was very frightened.
