October 3rd to 5th 2022
We walk.
We walk to think. To pick up soap. To meet a friend. To catch a bus. Sometimes, we walk because there is a path.
That's it.
This path that we take over the first two days leads to a crest where we sit for a while, turn around and head right back.
Along the way, there are trees, fungi and birds to see. Conversations to excite comment, morbid humour to stay unfocused. Some trail mix and philosophy to chew on. Well, here's the pot pourri.....
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| Egg-like mushrooms. That is about All That I need to know. Unless they are not edible |
Our guide, Bhagwat Singh - Bhaggu - is struck by my interest in mushrooms (it takes all types to make the world, he is thinking) and is the attentive sort, willing to share his knowledge and listen. I am just reading Entangled Life - a book on fungi - so the interest is new and I have all the enthusiasm of a recent convert. Bhaggu hence is a perfect companion.
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(ps: not my photo, but give me credit for lifting the best one I found online)
He points to the tall trees by the side of the path: the wild walnut is inedible, unbreakable, even unpredictable .....sounds exactly like the rotis we had on campus three decades ago (the taste, if you can call it that with fervent imagination, lingers).
We walk past lovely large oaks, locally known as baanhj (Quercus leucotrichophora - say that again, quickly), another oak called Kharsu (Quercus semecarpifolia - repeat, twice a day after food) and a stretch of conifers - good hard wood, I was told - extending across the hillsides.
And then, these giants give way to smaller trees: enter the rhododendron zone that accompanies us all the way to the Panghu crest at 11700 feet. The first rhodos are taller and straighter, while the higher ones seem to have wider entangled roots and cluster in a dense monoculture that must be a summer walker's delight as the flowers blossom.
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| The trunks are a delicate pink Peel the bark and it's a bloody red Stop for a while and reflect. Think Rush right in where angels tread. |
A broad-leaved Himalayan forest, with little trace of chir pine is a forest of my idyllic dreams, a forest that invites the denizens of these high-altitude landscapes: bear, deer - sambhar, barasingha and the occasional musk deer, going by local accounts - and porcupine (I see some droppings on the path, so Mr Prickly has been around).
Can you, in your mind's eye, see these montane forests under a moonlit sky, with a languid, prowling Bhalu searching for tubers, deer browsing on leaves and the sleepy langurs up in the branches keeping vigil for the Big One, the leopard.....
Bhaggu has, at times, seen his namesake - bhaggu, bageera, cheetah even, to locals - and once, at a higher elevation, saw the snow leopard with its kill. Both bhaggus bounded off in opposite directions, one to safety and the other - a feared predator - to call his mates, all of whom returned on their two supple legs in a group to pick up the remains of the deer for their dinner, while the snow leopard cursed her luck.
Some trees have been chopped and I hear the sound of a motorised saw below. This is a community forest, Bhagwat tells me, managed by a van panchayat and the local folk of the village are allowed - for a fee - to chop a tree or two for their use; occasionally this privilege is extended to the inhabitant of a neighbouring village. This isn't egregious by any means, for the forest is dense, with a rich layer of humus.
What is being done elsewhere on an organised scale in the ill-concealed guise of development is far worse, a hundred times so - the 5 kilometre road to Khati has on its slope an ecological graveyard. We debate on the issue as we walk and it is cogently argued that to make an omelette, one must break eggs, but surely a middle way is possible?
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| What a panorama tells us is that there is a larger picture that is missed |
If I have learnt one thing after all these years, it is that Economic Development - whatever that means - is a chimera. One day, I know, we will learn the fallacy of assumption as well.
But, for now, more mushrooms follow....
And that is where this story must stay.
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| Looks like a thick slab of paneer, hard as as plastic chair Tap, tap, goes Bhaggu, to prove his point. |
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| Another tap-tap one, rock solid |
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| An awning for your window that you can eat when you are hungry? It grows right back, |
Moss, fern, wood, mushroom.
No rolling stone.
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